HOW HAS FINANCE TAKEN OVER OUR ECONOMY?

Finance, formerly known as usury, was categorically forbidden by philosophers and religions because debt was the tool of domination over people and individuals. But in the course of history, finance broke all prohibitions and took over the real economy.

In the days of barter, usurers would advance food and demand larger quantities in return. And if the contract wasn't honored, it was either war or slavery.

Then, with the monetary revolution, usury took on a new dimension, one that Aristotle in particular criticized: it's immoral for money to make money without effort.

Until then, usurers had increased their wealth by using goods or money that they physically possessed. But the dematerialization of money changed all that.

At the end of the Middle Ages, banking underwent a revolution thanks to the dematerialization of money: to avoid theft, merchants deposited their gold in exchange for banknotes in establishments that were the ancestors of our banks.

Beginning in the 17th century, with the advent of fiat money, bankers redoubled their ingenuity: instead of lending out depositors' gold, they printed banknotes unbacked by gold deposits and lent them out at interest!

In a sense, since the invention of paper money, bankers' wealth has been built not only on usury but also on fraud - the creation of counterfeit money!

The bankers' ingenuity took another step forward in the twentieth century with the invention of fiat money, which is not based on gold deposits, but on trust.

From then on, bankers created money out of thin air when they extended credit!

And so the circle is complete: money becomes, by construction, the shell of credit that earns juicy interest for the bankers. To illustrate, if all debts were paid off simultaneously with a wave of a magic wand, virtually all money would disappear!

Trust in fiat money is acquired with the complicity of political institutions. The fraudulent money creation of the bankers of yesteryear is now institutionalized!

Maurice Allais, economist, and Nobel Prize winner, wrote in a book published in 1999 (The World Crisis of Today. For Profound Reforms of Financial and Monetary Institutions): "In essence, the present ex nihilo creation of money by the banking system is identical - and I don't hesitate to say this to make it clear what is really at stake - to the creation of money by counterfeiters, so justly condemned by the law. In practice, it leads to the same results. The only difference is that those who profit are different."

Thus, in the course of history, the ingenuity of the usurers of yesteryear, now the bankers of today, has become more and more sophisticated. What was forbidden by the ancients and religions is now institutionalized.

Interest-based banking is the very foundation of finance capitalism, which exploits workers, exacerbates social inequalities, and destroys our planet. Indeed, finance is the science of credit, which gives individuals the power to consume today what they should have consumed in the future. Credits granted to impatient consumers constitute the ecological debt of future generations!

Today, no modern economist questions the very basis of finance, i.e., interest-bearing credit. Worse, no political leader seems to have understood that what our elders forbade us is the source of our present misfortunes.

The bankers' ingenuity has enabled them to hold hostage not only the real economy, but also our political institutions and, by extension, our democracies: financial power has become total power!