Eco-Economy: Banking Reform Letter to Dominion

The Editor

Dominion

Dear Sir,

If more trade is the answer, what was the question? Worldwide trade has increased sixteen times since the Second World War but we have still not solved the problem of the prosperity of all trading nations. All nations on earth are in debt with the most prosperous, the US, being $5 trillion in debt. And at the same time, in one generation, according to the Worldwide Fund for Nature, we have lost 30% of nature's productive capacity.

Of course corporations want to rule the earth and override the democratic nation states and their citizens. They want the profits and they want to convince governments to employ their solution for prosperity. But the people of the world will not stand by and watch. Demonstrations like those at the World Economic Forum in Melbourne and at the World Trade Organisation in Seattle are destined to grow and continue. Together with the World Bank and IMF these organisations are destroying health and life on this planet but fortunately as time passes they are also becoming politically unsustainable.

Big international finance and banking interests want to protect the loans they created out of nothing. The curious thing is that we allow the money supply of modern countries to be largely created by private banks as interest bearing loans. (Contrary to popular belief, banks don't lend other people's money, they create it out of nothing, then lend it.) Money is thus created at the same time as debt and so there is never enough money in the system to pay off all debts at once. Hence debt must grow. The best way to reduce a country's indebtedness is to trade. We are trading with each other in a competition to reduce our indebtedness.

No, more of the same won't solve the problem. More trade is not the answer while we allow our country's money supply to be created by profit seeking commercial banks.

New Zealand Banking Reform believes that reform of the banking system is the first step to reducing debt and thus reducing the need for secret and undemocratic organisations like the World Economic Forum.

Deirdre Kent
Chair NZ Banking Reform

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