Article: An opportunity in this financial crisis

As the financial meltdown swirls around us, it is very easy to become consumed with fear. Our financial system is a core component of the "dominator"- system""a system that protects the few at the top at the expense of the many. It is set up to create scarcity as a tool for keeping the dominator system in control. This scarcity is at the heart of fear whereby everyone seeks to protect their small lot while others fall by the wayside.

But as Riane Eisler shows in her book, Real Wealth of Nations""we inherit our economic systems""and we perpetuate them simply because they appear to "be the way its always been"-. But it isn't true""we made up this current mess""we now have a choice to change it.

Every crisis presents us with opportunities""and so, today, we have to look at the financial crisis and find those opportunities for progressive change. Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt, posted on her blog an amazingly concise picture of the current financial crisis along with a completely doable solution. And what's powerful about this solution from the standpoint of RWN is that it enables us to begin shifting out of the dominator money system and into a caring money system.

Here's a quote from that article:

So what would happen if the mega-banks engaging in these irresponsible practices actually went bankrupt? These banks are widely acknowledged to be at fault, but they expect to be bailed out by the Federal Reserve or the taxpayers because they are "too big to fail."- The argument is that if they were allowed to collapse, they would take the economy down with them. That is the fear, but it is not actually true. We do need a ready source of credit, so we need banks; but we don't need private banks. It is a little-known, well-concealed fact that banks do not lend their own money or even their depositors' money. They actually create the money they lend; and creating money is properly a public, not a private, function. The Constitution delegates the power to create money to Congress and only to Congress. In making loans, banks are merely extending credit; and the proper agency for extending "the full faith and credit of the United States"- is the United States itself.

There is more at stake here than just the equitable treatment of injured homeowners and investors in mortgage-backed securities. Banks and investment houses are now squeezing the last drops of blood from the U.S. government's credit rating, "borrowing"- money and unloading worthless paper on the government and the taxpayers. When the dust settles, it will be the banks, investment brokerages and hedge funds for wealthy investors that will be saved. The repossessed will become the dispossessed; and unless your pension fund has invested in politically well-connected hedge funds, you can probably kiss it goodbye, as teachers in Florida already have.

But the banking genie is a creature of the law, and the law can put it back in the bottle. The imminent failure of some very big banks could provide the government with an opportunity to regain control of its finances. More than that, it could provide the funds for tackling otherwise unsolvable problems now threatening to destroy our standard of living and our standing in the world. The only solution that will be more than a temporary fix is to take the power to create money away from private bankers and return it to the people collectively. That is how it should have been all along, and how it was in our early history; but we are so used to banks being private corporations that we have forgotten the public banks of our forebears. The best of the colonial American banking models was developed in Benjamin Franklin's province of Pennsylvania, where a government-owned bank issued money and lent it to farmers at 5 percent interest. The interest was returned to the government, replacing taxes. During the decades that that system was in operation, the province of Pennsylvania operated without taxes, inflation or debt. "

There it is in front of us""and we have a choice""we can keep complaining, we can become the dispossesed while the weathy are protected once again or we can come together as a coalition for change that would result in a world focused on building a "Real Wealth Economy"- that enables the most important work of all""caring for humans and the planet. Changing our banking/economic system is, as Brown's blog article says, a "creature of law"-"-.and laws can be changed. Let's get to it"-..