Money as an illusion

Have a look at a video entitled Money as Debt http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

Borrowers agree to work for years to repay the interest to the banks- effectively rendering themselves slaves to the bank for a certain time. (I've done it myself.) For these reasons, lending at interest - or usury - was for centuries reviled by every major religion and by great philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. It's still forbidden by Islam and when Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, talked recently about Britain learning from sharia law, there's evidence to suggest that debt-free money was one of the things he had in mind.

What mystifies me is why the government doesn't simply create more debt-free money instead of borrowing from banks itself, with the result that taxpayers must meet the interest payments - more than all defence spending put together and not much less than the total amount spent on the NHS.

Gratifyingly, it turns out that a (still rather small) cross-bench group of MPs has put down a motion calling on the government to do exactly that - to issue "green credit for green growth". Among other things, they recommend "that the Treasury should use its powers to create non-interest bearing money so as to fund activities to combat climate change along the lines developed by the submission of the Forum for Stable Currencies."

By the way, I'm not going to pretend that the film is short. It's 47 minutes long. But perhaps that's how long it needs to be, to explain the many questions that are thrown up by this complex topic. I very strongly recommend that you download it and watch it when you can. I'd be delighted to hear what you think - but please do watch the film first!

John-Paul Flintoff