Catechism on Banking

Recently, I started reading ‘The Creature from Jekyll Island,’ by G. Edward Griffin. It is an expose of the American Federal Reserve Banking system. After just two chapters I am already dangling between outrage and nausea. Griffin opens his book by republishing an article originally published in 1957 from British humor magazine, ‘Punch.’ Incidentally, Malcolm Muggeridge (one of my favorites) would have been editor of ‘Punch’ at this time.

Q. – What are banks for?
A. – To make money.

Q. – For the customer?
A. – For the banks.

Q. – Why doesn’t bank advertising mention this?
A. – It would not be in good taste. But it is mentioned by implication in references to reserves of $249,000,000 or thereabouts. That is the money they have made.

Q. – Out of the customers?
A. – I suppose so.

Q. – They also mention Assets of $500,000,000 or thereabouts. Have they made that too?
A. – Not exactly. That is the money they use to make money.

Q. – I see. And they keep it in a safe somewhere?
A. – Not at all. They lend it to customers.

Q. – Then they haven’t got it?
A. – No.

Q. – Then how is it Assets?
A. – They maintain that it would be if they got it back

Q. – But they must have money in a safe somewhere?
A. – Yes, usually $500,000,000 or thereabouts. This is called Liabilities.

Q. – But if they’ve got it, how can they be liable for it?
A. – Because it isn’t theirs.

Q. – Then why do they have it?
A. – Because it has been lent to them by customers.

Q. – You mean customers lend banks money?
A. – In effect. They put money into their accounts, so it really is lent to the banks.

Q. – And what do the banks do with it?
A. – Lend it to other customers.

Q. – But you said that money they lent to other people was Assets?
A. – Yes.

Q. – Then Assets and Liabilities must be the same thing?
A. – You can’t really say that.

Q. – But you just said it. If I put $100 into my account the bank is liable to have to pay it back, so it’s Liabilities. But they go and lend it to someone else, and he is liable to have it to pay it back, so it’s Assets. It’s the same $100, isn’t it?
A. – Yes. But .

Q. – Then it cancels out. It means, doesn’t it that banks haven’t really any money at all?
A. – Theoretically..

Q. – Never mind theoretically. And if they haven’t any money, where do they get their Reserves of $249,000,000 or thereabouts?
A. – I told you. That is money they have made.

Q. – How?
A. – Well, when they lend your $100 to someone they charge him interest.

Q. – How much?
A. – It depends on the bank rate. Say 5.5%. That’s their profit.

Q. – Why isn’t it my profit? Isn’t it my money?
A. – It’s the theory of banking practice that .

Q. – When I lend them my $100 why don’t I charge them interest?
A. – You do.

Q. – You don’t say. How much?
A. – It depends on the bank rate. Say half a percent.

Q. – Grasping of me rather?
A. – But that’s only if you’re not going to draw the money out again.

Q. – But of course, I’m going to draw it out again. If I hadn’t wanted to draw it out again I could’ve buried it in the garden, couldn’t I?
A. – They wouldn’t like you to draw it out again.

Q. – Why not? If I keep it there you say it’s a Liability. Wouldn’t they be glad if I reduced their Liabilities by removing it?
A. – No. Because if you remove it they can’t lend it to anyone else.

Q. – But if I wanted to remove it they’d have to let me.
A. – Certainly

Q. – But suppose they’ve already lent it to another customer?
A. – Then they’ll let you have someone else’s money.

Q. – But suppose he wants his too. and they’ve let me have it?
A. – You’re being purposely obtuse.

Q. – I think I am being acute. What if everyone wanted their money at once?
A. – It’s the theory of banking practice that they never would.

Q. – So what banks bank on is not having to meet their commitments?
A. – I wouldn’t say that.

Q. – Naturally. Well, if there’s nothing else you think you can tell me .?
A. – Quite so. Now you can go off and open a banking account.

Q. – Just one last question.
A. – Of course.

Q. – Wouldn’t I be better to go off and open up a bank?

After reading Griffin Armed Robbery will forever strike you as a honest man’s form of theft.

Are doctors beneficial to society? Of course. But they aren’t gods. Sure, they have an expensive education, but that only means that they paid a lot of money to have someone else tell them what to think and how to act–and then we pay them a lot of money to tell us what to think and how to act.

The sad thing is that very few doctors are in the business of healing people. Their hands are tied by pharmaceutical and insurance companies, not to mention the government. That’s why when you go to a doctor for treatment, the main course of action is to either give you a drug or cut off some part of your body–and that’s modern medicine in a nutshell.

Keep in mind that doctors do not have a monopoly on knowledge and common sense. They fall for medical and dietary fads just like everyone else.

Case in point: Do you slather gallons of sunscreen on your kids before sending them outside to play? If you do, it’s probably because your doctor warned you of the risks of skin cancer. He or she may have even shown you disgusting pictures of what melanoma can do to your skin.

Unfortunately, that sunscreen you were told was absolutely necessary just may be doing more harm than good. Consider this article from The Independent:

A growing body of evidence in recent years has shown that lack of vitamin D may have lethal effects. Heart disease, lung disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis are among the conditions in which it is believed to play a vital role. The vitamin is also essential for bone health and protects against rickets in children and osteoporosis in the elderly.

Vitamin D is made by the action of sunlight on the skin, which accounts for 90 per cent of the body’s supply. But the increasing use of sunscreens and the reduced time spent outdoors, especially by children, has contributed to what many scientists believe is an increasing problem of vitamin D deficiency.

Believe it or not, this medical “discovery” is old news to those who operate outside the mainstream. There are some who have known this for years.

Dr. Joseph Mercola points our that sunblock might actually increase your risk for skin cancer: “Although most sunblocking agents seem to prevent burning, they are not very good at blocking the UVA that causes skin cancer. Unfortunately, they are effective at blocking UVB, the wavelengths our bodies need to produce vitamin D.”

Dr. William Campbell Douglass agrees. He notes: “A deficiency–not an excess–of full-spectrum sunlight is what’s clearly linked to melanoma.”

Naturally, doctors like Mercola and Douglass are considered quacks by the medical establishment. They are fringe extremists who are just using scare tactics to sell more books.

But are mainstream doctors any better? Remember, they graduated from the same schools of higher learning that teach that we humans evolved from single-cell organisms purely by chance, that global warming is a scientific fact and that pumping toxic chemicals into our water supply is vital for good health.

I’m not saying that doctors don’t know what they’re talking about or that we should never listen to them. What I am saying is that you should keep an open mind when it comes to your health. Don’t just assume your doctor knows everything. When you consider that nearly 100,000 people die every year as a result of medical errors, a small dose of skepticism might actually be good for you.

‘Tis the season to be melancholy. Haven’t you heard? Christmas is under attack! Christians all across America are being persecuted! You thought Nero was bad? Our most sacred of days is being secularized and no one seems to be doing anything to stop it!

Is this a foreshadowing of the coming Great Tribulation? Are we about to see the fulfillment of Revelation 13:17? Will we wake up one morning and discover that we cannot buy Christmas presents for our loved ones unless our hands or foreheads bear the mark of the Beast? Surely we must be living in the End Times!

Okay, back to reality…

Yes, I believe there are assaults on the tradition of Christmas, just as surely as the world rails against anything associated with Christ and his church. But given the state of our secular, hedonistic culture, it really isn’t all that surprising when some people are offended when you wish them a “Merry Christmas.”

It goes both ways, however. Many Christians are just as offended when they are greeted with the words “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings.” “How dare you take Christ out of Christmas!” they shout, as they claw, punch and bite their way through a gaggle of shoppers for the last Xbox 360 on the shelf so that they and their spoiled children can properly celebrate the Savior’s birth.

Don’t get me wrong. Despite the fact that, after all this time, I still have not received a Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, I love Christmas. It is a time set aside for fellowship with friends and family. It is also the time of year during which we focus on the birth of Jesus Christ. While that does make Christmas a significant holiday, there isn’t anything especially holy about it.

Debate continues even within Christian circles about the origins of Christmas. “Its roots go back to the pagan rituals of ancient Rome,” some will argue. “No,” others reply. “Christmas is a distinctly Christian celebration and should be embraced.” Whatever your particular view may be, the fact remains that Christmas is a man-made holiday.

Romans 14:5 says, “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” That is not to say that traditions aren’t important or that churches shouldn’t have special days on their calendars. But considering that the only celebration in remembrance of Christ that is called for in scripture is the Lord’s Supper, can we really justify getting worked up simply because we don’t see the word “Christmas” in a store display?

My point is that many of us have a tendency to overreact when we see things we don’t like. That is especially true at Christmastime. We’re geared up for a fight, and when we hear the jingle bells ring we come out swinging.

Alistair Begg, pastor of Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, once noted in a sermon that the weapons of the believer are “prayer and the proclamation of the Word.” Those are the weapons we should be using. “As soon as we lay down the two weapons given by our Commander,” Begg continued, “we will be forced to take up the weapons that are present in our culture. And so we become just another marching special interest group…”

The result is a boycott here and a lawsuit there in the hope that an unbelieving world will relent and allow us to express our Christian beliefs. Of course, what usually happens is that we end up looking every bit as shallow and selfish as the very ones we believe are out to get us. We forget to exhibit Christ’s love in a fallen world.

Is that how we want to be seen? Is that what we are called to do? Is our dedication to the defense of the gospel of Christ defined by how ferociously we defend a particular holiday? Will our petty complaints about society’s disregard for the “true meaning” of Christmas help us reach lost souls?

This Christmas, may we be less offended by the “secularization” of a man-made holiday and be more focused on living as examples of the One whose birth we’re celebrating. The world doesn’t need Christmas; what it does need is Christ.

In a recent entry at a different site it was written,

Reverend Bret McAtee does his best to show that Rushdoony approved of miscegenation, but alas, Bret’s pole snaps in the middle of the vault.

The author comments that I was trying to prove that Rushdoony approved of miscegenation. That is a misrepresentation. What I was trying to prove and that which I suceeded in proving is that the great Rushdoony spoke with more than one voice on the subject of inter-racial marriages. The person in question doesn’t like that but if one reads the two quotes in question there can be no doubt that Rev. Rushdoony sent mixed messages on this subject.

Then the person in question quotes Rushdoony from a earlier writing,

“Unequal yoking plainly means mixed marriages between believers and unbelievers is clearly forbidden. But Deuteronomy 22:10 not only forbids unequal yoking by inference, and as a case law, but also unequal yoking generally. This means that an unequal marriage between believers or between unbelievers is wrong. Man was created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26), and woman is the reflected image of God in man, and from man (1 Cor. 11:1-12; Gen. 2:18, 21-23). ‘Helpmeet’ means a reflection or a mirror, an image of man, indicating that a woman must have something religiously and culturally in common with her husband. The burden of the law is thus against inter-religious, inter-racial, and inter-cultural marriages, in that they normally go against the very community which marriage is designed to establish. Unequal yoking means more than marriage. In society at large it means the enforced integration of various elements which are not congenial. Unequal yoking is in no realm productive of harmony; rather, it aggravates the differences and delays the growth of the different elements toward a Christian harmony and association. Cross-cultural marriages are thus normally a failure. A man can identify character within his culture, but he cannot do more than identify the general character of another culture.”

And I offer again a quote from the later Rushdoony work,

“Paul uses these laws (The Laws of Diverse Kinds) to show their application to the realm of human relations. He makes clear that mixed marriages between believer and unbelievers are forbidden. It is unequal yoking. For Paul, the meaning of mixed marriages is religious. Men have often opposed marriages which bridge class barriers, i.e., the nobility and commoners, or upper classes with lower classes. Again, the mixed marriage problem is viewed racially. Paul concerns himself with neither; these he leaves to the realm of historical considerations. It is the religiously mixed marriage of believers with unbelievers that is forbidden as an unequal yoking. “The unclean thing” is a yoking with an unbeliever where it is done by an ostensible believer. Paul’s comments in I Corinthians 7 deal with the marriages of couples who were originally both unbelievers and subsquently one becomes a Christian. In such cases, the believer is not to break the bond, but, if the unbelieving partner departs, the believer is free.”

R.J. Rushdoony
Systematic Theology Vol II. — pg. 971

I offer this quote here that I might be cleared of accusations of sanitizing. I also offer it here and note as we compare the two quotes that it is pretty standard interpretative behavior to read the writings of a author in his earlier days in light of his later more mature reflections.

My only goal is to give the reader the WHOLE Rushdoony and not seize on to any one part of him and ride it as a hobby horse for some not so hidden agenda.

Recently, my spy network passed on to me microfilmed copies of President Bush’s Diary. I thought I would reproduce some of it here.

Date — indecipherable.

Dear Diary,

After consulting with my Attorney General, who told me anything I want to do is constitutional as long as I give him enough notice, I gave the order to spy on some of the more swarthy of my fellow Americans. To be honest, I haven’t felt this titillated since I used to cheat on my Business exams at Yale in order to pull a ‘C.’

I feel just a little guilty about this behavior but my options are restricted if I am to maintain the American way of life and the American religion that produces that way of life. Diary, I can’t tell anyone what I am about to tell you so bear my secrets well. What people don’t realize is that the most effective way of dealing with the problem of a fifth column would be to defend our borders and to put tight restrictions on the Islamic faith in America. This I cannot do since to take either action would effectively eviscerate our national religion of multi-culturalism and so jeopardize our way of life.

You see Diary, if I restrict borders or put limitations on the Islamic faith I am essentially admitting that multiculturalism doesn’t work and so would be implicitly admitting that the faith of the realm is bankrupt and so I am forced to keep the borders porous and Islamic evangelism in the inner cities and universities vibrant in order to protect our undoubted catholic multi-cultural faith. So, you see, since I must maintain the facade, my only option is to spy and eavesdrop on those I would like to keep out but can’t in order to keep the national faith strong. We can only hope that our religious wise men are right and that most of these aliens in our midst will become acculturated into our multi-cultural faith and eventually give up taking their pre-border crossing faiths over seriously.

Diary, this brings another matter that is closely related to mind. I continue to lose sleep at nights that the American people will one day begin to realize that we are using their tax dollars to build Islamic study centers on American Universities. Here is the way it works. This country gives millions of dollars a year to the house of Saud in foreign aid. This frees up monies in the royal family to be used for other endeavors such as the 40 million recently ‘donated’ to Georgetown University and Harvard by a Billionaire member of the house of Saud to establish Islamic study centers. Prince Abdul Mohammed whatever his name is insists that he is trying to “bridge the understanding between East and West (as that) is important for peace and tolerance.” (Memo to self — Check to see if the University of Mecca or the University of Medina will allow us to build a Christian Study center on their campuses in order to foster peace and tolerance.)

Now my multi-cultural religious Priests and Priestesses tell me that these Islamic study centers are great public relation publicity stunts for the multicultural faith of the State. I just hope those Christian nutcases aren’t right that the Muslims won’t be happy until we are all speaking Arabic. Anyway… I hope nobody ever realizes that American tax dollars are essentially financing the propagation of that very faith system that was responsible for 9/11 and I hope that the students that study at these Islamic centers will understand if one day their government has to spy and eavesdrop on them.

Now I am off for some buttermilk and Jack Daniels.

I love this job,

George W. Bush

Brokeback Mountain, a film developed to continue to mainstream all things sodomite upon American culture, is already old news. The film is but one more example of how the ‘love’ that was once described as one that dare not speak its name now won’t close its piehole. Brokeback Mountain seeks to make the audience feel sorry for these two Cowpoke lovers whose innocent love can’t be lived out publicly for fear of the consequences.

This film is one more step into the breach of mainstreaming all things sodomite in as much as it is the first film produced for a broad audience that films the perversion that goes on between two excited but confused males in heat. Christians must not make the mistake of referring to this perversion as ’sex’ lest we surrender the meaning of the word for its anti-meaning. Whatever it is that two men do with their reproductive organs it certainly isn’t sex.

Its interesting that the way that Brokeback Mountain is marketing itself is by selling itself as a love story, and further it is interesting that many of the people that it is being marketed to will likely buy that angle. You see it has all the angles of a love story being present with the only difference being that they forgot to include a female lead. In traditional Hollywood love story fashion, boy meets boy, boy rides boy (hey — they’re not Cowboys for nothing), boy falls in love with boy, love ends frustrated, audience leaves sad that boy boy love story didn’t end happily ever after and resolved that they will never do anything to frustrate such sacred love when they meet two star crossed male sodomites.

Of course this love story suffers from the upside down world of categories that comes when God hating people are left in charge of the culture. What is billed as a love story is actually a hate story. As a proper oriented sexual identity is very closely bound up with man created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), homosexual behavior is a self and other hating behavior as it has as its intent (whether consciously or sub-consciously) the attacking of the image of God in man. So the behavior explicitly portrayed in this film is about hate of God, Hate of self and hate of the partner and all of this is done in humanistic notions of ‘love.’ Hatred of God, self, and others, in Brokeback Mountain is the theme of this movie and it is all portrayed as endearing, heart wrenching, and commendable.

What American filmgoers have long forgotten is that love is not a sentiment. Rather love is defined by conforming to a certain explicitly defined standard. The question then is where will we find those standards by which to judge the putative love that is portrayed in Brokeback Mountain? Either we will discover those standards on the basis of film-makers ability to manipulate our emotions or we will discover those standards in God’s word. If we submit to manipulated emotions then whoever is best at film propaganda will define our standards. If we submit to God’s word as the standard then we have capacity to determine if film-makers are sentimentalizing in an ugly direction.

Brokeback Mountain is one more example of how our culture has come to call evil, ‘good’ and good, ‘evil.’ It creates a narrative that conveniently leaves out Aids hospitals, Brokenhearted parents, homosexual bath-houses, torn and bleeding anuses, and tries to create the facile myth that the most traditionally masculine of men (Cowboys) can find monogamous gay love on the range where the deer and the antelope play… or at least could if it wasn’t for such a hateful culture that oppresses them.

One of the definitions Webster ascribes to the word “lie” is “an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker.” If that is the case, then the war in Iraq is unquestionably based on a pack of lies.

The Bush administration insists it did not lie. In fact, our fearless leaders–none of whom are at risk of losing life or limb in this conflict–take great offense at the mere suggestion that they may have misrepresented their case.

Dick Cheney, in a recent speech at the American Enterprise Institute, said, “The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight. But any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false.”

Who can argue with that? After all, politicians are renowned for their honesty. How could anyone possibly think they might have ulterior motives for anything they do?

As the whole world knows, the main reason we invaded Iraq was because of the threat of weapons of mass destruction. But was everyone convinced of the supposed threat Saddam Hussein posed prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks? No. Not even those who brought us this war were convinced.

During a debate with Al Gore on October 11, 2000, presidential candidate George W. Bush said that “we don’t know whether he’s developing weapons of mass destruction. He better not be, or there’s going to be a consequence should I be the president.”

One could argue that Bush made that statement because he didn’t have access to the proper intelligence before he was elected president. But on February 24, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell said this of Saddam’s military capabilities: “He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”

In May of 2001, Powell was speaking before a Senate subcommittee about Iraq. There was this exchange between Powell and Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT):

Bennett: Mr. Secretary, the U.N. sanctions on Iraq expire the beginning of June. We’ve had bombs dropped, we’ve had threats made, we’ve had all kinds of activity vis-à-vis Iraq in the previous administration. Now we’re coming to the end. What’s our level of concern about the progress of Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons programs?

Powell: The sanctions, as they are called, have succeeded over the last 10 years, not in deterring him from moving in that direction, but from actually being able to move in that direction. The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn’t have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been contained. And even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction–chemical, biological and nuclear–I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful. There’s no question that they have some stockpiles of some of these sorts of weapons still under their control, but they have not been able to break out, they have not been able to come out with the capacity to deliver these kinds of systems or to actually have these kinds of systems that is much beyond where they were 10 years ago.

In July of 2001, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice admitted in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that President Bush did consider Hussein “to be a threat to his neighbors.” However, she went on to say, “He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.”

Then came the terrorist attacks of September 11. Suddenly, Saddam Hussein was considered a grave threat to the security of the United States and had to be disarmed immediately, one way or another.

Links were quickly drawn by the Bush administration between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda. On NBC’s Meet the Press, in December of 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke of an alleged meeting between an Iraqi agent and Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 terrorist ringleader. Cheney said, “It’s been pretty well confirmed that he [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.”

More U.N. inspections were ordered, and on December 7, 2002, Iraq finally submitted a 12,000-page declaration of its weapons and weapons programs. Colin Powell’s reaction to the report was far from pleasant:

“Most brazenly of all, the Iraqi declaration denies the existence of any prohibited weapons programs at all. The United States, the United Nations and the world waited for this declaration from Iraq. But Iraq’s response is a catalogue of recycled information and flagrant omissions. It should be obvious that the pattern of systematic holes and gaps in Iraq’s declaration is not the result of accidents or editing oversights or technical mistakes. These are material omissions that, in our view, constitute another material breach.”

So, it appeared Saddam was simply trying to buy himself more time. He had no intention of complying with U.N. resolutions. This less-than-satisfactory report was the proverbial final straw, and the Bush administration began forging ahead with its war plan.

Then, a very serious charge was leveled against Hussein. You may recall those “16 words” uttered by President Bush in his 2003 State of the Union speech: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The case against Saddam seemed open-and-shut.

The following month, Powell went before the United Nations and presented damning evidence of Saddam’s WMD. For the war-hungry patriots, this was all the proof they needed. On March 20, 2003, the bombs began to fall.

The lies of desperate politicians in any situation can hardly be considered surprising. Fortunately, lies have a tendency to unravel over time.

Weapons of mass destruction have not been found in Iraq. What’s more, we are no longer actively looking for them. As White House press secretary Scott McClellan stated, “There may be a couple, a few people, that are focused on that, but it has largely concluded. … A lot of their mission is focused elsewhere now.” (Can you say, “nation-building“?)

Colin Powell now considers his WMD speech a “blot” on his record, and a former Powell aide called his own involvement in that U.N. presentation “the lowest point in my life.” I suppose the “material omissions” in Iraq’s weapons declaration to which Powell referred in 2002 may have been a subtle reference to the more than 8,000 pages the Bush administration edited out of the report shortly after it was submitted.

Last summer, in an interview with CNBC’s Gloria Borger, Dick Cheney backed off from his previous public remarks linking Iraq and al Qaeda:

Borger: You have said in the past that it was, quote, “pretty well confirmed…”
Cheney: No, I never said that.
Borger: Okay, I think that is…
Cheney: Never said that. Absolutely not.

And the president’s “16 words”? Columnist Justin Raimondo writes: “This falsehood leaps out at one in its brazenness, to begin with, because it was based on a cache of forged documents: not mistaken intelligence, but a deliberate attempt to deceive.”

The administration’s wall of obfuscation has begun to crumble. So, what perpetuates support for this war? I believe that it is our own self-deception. We do not want to believe that the leaders we placed in office would lie to us. Admitting that we were deceived means that our men and women in uniform were sent overseas to die for a lie–and for most, that alternative is unthinkable.

Regardless of personal feelings, our invasion of Iraq remains an illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, undeclared war. To pretend it is anything else is perhaps the biggest lie of all.