Page 51 - Reflexions of African Bishops and Priests

Lesson 1: the goal of the economy: the Christian religion is practised, and at its minimum
that the goods meet the needs where it is denied and derided.
In order to dispel all confusion between the ends Lesson 2: Poverty in the face of abundance:
and the means, it is supposed here that the final goal the birth and death of money
of the production of goods is to satisfy the needs. It The abundance of goods and overproduction are
is unacceptable to assign other tasks to the economy,
such as to create jobs, obtain a favorable commercial incontestable facts today. Unfortunately, poverty en-
dures. The goods are not lacking but families are lack-
balance or distribute money to the population. When ing goods, simply because they do not have the right
opting for one or the other of these goals it causes the to appropriate them. So the products are there but men
means to conflict with the ends used. Money is not a do not have the right to have them or they do not have
material benefit but a means to obtain them. the permission. This is a problem of purchasing power.
Man has a grave moral duty to oversee the eco-
nomic, social and temporal orders, to be sure that they Money is only a sign to facilitate the exchange of
meet their goals. To this end, he needs a minimum of products. The quantity of money should correspond to
temporal goods to facilitate the practice of virtue. This is the products so that there is equilibrium; this money
what Pope Benedict XV meant when he said: “it is in the should be in the hands of all. We cannot imagine that
economic field that the salvation of souls is at stake.” it is not possible to arrive to a correlation because the
The person of whom we are speaking is the consumer, quantity of money today is not stable. Money was born
for whom the economy should be ordained. This means somewhere. We can then arrange it to equal the existing
to all men and to the whole man. products. Alas! Today, it is not the governments that
create money, it is the greedy bankers that create and
Social Credit could be understood as the policy of destroy money for their own profit.
a philosophy of association or the common good. As-
sociations could not make sense until they assured the Lesson 3: Banks create money as a debt
good of each of their associates. In other words, Social When granting credit, the bank creates money that
Credit means the society at the service of each mem- did not exist before and consents to the loan thanks to
ber; it is politics at the service of each citizen; the econ- a signature passed in favor of the banker, without the
omy at the service of each and every consumer. financial equivalence of paper money. The bank knows
Henceforth, social credit promotes social life be- from experience that the financial procedures in creat-
cause it is synonymous with faith and confidence. It is ing this loan does not necessarily come from cash or
mutual confidence that links the members of society coin money, at least not more than 10% of the loan.
together. It follows that without social credit, life in soci- The power of the banks to loan more than 10 times the
ety would be inconceivable and bring fear and mistrust. amount of paper money that they have in their safe is u
Social credit, or social trust, is at its maximum where called fractional-reserve banking.

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