Money for Nuthin!

Now look at them yo-yos thats the way you do it
You play the guitar on the mtv
That aint workin thats the way you do it
Money for nothin and chicks for free
Now that aint workin thats the way you do it
Lemme tell ya them guys aint dumb
Maybe get a blister on your little finger
Maybe get a blister on your thumb
Money For Nothing by Dire Straits

I always liked Dire Straits' sound, but I have recently come to appreciate their lyrics as well.

In Money For Nothing, they were talking about musicians who make money from playing music....hence, money for nothing, as playing music is hardly considered work.

Well, they could have just as easily been talking about the banking system . . . the originators of "money for nothing."

Consider the following by economist Howard Katz:

"The United States was a largely free market society from 1788 to 1933, but not completely. One important flaw in the system was that bankers were allowed to create money out of nothing (to a limited extent). Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson fought this and were partially successful, but some degree of banker privilege remained.

Commercial bankers would take in gold/silver coin and issue bank notes for the coin. These bank notes substituted for money. Then the bankers would make loans, not with their own money, not with depositors’ money but with bank notes they had created out of nothing.

Both money and credit would expand, and the bankers would make big profits. The bankers had learned that they could expand their notes up to about 4 times their gold and silver without having to worry about too many people coming to the bank to demand the gold and silver which each note promised. (My Note: Today this ratio is in excess of 10 to 1, and this process is known as fractional banking.)

However, sooner or later some banker would get greedy and go beyond the 4 times, and he would be hit with a demand to redeem his bank notes. Then would begin a cycle of money/credit contraction. A school of economists then grew up who acted as lap dogs of the bankers. They called the bankers’ money/credit expansion economic growth. And they called the period when the bankers had to contract a depression."

Legal counterfeiting....now that's the ticket! And they figured this all out BEFORE color copiers were invented. . . . . them guys ain't dumb . . . .

So the next time you hear the term recession or depression, just quietly smile and realize how prevasive lap dog economics has become, and thank God that you know better.

And armed with the truth, you won't be conned into playing the bankers' paper money games, which ALWAYS makes them the winner, and us the loser.

Just remember . . . . them guys ain't dumb . . . .