Our Economy is An Illusion That Impoverishes Us

The way banks create money is grand theft on an epic scale

[NOTE: Because I believe the economy will soon be the most important issue in our lives, I will be focusing on this topic more in future articles. My hope is that awakening others to the true nature of money and debt and their effect on our lives will be instructive and empowering at this critical time.]

“The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Economics, Harvard University

If you’re an American like me, you’ve been living in a distorted reality.

You’ve been conditioned to embrace the illusion that mainstream media are independent and free of bias, our markets operate freely and fairly, our government serves our best interests, and voting for the “right” people will solve our problems. This is the reality we’ve accepted all our life.

But now we are awakening.

We’re slowly realizing that the world we’re told — and want to believe — we live in bears little resemblance to the world we actually live in. Awakening to any illusion can be disorienting, but awakening to the reality of what our economy is really based on is mind-blowing. It’s like stepping through the Looking Glass in Wonderland, where the world is the opposite of what you expect it to be. I’m inviting you to step through the Looking Glass with me now.

Are you ready?

Like many Americans, I’d always been casually aware of the rot that had been eating its way up the class ladder, slowly devouring middle and working class families. I was so busy working to make ends meet that I never stopped to ask the obvious questions: What is causing the rot? Why is this happening?

The media give us dizzying autopsies of Russian collusion, the war in Ukraine, and the January 6 “insurrection.” Experts can explain in excruciating detail how a virus ravages our body. But they never do a deep dive into why the standard of living for most Americans has been in free-fall for decades, no matter who wins the White House or who controls Congress.

Have you ever wondered why?

I wanted an answer, so I began to investigate. It didn’t take long for me to realize that money isn’t just the source of class slippage; it lies at the center of all our systemic problems:

• We have debilitating crises in health care, housing, and education crisis because they’ve become unaffordable for the majority

• The U.S. is embroiled in conflicts in the Middle East because the strength of the dollar is tied to oil production

• Voting never solves our biggest problems because members of Congress are paid to serve the interests of elites

• The U.S. faces an opioid epidemic because Americans are trying to escape their increasingly depressing reality

• We’re depleting our natural resources because businesses choose to destroy our environment for the sake of profits and “growth”

Everything ALWAYS comes back to money.

Once upon a time, I saw money the way you probably do. I thought it was an indifferent beast that served no particular master. I believed it was available to anyone who worked hard enough (or was lucky enough to be born with it).

I never concerned myself with details like interest rates and money supply because they sounded too complicated. Isn’t that what most of us have done? The only thing we really want to know about money is how we can get more of it.

I’m going to show you why we should be paying less attention to how much money we have and more attention to something economists and other experts never talk about: where our money comes from.

Once you understand how money is created, you’ll know why we’ve been working harder to survive, why it gets worse every year, and why the people we elect never make good on their pledges to remove the rot that’s killing us.

Because the rot is woven into the fabric of our economy.

What I’m going to share with you isn’t taught in schools, even the best ones. You won’t hear about it in the media. This information has been hidden from us all our lives, and I’m going to break it down for you now.

Where Does Money Come From?

“Money is the root of all evil.”

We hear this phrase all the time, but it’s actually a misquoted line from the New Testament: “For the love of money is the root of all evil.” Because even the apostles knew that money, itself, isn’t a bad thing; it’s actually serves a valuable purpose.

Money is a valuable medium of exchange that makes it easier for us to get the stuff we need. If we bake bread for a living and need to get our car fixed, we might have a problem convincing the mechanic to accept sourdough to fix our brakes. Money solves this problem; we give the mechanic cash, and we’re on our way.

But money also makes us anxious, doesn’t it? We need it to do almost everything: without it, we have no food, no clothes, no shelter, no healthcare if we get sick. Without money, we can’t survive.

Money controls nearly every aspect of our lives. This begs the question: who controls the money we rely on?

“Give a man a gun, and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob the world.”

— Unknown

When it comes to money, there are only two kinds of people, and it’s not the rich and the poor: it’s those who have the privilege of creating money and those who have the obligation to accept it.

The privilege of creating money is granted to an elite class of people: bankers. I’m going to show you why money-creating power is significant and how it impacts our lives on a scale you might not realize.

What if you could create something out of thin air and convince a government to require hundreds of millions of people to use it to buy and sell things of “real” value?

What if you could require these people to receive what you create (out of thin air) in exchange for their hard-earned labor and efforts?

What if you could require people to borrow what you’ve created (again, out of thin air) to buy whatever they couldn’t afford — and even obligate them to repay the loan with interest?

Imagine the epic windfall you would reap, with virtually no effort or expense.

This, my friends, is the bold and clever scam that’s been perpetrated against us in plain sight. This is real power, beyond the reach of any president, member of Congress, or anyone else in government. And it’s the key to the control that banks have had over humanity for centuries.

When I bought my first home in L.A. in 2000, the real estate market was red-hot. As I sat across the desk from an escrow agent, robotically signing away my life, I remember staring at the bank’s promissory note. I was committing myself to repay an amount that was more than forty times what my parents had paid for their first home. How was that even possible?

The agent smiled sympathetically. “I know. It’s a lot of money, right?”

“For sure,” I mumbled, briefly wondering what the hell I was getting myself into.

“Just be glad you’re buying now,” the agent said. “Homes are going to keep getting more expensive. Sometimes I wonder if banks will run out of money to keep making loans!”

After I’d signed my escrow docs and got in my car, I thought about what would happen next: my bank would transfer an obscene amount of money electronically to the seller’s bank. No cash would change hands; the couple who sold me their home would just turn on their computer and find a bunch of new digits in their account.

I’d spent a semester in college macroeconomics studying GDP, interest rates, and money supply, but my professor had never touched upon the question that hung in the back of my mind: how did banks get the money to keep making loans?

Where did all that money come from?

Private Commercial Banks Create Most Of The Money We Use

Whenever you get a loan, deposit your paycheck, or get change from the cashier at a store, do you ever wonder where that money was before it reached you, where it began its journey into the economy?

Most people think the money we use is born in the U.S. Treasury, which does happen sometimes. Some people believe the Federal Reserve creates money, which it occasionally does.

But private commercial banks like Wells Fargo and Citibank are also gifted with the privilege of creating money. How they do it is one of the world’s best kept secrets — and the key to a masterful trick the entire global banking System relies upon. Pay close attention and watch how it’s done:

A customer walks into a bank and asks to speak to a loan officer.

“Good morning. I need a loan for $10,000 to buy a car. Can you help me?”

“Absolutely,” the loan officer replies. “You’ll have to complete this application, and I’ll need to see some I.D.”

The customer completes the application, the loan officer reviews it, then turns to his computer and spends an hour or so pressing buttons. The next day, $10,000 appears in the customer’s checking account. The customer goes to the dealership and buys the car with the $10,000 in his account.

And just like that, new money has been created.

Did you see what just happened? Did you catch the trick? If not, let’s review this sleight of hand in slow motion:

With a few keystrokes, the bank created digits on a computer (that have no intrinsic value) and deposited them into the customer’s account.

Those digits magically became money that the customer then used to buy a car (which has “real”) value.

Now the customer must work at a job to perform services (that have “real” value), like baking bread or fixing toilets, so he can repay the bank with interest for the digits it created — with a keystroke — and loaned him to buy the car (that has “real” value).

Do you understand how the trick works now? Money (created out of thin air) was used to purchase something of “real” value, and in exchange the customer has promised to spend years working to pay for the money that was borrowed (and created out of thin air).

Whenever people get loans to buy homes, cars and appliances, etc., money is created and flows into the economy

You’re probably thinking: “Seriously? It can’t be that easy to create money.”

Yes, it’s that easy —  and the process happens hundreds of millions of times each day, all around the country. Whenever people borrow money to buy homes, operate businesses, or pay college tuition, etc., money is born and flows into the economy.

The money borrowers receive is funneled to others down the chain: people who got loans to buy homes will give that money to home sellers (who will use it to buy other outrageously priced homes); businesses will use it to buy equipment from vendors; colleges will use it to pay their staff; and the people downstream who receive it will use it to pay rent and mortgages, to buy groceries, gas, etc.

And on it goes.

Without debt, our money would simply not exist. Crazy, right?

So how much money are we talking about? Private commercial banks create 97% of the money flowing through the economy. Did you learn this in school? Have you ever heard any economist mention this? Probably not. We never discuss this fundamental truth about our money.

So where does the rest of the money come from?

Our government creates the remaining 3%, including cash in circulation, i.e. dollars and coins. Think about what this means: our government has injected $2 trillion in COVID “relief” into the economy over the last two years — which has sent inflation higher than it’s been in 40 years — but that’s only a fraction of the money that banks have been creating for decades.

Our country is awash with unimaginable amounts of money because it’s so easy to create. Yet this begs another question: if it’s this easy to produce money, why is it so hard for us to get our hands on it?

Because people like you and me only have access to a tiny fraction of the money that's created; the vast majority stays above our heads and out of our reach, creating an artificial scarcity of something that's abundant. Because the closer you are to the people who create money, the greater your chances of getting your hands on it.

And 99% of us aren’t in this elite club.

“Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation. If the banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless situation is almost incredible — but there it is.”

— Irving Fisher, Former Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

The Problem With Giving Banks The Power To Create Our Money

When I began my deep dive into money creation, I couldn’t resist sharing my insights with my partner, Lisa. She’s always lamented the fact that she’s never understood much about the economy because it overwhelmed her.

One night as we were prepping dinner, I downloaded what I’d learned.

“So…the Treasury doesn’t create all the money?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said, tossing a handful of Mozzarella onto a slab of pizza dough.

“And it’s not the Federal Reserve?” she asked.

“The Fed and the Treasury create about 3% of it,” I explained. “Everything else comes from private banks. They create money from nothing, and we have to bust our humps trying to get some so we can buy what we need to live. How insane is that?”

“Yeah, it does seem weird...” She shrugged. “But is it really that big a deal?”

“Are you kidding? It’s a huge deal!”

“Well, someone has to create the money,” she said. “Why shouldn’t it be the banks?”

I hadn’t expected this response. How could she not be as outraged as I was about this set-up?

“But they should create money based on something that has real value, not digits they type on a screen,” I insisted.

“I guess so, in a perfect world. But if we all agree the digits have value, isn’t that good enough?”

At the time, I couldn’t understand her indifference to the money creating scheme. Only later did I realize it was because she was looking at the world the way most people see it.

On the surface, her questions made perfect sense. If we all agree that something has value —  whether they’re digits on a screen, little pieces of paper with dead presidents on them, or athletic socks —  what difference should it make? If we all agree to accept it as money, why should it matter who creates it or how they create it? Giving someone the power to create money ultimately benefits society because it allows the economy to function, right?

Yes — as long as we can rely on these people to create money in a way that serves society.

What Lisa wasn’t taking into account was that giving anyone this kind of power requires a great deal of trust. Like most Americans at the time, she had little reason to doubt the integrity of people with power and authority.

But what if that trust were misplaced?

Here’s why this matters. Because banks create money based on computer keystrokes — not “real” things of finite quanity — they can put as much as they want into circulation. This might not seem like a problem, until you realize that the way our System is designed, whenever money is released into the economy, it increases the price of everything we buy, i.e. it leads to inflation.

But that’s not all. Because money is like a drug, and banks bear a passing resemblance to pushers. Think of the economy as the junkie.

When banks are feeling generous and make loans to anyone who can “fog” a mirror, they pump money into the economy, and the junkie gets high: the stock market booms, home prices skyrocket, businesses expand, and people spend freely. But when banks decide to slow the money pump, the high wears off, and the junkie crashes: the stock market tanks, the housing bubble bursts, businesses close, and savings are wiped out.

Banks — not the people we vote for — control our quality of life, because they control the economy. Banks have the power to inflate or deflate it, whenever they want. It happened in the 2008 Financial Crisis. It happened in the 2000 Dotcom bubble. And before that, it happened in the 1990 housing bubble.

The money creating power of banks has led to increasingly intense “booms” and “busts” that have occurred more frequently over time and have fueled the wealth inequality divide  — because after every crash, fewer Americans are left standing, and those at the top scoop up more of what’s left.

Life in America has become a Squid Game that leaves fewer survivors in each round. And we are nearing the final round, my friends.

But this begs yet more questions: If banks have abused their money-creating power again and again, why do we still give them our trust? We didn’t vote for these people, so why do they have so much control over our lives? Why has our government looked the other way while banks have repeatedly wrecked our economy and lowered our standard of living?

Because creating money out of thin air also gives banks enormous power to influence the people we elect.

Take a look at this list of donors to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain.

Notice that banks were the single biggest donors to both candidates? Notice that the same three banks were top donors to both candidates? Notice that the man who ended up winning the election got a lot more money from banks than his opponent?

This isn’t by chance.

This is why the Obama administration only prosecuted one banker for his role in the Financial Crisis. This is why the rot that’s now devouring massive swaths of Americans has been allowed to fester for decades.

We're fast approaching a tipping point. Banks are preparing their final, decisive trick that will allow those in their elite club to scoop up whatever's left on the table now, guaranteeing that you and I have nothing (but we’ll be “happy” with nothing).

But it’s not too late to keep them from pulling this trick.

As the global economy goes into its swan dive in the coming months, our government will try to intimidate us into letting the people who robbed us preside over a much grander and more sophisticated theft. We’ll be urged to embrace the new digital dollar and digital IDs under the guise of “stakeholder capitalism,” “pandemic preparedness,” “sustainability,” and other clever buzz words designed to deceive us into giving them more power.

We absolutely can’t give them this power, my friends.

We must resist, and the key to resistance is educating ourselves and others about the illusion of money that sustains our economy.

The Awakening has begun, and it can’t be stopped. We have the power to rebuild the System in a way that works for all of us and not the people who have used it to exploit us. But the key to harnessing this power will be awakening a critical mass of minds before it’s too late.