Opinion
The solution to Wales’ economic woes is mind-bogglingly simple
Simon Gruffydd Foster
Politicians can’t solve Wales’ economic problems because they don’t understand how the economy works.
Over 97% of our current money supply is fabricated by private banks as a debt - to be paid back with compounding interest.
This results in us (governments and people) owning far more money than even exists.
To keep up to the demands of debt repayments we been thrown into a treadmill of mindless "economic growth" causing environmental destruction, social disharmony, a growing gap in wealth distribution, and poverty - just to name a few of its many negative repercussions.
The solution is mind-bogglingly simple. We need to switch from a destructive private debt-based money supply to Social Credit.
Social Credit is money created by a government as a common good for the smooth functioning of a national economy. It is sometimes called National Credit, or Real Money.
It has been done in the UK once before, and by a Welshman. In 1914 David Lloyd George as UK Chancellor oversaw the introduction of the Bradbury Pound to avoid banking collapse.
Moving from a debt-based to a credit-based economy is just a matter of changing the accounting rules that govern the creation and distribution of money.
Any government could do it tomorrow - if they understood the stupidity of basing a national money supply on debt - and the benefits of shifting to a 'real money' system.
Leech
Some might like to dismiss the idea out of hand with the quip that Wales does not have the power to enact such a change.
But there would be nothing preventing us from running a parallel currency (like big corporations such as Tesco already do, with their reward points) as a stepping stone.
Once the burden of compound interest is removed, a nation would be propelled into relative prosperity. The cost of goods and services would drop while working wages would rise.
Taxes could be reduced and programmes like a Universal Basic Income could not just be viable but would be economically beneficial.
It would be like removing a life-depleting financial leech from the system so we can breathe freely again.
Why Wales?
To make significant changes to the world it makes sense to start at home. Our home is a country of three million people - small enough to make the kind of changes we need.
If we created a credit-based (real money) economy in Wales, the changes would be so compelling it would only be a matter of time before other nations followed suit.
They would follow suit not necessarily out of admiration, but out of simple economic necessity. No nation mired in a debt-based economy could compete with a Social Credit-based economy, just in terms of price alone - even with our higher wages.
That's because the largest cost to debt-based economies is servicing the debt - a burden that grows larger every year.
Free of this burden, Wales would fly. Other nations would have to switch to a Social Credit-based system of money just to catch up.
So let's plant a seed of change in Wales that will lead to change across the world.
The alternative is doing nothing and watching the world slip ever deeper into debt-dependency, recession, and poverty. It is not an option I want to contemplate.
Bubble
I believe 2017 will be known as the year cryptocurrencies got a foot in the global economic door. An essential difference between cryptocurrencies and UK pounds is that cryptocurrencies exist outside the world of banking and are not based on debt.
With a market cap (the amount of money put into it) approaching a trillion dollars, they can no longer be ignored.
Any nation could adopt a cryptocurrecy as a Social Credit monetary base. Cryptocurrencies provide more privacy and security than traditional bank-created money.
As economist Professor Steve Keen pointed out the other day: "Blockchain technology [the basis of cryptocurrency] could be used by a trusted party like a central bank to produce digital money which could be then given to everybody in the country.
“At the moment central banks only interact with the banking system and some non-bank financial institutions. And suddenly, central banks could interact with us directly.
“And that to me would be a means by which we could use the digital currencies to cancel the excessive level of credit [debt] created money which has been caused in the private debt bubbles.
“That’s probably the major innovation; central banks taking on blockchain technology producing digital currency and giving us all a bank account at the central bank which could be used as a way of bringing about the people’s quantitative easing.”
The future is here. An independent Central Bank of Wales providing the Welsh economy with sufficient liquidity to get us out of debt and back on our feet is all the medicine we need.
All we have to do is see the opportunity and grab it with both hands. First Wales. Then the world.
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