Banks are stealing a sovereign right from the people: The money to the sovereign!

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

The money to the sovereign!

Original German text: http://www.dasliebegeld.ch/2017/06/das-geld-dem-souveran.html 

The full-money reform raises a fundamental question: Who is in a democracy responsible for the money and the rules by which the members of the democratic community can benefit?

The issue of funds, "the minting regalia", was a royal or sovereign right in times of monarchies. The king and emperors held substantial sovereign rights and the "money regiment" was one of them. In the transition of the sovereign power from the king to the population in democracy, the sovereign rights were entirely lost, all focus being on individual human rights and human rights; The collective rights ("sovereign rights") were ignored. This carelessness has led to the fact that the practice of generating money as a result of the electrification of payment transactions and credit bookings has migrated to the private commercial banks, which, paradoxically, have recently taken the right to print and issue banknotes and transferred them to central (public) banknotes. When electronic book money was used to pay cash (coins and banknotes) and was created exclusively by commercial banks (privatization of money-making), this privatization remained uncommented by the legislature, the state of the state remained in striking silence. It was striking because in the Constitutions, "the right to coin money" was an explicit prerogative of the state, following the king's money regalia in the Middle Ages. The fact that the issuance of cash, the primary function of which is the means of payment, constitutes a state sovereign right determined by constitutions; The issue of book money, the currently dominant currency, however, does not make sense. Apart from the fact that the privilege of private banks, which is happily created by a technological development, is to be protected - contrary to the clear historical tradition that the issuing of money is a) a sovereign sovereignty, and b) a sovereign right.

Conscious decision

At the very least, the right to make money and put it into circulation would have to be transferred to the private banks, with specific objectives and conditions, by means of a conscious legislative act. Just as the kings were able to transfer the right to minting to bishops or princes, and just as the US government has transferred "the right to coin money" to the Federal Reserve System. And such a decision, in the face of sovereign sovereignty, should be taken only by the sovereign. Neither has such a decision ever been made, either by a democratic sovereign, nor by his representation, nor does constitutions prescribe the issuance of money as sovereign sovereignty, but "only" as a sovereign sovereignty.

Both questions are linked: on the one hand, a clear decision is needed to transfer the right to make money to non-state actors - this has never happened. On the other hand, it is necessary to clarify the responsibility for such a decision: as clear as this was in the monarchy, this is unclear in democracy. In a "sovereign democracy," as the common-economic movement suggests, things are as clear as in a kingdom: the right to spending money is a sovereign right. Only this can be transferred to other bodies, whether for book money or cash, by legal decision by transferring this sovereign privilege to a non-sovereign authority. For example, to a government-independent "monetative" mandated directly by the Sovereign.

Today, everything is wrong and twisted: the private business banks have the right to the issue of book money, the prevailing means of payment, creeping appropriately. And the guardians of the state's sovereignty, governments and parliaments, are not allowed for this process. A clarification of who is responsible for the public good money - which should be of use to everyone - is decent and overdue. The "Gemeinwohl-Ökonomie-Bewegung" proposes that the principle questions on the monetary order in decentralized constitutional conventions should be discussed and coordinated in alternatives. A federal delegation or an EU convention could be constituted through a delegation procedure. It would deal with the most important issues of the monetary and financial regulation and put the sovereign to final vote. These questions could include who owns the sovereign right of the money, whether the central bank is public or private, how its bodies are constituted, whether commercial banks are public or profit-oriented, and loans forbidden. The result of the final votes would be clearly defined in the democratic constitutions, in the sense of sovereign democracy. Changeable at any time - through the sovereign.

Christian Felber is the initiator of the projects Bank für Gemeinwohl und Gemeinwohl-Ökonomie. His current book "Money. The new rules of play "deals with a democratic monetary order.