On 20101226 the below was to be found here: http://truthseeker2473.blogspot.com/2010/03/bill-still-refutes-g-edward-griffin-on.html . This is a page within a blog named "TruthSeeker24's anti-N.W.O. corner" run by a guy named Tim. While a little difficult to parse, I resisted the temptation to Bowdlerize the below with my "clarifications" and/or "insights"! The below claims to be "From http://z6.invisionfree.com/Bill_Still_Reforum/index.php?showtopic=206 http://z6.invisionfree.com/Bill_Still_Reforum/index.php?showtopic=206". That site is self-labeled "Still's Monetary reforum" and is closer to the 'source' and less 'derivative'. However that site is members-only and I was in a hurry to explore new ideas, not to rigorously document who said what when. -FNC
From http://z6.invisionfree.com/Bill_Still_Reforum/index.php?showtopic=206
For
the last four years I have resisted the temptation to respond Ed
Griffin’s criticism of my work that has resided on his website
since 2006. However, the link to this website has been thrown at me
so many times now that for me not to respond implies that I do not
have a good response. Such is not the case. Unlike Ed, I welcome a
full and open debate on this topic and welcome his further response.
Griffin's comments are in non-bold text below. My comments are in
bold.
MEET
BILL STILL, FIAT-MONEY ADVOCATE
An analysis of the documentaries
Money Masters and Capital Crimes
© 2006 by G. Edward
Griffin
The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate two video
documentaries on monetary issues that were written and produced by
Bill Still. One is The Money Masters and the other is Capital
Crimes.
They
are both the same production. We just changed the name after the
first year of distribution.
They
are excellent productions with a great deal of history and
professionally created images. They tell the story of our debauched
monetary system based on fractional-reserve banking. There is just
one problem. They offer a false solution – which is to say they
offer no solution at all. The alleged solution is that we abandon our
present fiat money system and adopt another one similar to it. Yes,
they actually advocate FIAT money!
It
drives me nuts the way Ed misuses the term "fiat" money.
"Fiat" is not synonymous with "Satan"! Here's the
dictionary.com definition:
“an arbitrary decree or
pronouncement, esp. by a person or group of persons having absolute
authority to enforce it: The king ruled by fiat.”
But Ed
and the other goldbugs prefer to define "fiat" as meaning
money not backed by gold. It always comes as a surprise to them that
gold money is also fiat as soon as it is declared "good for the
payment of taxes" by the government.
The
proposal is that we should take the power to create
money-out-of-nothing away from big, bad bankers and turn it over to
nice, trustworthy politicians. In my view, it is very naïve to
think that politicians are more trustworthy than bankers.
This
is perhaps the most telling of all of Ed's statements, and represents
the most important and astonishing error in the goldbug's argument.
Ed obviously does not believe in the utility of an elected
government. This is actually very consistent historically with the
goldbug's view of our democratic republic. The goldbugs of the late
1800s were the big bankers. Their consistent message was that
government was incapable of governing, and therefore, money matters
should be left to the experts --- the big bankers --- and not to the
people through their elected representatives.
To me,
government is all we have – the best tool – to, as
Gouverneur Morris, one of the authors of the Constitution and the
author of its Preamble put it in a letter to James Madison on July 2,
1787:
"The rich will strive to establish their dominion
and enslave the rest. They always did. They always will.... They will
have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by [the power
of] government, keep them in their proper spheres."
The
problem with money created out of nothing is not who does it but that
it is done at all.
These documentaries remind me of William
Greider's book, Secrets of the Temple, which was offered to the
public as a scathing exposé of the Federal Reserve System.
Greider’s history was excellent, but his conclusion was fatally
flawed.
So
is yours, Ed.
…That
is exactly what Bill Still has done in his documentaries. The
solution to fiat money is not MORE fiat money.
Keep
in mind, gold is fiat money, too. What Ed is trying to do here, is to
gloss over my real solution. It doesn't matter what backs the money,
all that matters is who controls the quantity. That combined with the
elimination of the ability of the federal government to BORROW –
No More National Debt – is the solution to all our economic
problems.
Historically, without exception, in every
gold-only money system, the quantity of money is controlled -- not by
the people, through their elected representatives -- but by the big
bankers for their benefit alone. Ed tries to paint my solution as one
where the government issues money without controlling the quantity.
This would, of course, be insane!
It
is REAL money based on tangible assets, and none has yet been
discovered that serves as well as gold or silver.
Au
contraire, Mr. Ed! Gold only works well as money for the very rich –
the holders of fixed investments. It has never worked well as money
for the middle class. It has never worked well to provide freedom
from serfdom to the majority of any population! And, despite other
assertions of yours, I do not believe in wealth redistribution. If
all wealth were redistributed equally at midnight on Day 1, by dawn,
the clever would have cheated the weak, the frugal would have saved
and the spendthrift would have wasted his wealth, and the government
who would have legislated the scheme would have skimmed of a
substantial share.
The
assertion in the videos that wooden sticks were successfully used in
England as money is grossly misleading. Tally sticks were
occasionally used like government-issued script that could be applied
to the payment of taxes, but at no time in history were they ever
used as a medium of exchange for substantial economic
transactions.
Ed
sadly bases this assertion on zero historical facts. This is exactly
why I traveled to London during the filming of "The Secret of
Oz" to film at the Bank of England museum holding actual
examples of tally sticks kept there. According to the museum's
curator, John Keyworth, tally sticks comprised well over 90% of
English money for about 700 years. Although the tally sticks I filmed
were the very large ones, because those are the ones Mr. Keyworth
brought down from the vault with him, I included a segment in the
film of Mr. Keyworth explaining that the average tally stick was the
length between a man's thumb and forefinger. This small size made
tally sticks convenient for every-day exchanges. Do you think that
the average serf would have owned any gold coins, much less traded
with them?
To
propose that we now can live with fiat money based on that myth is a
non-solution of the highest order.
Get
your facts together, Ed.
Still
points with admiration to some of the darkest days of the American
Republic. He praises Lincoln for issuing debt-based money, called
Greenbacks, during the Civil War even though this was a blatant
violation of the Constitution. His argument is not that this was a
desperate expediency required by the urgency of war, but that it was
an act of brilliant monetary statesmanship.
At
last, one correct statement from Mr. Griffin.
In
a similar vein, he approvingly surveys the early colonial period in
which colonial governments resorted to printing-press money without
silver or gold backing. It led to disastrous inflation and was
devastating to the common man; but he says this was caused, not by
flooding the colonies with fiat money, but by England forcing the
colonies to STOP the practice!
Ed
is very confused here. He is mixing up two different periods in early
American history. Unfortunately, he's doing this deliberately to
support his theories. He knows very well what actually occurred. This
period in history opens a gaping hole in his theory and he
desperately tries to gloss over it. Here are the facts of this
matter:
Early America had no gold. They were forced, in order
to have a medium of exchange, to print their own homegrown paper
money. This was money issued by the individual colonial governments,
without debt. It worked very well, and the colonies began to
prosper.
Unfortunately, as of 1694, England's tally stick
system --- also a debt-free money system --- had been killed with the
founding of the Bank of England. After 700 years of prosperity under
the debt-free tally stick system, England was suddenly thrust into a
situation where they had to borrow all of their money into existence,
at interest, from bankers. Of course this new money, was backed by
gold. So how did that work out?
By the mid-1700s, the interest
on this new national debt was crippling the empire on which the sun
never set. Fully 75% of British taxation went to paying just the
interest on England’s titanic debt. As a result, England was
forced to squeeze increasingly exorbitant taxation out of all her
colonies; America was no exception. Of course, they demanded this
payment in gold, but America had no gold. To the gold money system of
the bankers, America’s debt free “colonial script”
was worthless.
So, the British passed the Currency Act
of 1764. This outlawed America’s “worthless” fiat
paper money and ordered all Americans to pay their taxes in fiat gold
or silver coin. The result was the same as would occur today if the
average American was told that they could no longer make transactions
in anything but gold or silver coin. Most of us would immediately be
bankrupt. Look what befell the American colonies. As Franklin put
it:
"In one year, the conditions were so reversed that
the era of prosperity ended, and a depression set in, to such an
extent that the streets of the Colonies were filled with
unemployed."
To Ben Franklin this return to a gold money
system was the basic cause for the American Revolution.
"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."
So,
to Franklin, this banning of America's debt free currency was the
primary and underlying cause of the American Revolution.
He
relies on the words of Benjamin Franklin to support his case, and,
indeed, Franklin speaks forcefully. Still does not explain that,
although Franklin was an advocate of fiat money in the early years,
after the experience of rampant inflation had taught its painful
lesson, such a view was in the extreme minority. Still makes it
appear that Franklin was expressing the consensus of the Founding
Fathers when, in fact, it was just the opposite.
Not
true, Ed. But again you gloss over details in a lame attempt to hide
evidence that is detrimental to your case. After America revolted
from Britain's gold backed fiat money system, they begin printing
their first national fiat money. It was called Continental currency.
It was issued without debt and without backing by the fledgling and
impoverished Continental Congress. It worked very well, and George
Washington was able to pay American troops and pursue a revolution
against the mightiest power on the face of the earth.
It was
only during the last half of the Revolutionary war that the
continental currency became wildly debauched. Why? It was not as a
result of the duly-elected government, the Continental Congress,
printing too much of their "worthless" fiat paper, it was
because the British parked ships in Boston Harbor with complete
printing presses on board where they massively counterfeited the new
American currency and spent it into circulation, driving up demand
and prices everywhere.
These were the circumstances that led
George Washington to lament towards the end of the Revolutionary
war:
"…a wagon load of money will scarcely
purchase a wagon load of provisions."
Still
claims that it would be a mistake to return to a gold-backed monetary
system because most of the world’s gold now is held by the
bankers. This is a deceptively appealing argument. First, it is not
true. Central banks do hold more gold than any other single entity;
but the total inventory of gold in the hands of private citizens, as
bullion or coins or jewelry or known deposits in working mines, is
much larger. If money were to be restored to a precious-metal base,
this largely invisible reserve would be more than adequate to supply
the demand.
Ed
is absolutely correct -- on one point, anyway. The majority of gold
is now in private hands. In all of human history only a grand total
of 161,000 tons of gold have ever been mined, and world production
today stands at about 2500 tons per year. A ton of gold at today's
prices will cost you about $12 million. So even if all the gold that
had ever been mined was in existence today it its value at current
prices, would be less than $2 trillion, less then 1% of that which is
needed in today’s world. In other words, gold’s price
would have to go to $100,000 per ounce to serve the money needs of
the world today. Can you imagine buying a house with a single gold
coin?
Of course, Ed addresses this in his next paragraph.
We
must remember that the limited supply of gold as a monetary base is
an advantage, not a disadvantage. If it were not scarce, it would not
have utility as money. The smaller the supply, the more valuable it
is. Any amount of gold or silver will work just as well as any other
amount. The only difference is how valuable each unit of measure will
be. The argument that “we don’t have enough gold in the
world” is without foundation, and those who say this do not
understand the fundamental mechanics of money.
Okay.
This would be a reasonable argument if Ed had not just ignored tons
of monetary history to get to this point. The history is that gold
has not worked --- it has never worked --- at least for the last 2000
years --- for the common man. Ed’s “fundamental mechanics
of money” worked great for the world’s richest people ---
the holders of the majority of gold. Gold money has never worked well
to provide freedom from serfdom for the common man. Again, the
pertinent question is not what backs the money; the essential
question is, who controls its quantity?
Bill
Still does not make this argument but he comes close when he says
that most of the world’s gold is held by the bankers.
Ed,
my contention is that never before has a higher percentage of world
gold been in private hands.
Even
if this were true (which it is not) we need to ask a question: If
gold is so useless as a backing for money, why are the bankers trying
to acquire it as fast as they can? And why are central bankers so
strongly opposed to gold or silver-backed currencies?
Ed
seems a little confused here again. Bankers are trying to acquire
gold as fast as they can, and so are central bankers. China has just
opened up a new gold repository underneath Hong Kong airport and are
buying up all the gold they can get their hands on. India’s
central bank is doing the same. As a result, recent news items have
found that some of these purchases of gold bars, reputedly coming
from Fort Knox’s reserves, have contained counterfeit tungsten
cores. Huge international scandal which has devastated the notion
that gold cannot be manipulated. If true, it shows that gold is not
only being manipulated, it’s being outright counterfeited!
The
answer is obvious. It is because precious metals still are, and will
continue to be, a universally recognized storehouse of value,
Ed
is correct again. Gold is a store of value, but what he usually goes
on to say is that money needs to be a medium of exchange and a store
of value. In reality, money only needs to be a medium of exchange,
NOT a store of value.
and
that value cannot be manipulated by bankers OR free-spending
politicians. But fiat money CAN be – and always will
be.
Absolutely
wrong! Any open-minded review of the monetary history of the world
shows that gold is absolutely manipulateable by bankers!
This
brings us to the crux of the matter. Still claims that, because the
bankers have operated a gigantic monetary scam for hundreds of years,
it is time to break their grip over our lives and establish a fair
and honest monetary system We could not agree more on that point. But
then, in the tradition of Greider and Stinnett, he attempts to lead
us to a non-solution. He claims that we should take this power from
the bankers and give it to the politicians, because they are chosen
by the people and, therefore, can be trusted.
Well,
unfortunately, they cannot be trusted in today’s world because
the banking monopoly has controlled the quantity of money for nearly
150 years now. However, history has shown that freely-elected
governments have always been humanity’s only successful method
of freeing itself from serfdom --- the serfdom of the big banker’s
gold-only money system. Today, we have nearly lost our precious
freely-elected Republic. We have in its place, for all practical
purposes, a plutocracy --- rule by the rich. Ed’s gold money
system with only serve to enhance the powers of plutocracy and
diminish the capability of the average American to have an influence
over their government.
In
my view, this is the most naïve concept since Adolph Hitler won
the elections in Austria as “the man you can trust.”
Ed's
argument now devolves into desperately equating my views with those
of Adolf Hitler.
We
must not forget that politicians gave this monopoly to the bankers in
the first place. Politicians continue to cooperate with the system in
all of its corruption. Politicians derive huge benefits from this
system and repeatedly place their careers above the public good.
Politicians vote the bills that spend more than comes in from taxes
and thereby create that hidden tax called inflation. Politicians
write the laws that take away our liberty in the name of fighting
terrorism or crime or drugs. It is the height of folly to design a
plan of monetary reform based on the assumed wisdom and
incorruptibility of politicians.
Well,
Ed, my view is that government is all we've got! The average person
has absolutely no other ability to influence the political state of
affairs other than to band together and elect representatives and
re-empower our Republic thereby.
Lincoln’s
issuance of fiat money, called Greenbacks in violation of the
Constitution, once again was presented as an act of statesmanship.
I
wonder what part of the Constitution Mr. Griffin is referring to
here? Article 1, section 8 clearly says that Congress alone should
create the money and "regulate the Value thereof….”
Wouldn't regulating the value thereof mean the Congress should be in
control of the quantity?
There
were numerous other flaws that seriously marred this otherwise
excellent production, including the acceptance of the myth that JFK
was assassinated because he opposed the international bankers.
Not
true, Ed. I have consistently stated that JFK was NOT assassinated
because he was preparing to issue US notes. Executive Order 11101
speaks only about the reissuance of Silver certificates. I spent
three days in the Library of Congress back in 1994 tracking this
down. JFK was not at Columbia University on the day he supposedly
made a widely quoted speech that is apocryphal. He was in the White
House that day.
Like many in the monetary reform camp, I grew
up on Ed Griffin. He used to do brilliant work, but he has now backed
himself into this gold-backed money corner from which he has trouble
extricating himself honorably. Ed, you have correctly identified the
problem, but you made just one tiny error with the solution. That
isn't the end of the world! As many times as you've been right over
the years, there is no shame in admitting you got something
wrong.
_____________________________
Excellent
rebuttal Bill!
The gold-bugs are almost a fanatical religious
group. Their arguments have been smashed by common sense and by
countless historical events.
Taken from a previous
thread:
Common-sense
smashes the goldbugs
""Life
is not a problem of financial speculations, but always only a problem
of work. The folk community does not exist on the fictitious value of
money, but on the results of productive labour, which is what gives
money its value. This production, and not a bank or gold reserve, is
the first cover for a currency."
"To take another
instance where we are condemned: They claim to be fighting for the
maintenance of the gold standard as the currency basis....In our
eyes, gold is not of value in itself. It is only an agent by which
nations can be suppressed and dominated..... Are we to perish because
we have no gold; am I to believe in a phantom which spells our
destruction? I championed the opposite opinion: Even though we have
no gold, we have capacity for work.
The German capacity for
work is our gold and our capital, and with this gold I can compete
successfully with any power in the world. We want to live in houses
which have to be built. Hence, the workers must build them, and the
raw materials required must be procured by work. My whole economic
system has been built up on the conception of work. We have solved
our problems while, amazingly enough, the capitalist countries and
their currencies have suffered bankruptcy."
- Adolf
Hitler
"That the true wealth of the nation does not
consist in the hoarded gold of the Bank of England, nor in the
book-entries standing to the credit of merchant bankers. The wealth
of the nation lies in its capacity to produce goods, and its capacity
to consume goods, and its capacity to exchange its surplus goods for
necessary importations from other countries. If the City of London,
with its banks, its gold, banknotes, and its money, were suddenly to
sink into the bowels of the earth and be no more, the country would
go on, and, with incredible rapidity, would recover from the shock
and build a new and perhaps a better City. But if the country
vanished, the City of London would be dead for ever. In the last
resort, production and consumption could continue without money; but
money would be useless dross without production and consumption."
-
Vincent Vickers
Controlled fiat-money holds the ultimate trump
card in this debate, and that is the historical fact that it has been
used, time
and time again ,
to work flawlessly and benefit the people the
best.
-diva
__________________________________
FalseMoney.
Please see "The Secret of Oz" before posting again. I spent
a year producing something visually entertaining which fully answers
this question. Debt-free government issue has worked perfectly
whenever and wherever it has been employed. The only time it fails is
when the bankers attack it and replace it with gold money
systems.
We are going to start cracking down on these
inane arguments. We aren't going to continually return to square 1.
This isn't productive. Either play by the rules, or go
elsewhere.
Diva, I think David is right. Hitler quotes aren't
going to help us, though it's true that this is how a destitute post
WW1 Germany was able to amazingly reconstitute its war machine.
The
Vickers quote is absolutely stunning. I'd never seen that before.
Thank you.
-Bill
Still
___________________________________
Unfortunately,
I think a rebuttal was needed. If you google Bill Still or
MoneyMasters, Griffin's criticism comes up in the search. I have seen
this criticism many times on blogs.
Bill's response is a
thorough rebuttal and I don't think I can or need to add more. But
since Mr. Griffin wants to attack monetary reformers, through Bill's
work, I'd like to fire a couple salvos back.
Most Jekyll
Island and Federal Reserve books simply copy off Eustace Mullins'
earlier works. Griffin shamelessly and uncritically takes from
Mullins but inexplicably, Griffin receives most of the credit.
The
copy books, like Mullins research, start at around 1907 and run
through the mid century, with little research, if any, added. John
Birchers like Gary Allen and Griffin learned all they knew about the
Federal Reserve from Mullins - they took his work and wrapped it
around their 'gold is money" agenda.
The Money Masters,
like Mullins work, is based on actual research and it adds to our
historical knowledge well before 1907 and after the 1960s. Had
Griffin actually done any honest research of the 1800's, and 1970's,
he would have seen the fallacy of "gold
money."
Larry
_________________-
Thanks
Larry,
You are exactly right. Delving into monetary history in
the 1800s makes it obvious that gold is the money of plutocracy, not
democracy, not freedom for a sovereign nation. It's an intellectually
dishonest approach that will eventually leave its proponents
disgraced on the ash-heap of history.
It's been a long
time since I read Eustace Mullins, so correct me if I'm wrong, but as
I remember it, he claims to know the names of the so-called "Class
A" stockholders of the Fed. This is a worthless endeavor that I
criticized mildly in "The MoneyMasters" by pointing out
that the ownership of the Fed is so diverse that if even if you were
somehow able to remove these so-called "Class A"
stockholders from influence over our monetary system, their privately
owned central bank, debt-money system would go merrily on without
skipping a beat and nothing would change. Furthermore, there seems to
be a racial undertone to this line of attack that not only diverts us
from correcting the problem, it opens us to attack as racists.
For
years, Griffin's criticism has perplexed me. Ed invited me to his
home in Santa Barbara many years ago, shortly after the release of
"The MoneyMasters". We agreed to disagree, but parted on
friendly terms. Subsequently I read that he believed that the Tally
Stick system was not a significant money system for England because
tallies represented only large denomination transfers of money. This
was probably based on the fact that in "The MoneyMasters" I
filmed only the largest Tally Stick in the possession of The Bank of
England -- a 6-foot monster valued at £25,000.
This is
exactly why I returned to the Bank of England for "The Secret of
Oz" to film smaller Tallies and hear from THE world expert on
the topic, Bank of England curator, John Keyworth. Now that IS
primary source research! And believe me, it was a bit nervewracking
filming a documentary exposing the evils of the Bank of England
inside the Bank of England, in the heart of the City of London with a
film crew and one's wife in tow.
But luckily, Mr.
Keyworth, being a true museum curator -- a preserver of the truth --
a man who has spent his life steeped in the accurate preservation of
history -- was more than happy to dispense real unedited history --
unlike Mr. Griffin.
My hat is off to Mr. Keyworth. He
was a perfectly delightful English scholar and answered all our
questions to the best of his ability. He was nervous too, as the
first few seconds of his interview in "The Secret of Oz"
shows. Fortunately, we were able to convince him that we would
faithfully pass along the truth to future generations as well -- in
no small part due to the efforts of my wife engaging him in her
delightful mid-western conversational style while we were setting up
the shot. Without Anne's efforts, this important piece of history may
never have seen the light of day.
I don't know how Ed Griffin
will react to this critique. He may decide that he is best served to
ignore it. I know that I have spent a lot of money proving -- to my
satisfaction, and I hope to the eyes of history -- that he has been
wrong.
-Bill Still
posted by Timothy @ 3/02/2010 04:58:00 PM