"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
- Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US President, in a letter to John Taylor in 1816

The official history of money is that first people were trading by exchanging items (barter) and then we started using money as to make exchanging items easier. This has then later evolved into a modern, "safe", digital banking system where just numbers are being exchanged between computers. However this "safe" modern banking has caused our society to almost collapse. Banks and personal greed of the elite who owns the private banking system actually funding retail banks and governments are fully responsible for the recent credit crisis. 

But before we go deeper into that lets see what money really is. For a video introduction by Paul Hellyer see this blog entry, it is a good video to watch on the subject. 

It seems earlier societies had money which represented for example how much barley (or other relevant stock able good typically food related) from the state warehouse can be withdrawn. State issued money (in Sumeria this was clay tablets for example) against its surplus in the warehouse for services carried out. If I later on needed some barley I just walked into the warehouse - gave the money (or the clay tablet) and got some barley. Superficially not so different from todays shopping experience however the money bit here is very different. Here the money has a real value - it's fixed on barley which actually exists in a warehouse. Also the money is a credit note governed by the state (owner of the warehouse - the asset) not by a bank. In this case the money is 1:1 backed by the state warehouse so there is no credit risk at all. Its a very fair system. 

What's very surprising about the money today is that it is so called fiat money (this term actually exists which is kind of a joke in itself). Fiat money simply means that it is purely speculative money which does not have any real value. No not at all. It's not fixed on anything - it is an artificial instrument which is traded on so called "global free markets". People are buying and selling and betting about money and all this impacts the value of our house as we too well know.There was a good old time that you could walk into a bank and give them the money and they gave gold back (there are still some banks which do this) but try this in your bank. If you give them money they do not give you barley or gold because they do not have any. So why do we actually need banks? Just to store the money "safely"? 

What's even more amazing about this is that banks actually don't own their money but they have all the power. Banks take in your money and everyones money and then they are allowed to loan more money out than what they have. This is based on the idea that not everyone will withdraw their money on the same day - clever huh? So the banks make massive amounts of money out of money they did not even own in the first place (it was your money deposited there) or they have at all (banks are allowed to loan more than what they have). And all this is based on fiat money which does not have any real value. 

Am I the only one thinking that something is not quite right here?

What's even worse is that the bank's want everyone to own money for them (even governments and countries not just individuals) so they can have control over. Money as a dept is the key approach in the modern western society. The driving force is for the banks to make more money and this can only be achieved by getting more people / governments into dept so they gain interest and control. Plain greed. 

It seems money is designed to make more money for people who already have it and it is designed to make money slaves for the rest of us who have less of the green stuff. In the end its a power game of the super rich elite - just another clever way to control the innocent person on the street.

The only way out of poverty is to change this all, to change capitalism to something else - essentially to stop the super rich elite controlling this game via money and dept slavery. But to change to what? Ideally not to communism since that did not work either.

As Morihei Ueshiba (the founder of the peaceful form of martial art - Aikidio) said a long time ago: "Economy is the basis of society. When the economy is stable, society develops. The ideal economy combines the spiritual and the material, and the best commodities to trade in are sincerity and love."

You can read more about money related things from my blog under the tag #Money.