The following article was written in 1939 by Louis Even in the first issue of the "Vers Demain" Journal, almost sixty years ago. We left the figures as they originally were in the article in 1939, but they are not the same today; far from it! For instance, Louis Even said in 1939 that "the State (Ottawa) pays, in interest charges to the bankers, 128 million dollars a year". We Canadians, in 1998, must pay, in interest charges to the bankers, 43 billion dollars per year ($43,000,000,000), and this is only for the federal debt!
The same thing applies to the other figures given below. But let us read the article as it was written in 1939. The point is to understand "Who does money belong to?"
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If I borrowed ten dollars, I have them, but only for a while. I can use them as I please for the time they are at my disposal, but I will have to pay them back when the loan falls due.
If I received, in exchange for work or products, ten dollars from another person who borrowed them, these ten dollars are really mine for the time I possess them, but the other person still owes them to the one who loaned them to him. He will have to withdraw the equivalent of ten dollars from somewhere if he wants to pay off his debt.
All the money in circulation, either in our pockets, in our drawers, or in our banking accounts, necessarily had an origin. Money comes, originates from somewhere.
We, the farmers, the workers, the merchants, or the professionals, we do not create money. Money did not come from us at its origin. The Government does not create money; money did not come from it at its origin.
Nevertheless, money was born, created somewhere. Our regular readers learned a long time ago that all money is born in the banks. The banker who lends to the Government or to manufacturers does not loan money that he has; he creates the money he loans! On every dollar that he has and keeps, he creates ten dollars which he loans out. The money he creates is credit, bookkeeping money; but it is modern money which is prevailing by volume. It is the money that determines the circulation or the stagnation of the other kind of money cash (coins and paper money).
The banker is the modern creator of money, but he does not give this money to anyone. He loans it for a certain period of time, and he obliges the lender to bring it back. He remains the owner of the money. All of the money in circulation, even the money you or I have earned, is owed by someone to the banker who created it; owed by some individual, by some company, by some parish, by some municipality, or by some government owed to the banks!
All of the money in the country is loaned; the sole owner is the banker. The banker is thus the real owner of all the titles to the production of the country.
There are people who maintain that all money must be earned, and painfully earned. What then have the banks done to earn all of the money of the country?
That's not all! Banks possess not only all of the money of the country, but also money that the country does not have, that the country never had; money that was never born, never created, and that the banks require just the same from the country. This is the interest (that is never created) on the capital that is created by the banks. From there comes the existence of the debts - public debts and private debts. (They sometimes pass from one compartment to the other, but the final creditor is always the banker.)
The banker is the owner of all, of more than all, of the money of the country. He is the owner of it, and he measures, at his will and according to his conditions, the quantity of money he lends to us. The State, just like an individual, is a renter, and comes to sign a lease with the owner, the banker. The State, like an individual, pays its rent monthly or annually to the owner, the banker. And the rent is high: 128 million dollars a year (in 1939), that is collected on our revenues which are already too deficient. This is a grave situation. Is it justifiable?
Let us suppose for a while that there is no money in the country, that there had never been. We are, all the same, in an organized society: farmers, blacksmiths, bakers, merchants, truckers, carpenters, teachers, doctors, priests, etc. Everyone produces goods and services according to his field; but it is difficult to barter goods which are often indivisible, when for a big article we often want to have a dozen articles from different sources. We feel the need for a medium of exchange, for money.
We then decide, for the first time, to create money, and to put it into circulation.
We gather together, and we calculate that we will need at least $110 million to start a supple system of exchange amongst the citizens. Therefore we create this first money that no one had before, that is born for the first time, based on the necessities of the society in front of products that await only for money to circulate.
To whom does that money belong, that first money, that money which is born for the first time? Which one of the 11 million Canadians (the population of Canada in 1939), members of the society, will dare say: "That money, which the society decreeds necessary and which it creates, is all mine?" Which man, or which group, can claim the legitimate possession of that new money?
The answer does not give any doubts. The $110 million belongs to all of the society, not to a group, nor to an individual. Not even to the manager of the society thence not to the Government — but to the members themselves. And since that money, in order to achieve its goal, must be in the hands of the members of the society, the only logical solution is to give to all and everyone his share of that common wealth, of that communal institution which the society initiated.
From there, a legitimate dividend of ten dollars would be given to each member, to each citizen.
All new money is necessarily public property, since it is new money, and not money already in circulation, nor earned by one another. Can we logically conceive any new money put into circulation as being the property of an individual?
Nevertheless, that is what happens today. All new money required for the expansion of the country is appropriated from its birth by the banker. If society needs a hundred million dollars of new money, money that did not did not exist yet, but of which the creation has become necessary - the banker is there, and says: "This new money is mine, and were I will lend it out to the society who needs it." He adds: "I will lend it for a period of time. I will then take it back in order to create again a need for it. The people will come back to ask me for it. I will start all over again the emission which becomes necessary, and I will ask it back again. I will require a surplus of money that does not exist, and I will hold then all of society at my door and in perpetual debt towards me."
The first borrowing made by the Federal Government to finance the war was a loan of $200 million from the chartered banks, in October of 1939. It was made, first, to reimburse $120 million on a previous loan, and, second, to increase the money supply in the country by $80 million.
The banks created $200 million; the Government gave them back $120 million of their own creation, and used the rest, $80 million, as legal tender.
We can concede that it was more than convenient to create $80 million of new money, because there is a terrible lack of it, and because the country can easily supply the production that these $80 million will command.
But the banker immediately made himself the owner of this new money. He lent it to the Government, and after two years, the Government has to reimburse more than $83 million: the $80 million created plus $3,200,000 that was not created; then there remained less money than before, and we had to begin again, or to stop production.
This $80 million, based on the production capacity of the country, is our communal property; society must create these millions itself, since they were needed, and distribute these millions to its members, $7.25 each. Our share of the dividend, $7.25 per individual, or $36.25 for a family of five persons, was indeed swept off by the banks. The banks confiscated the total amount of the dividends, $80 million, lent it out while they remained the owner of it, and charged more than $3 million in interest as a reward for having done this confiscation.
When someone takes what belongs to someone else, this is called a robbery. Each Canadian was robbed of $7.25. We were collectively robbed of $80 million, and we reward the robber by forcing ourselves to pay a $3-million surplus in a two-year period. And the collection agent of that reward is our own manager, our Federal Government. We pay our ministers, but they work for the banker.
The appropriation of new money by the banker is illegitimate, but it is legalized and rewarded. It has been appropriated by our own fault, since we are in a democracy, and since it is our representatives who legislate along these lines.
We are told sometimes that the national dividend to each citizen is a utopia, an impossibility. It sure is an impossibility when the banker takes it all for himself.
The banker could not, create $80 million of new money if Canada could not supply $80 million worth of additional production in response to that new money. Only an increase in the production capacity of the country allows a money increase.
It is because there is in Canada an organized society (producers, distributors, consumers) that money can exist. It is the credit of the organized society which is at the base of all creation of money, whatever be the form of that new money.
It is then only the increase in the credit of society, in the social credit, that the banker exploits when he produces new money. If he himself appropriates that new money, he himself appropriates the social credit. This is what we must take back and keep for the society, for its members.
With the logical emission of new money by society itself, for each of its members, the $80 million of new money that came into existence in October of 1939 would have immediately done good to everyone.
The Government would have found the money it needs by asking for it, at the rate of its needs, from the public who received it. On the other hand, the use of the sums levied by the taxes would put all of the money back into circulation, since the banker would not subtract it any longer: it would no longer be the banker's money, but society's money.
Who does money belong to? By right, to society; but actually, to the banker under the existing regime. Under a Social Credit financial system, money would belong to society, both in fact and by right.
Louis Even
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