February 16, 2012
from
ActivistPost Website
Currency collapse is hardly something new. Especially when that currency is
backed by nothing.
In G. Edward Griffin's seminal work,
The Creature From Jekyll Island, he states
that once the "business of banking" by fiat began:
This led immediately to what would become an
almost unbroken record from then to the present: a record of inflation,
booms and busts, suspension of payments, bank failures, repudiation of
currencies, and recurring spasms o economic chaos.
(pg. 184)
Since this story of banking is so oft-repeated,
there are also a fair number of examples of how prosperity - or at least
stability and self-sufficiency - was restored afterward.
In nearly every case, it came from desperate,
but determined individuals who shrugged off the shackles of central banking,
and either returned to the currency they used previous to government
hijacking, restored pre-money barter systems, or created something entirely
new.
The modern-day, planet-wide collapse of fiat currencies is providing
additional real-time examples of how forsaken citizens are taking matters
into their own hands.
Let us look at just the two most affected:
Greece
It is a travesty that the nation where democracy and gold-backed coinage was
first developed should become the poster child of a whirling black hole of
debt and dependency brought on by autocratic rule.
Regardless, despite the
austerity riots filling city streets to make demands, there are indications
that some communities are finished with demanding anything from a provably
corrupt government that is literally foreign to their best interests.
The video below illustrates the rebirth of diverse means of exchange such as
time banks, barter networks, barter currency, and "priceless" commodities in
Greece:
Spain
The
Daily Mail reports on a town of 3,000 called Villamayor de Santiago,
where "rebellious" locals have reintroduced the peseta in a project to
thwart the failing euro after inflation has driven up the price of essential
goods 43 per cent.
The cost of bread is up by 49 per cent, milk 48
per cent, and the price of potatoes is up 116 per cent.
All while a third of this small town is out of
work.
Around 30 shops in the historic town, 75
miles south-east of Madrid, started accepting pesetas last month after
urging customers to dig out any old notes and coins they had forgotten
about.
(...)
News quickly spread, and shoppers from neighboring villages and towns
have been flocking there to spend the old currency.
After a one-month field test, the enthusiasm for
the plan has ensured its renewal.
Meanwhile, four other Spanish towns have
reintroduced the peseta, as the country goes through an employment crisis
worse than that of Greece, and the country's credit rating has been knocked
down another two notches.
America
The two modern examples of Greece and Spain, echo America's own colonial
history.
Following China, America was the second location
in the world to test fiat currency at the behest of the British Empire. The
story is fully recounted in Chapter 8 of The Creature From Jekyll Island and
is well worth a full read, but the salient point is that once colonists were
repeatedly subjected to hyperinflation and depression through the
overprinting of money, as well as having been subjected to broken promises
and tyrannical rule by the Bank of England through the removal of coins,
barter became a means of exchange and survival.
Tobacco was the first commodity, but nearly
anything of intrinsic value served equally well in restoring a semblance of
power to individuals as a means for their self-determination.
Later, the colonists who disobeyed government dictates brought out their
limited supplies of hoarded coins and re-built from the ground up using
sound economic principles. Those colonies which used sound money, such as
Massachusetts, won trade from fiat-money colonies like Rhode Island.
As Griffin states:
After the colonies had returned to coin,
prices quickly found their natural equilibrium and then stayed at that
point, even during the Seven Years War and the disruption of trade that
occurred immediately prior to the Revolution.
There is no better example
of the fact that economic systems in distress can and do recover rapidly
if government does not interfere with the natural healing process.
(pg.
160)
And Ben Franklin proclaimed that King George III
taking away the ability of the colonies to create their own currency was the
true reason for the Revolutionary War:
The colonies would gladly have borne the
little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took
away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and
dissatisfaction.
The inability of colonists to get power to issue their
own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the
international bankers was the prime reason for the Revolutionary War.
And this is the good news:
what's old seems to
be new again; citizens within collapsed economies are once again turning
their backs on centralized international government, ignoring their unjust
policies, and instead are returning to the far simpler and more logical
means of self-sufficiency and prosperity - their own inherent community
strength built upon real production and trade between individuals.
In short,
decentralization.
Americans would do well not to forget that the actions taken by individuals
in other severely collapsed countries are those also entrenched in America's
history.
Let us all observe closely, then, how the first dominoes that have
fallen in the latest cycle of depression are choosing to right themselves;
for it would be at our peril to ignore history, and the momentum that
already has pushed others toward the same foregone conclusion.
Our forgetfulness is perhaps the root cause of our repeated inability to
sustain ourselves, until another collapse scenario forces us to take action.
For an instructive case study in the risks imposed on nations by
international banking interests, as well as how anyone can survive the
inevitable aftermath, please view the story of Argentina below:
Related Additional Information: