Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Werner at Occupy London LSX: Drop university fees

Why do students need to pay fees for their university education? Richard Werner a leading international banking professor said at St Paul's Occupy LondonLSX site on 8th December that education could be free of charge if the government followed the no-usury law of the Bible. Werner said that the tax burden of £80 billion per annum  for the UK's interest bill is quite unnecessary. Hence the possibility of new wealth through a debt-free interest-free money system.


He wove a fascinating story for an attentive audience in Tent City University. St Paul's bells chimed on, police cars wailed, passers-by diverted into the tent, listened and joined the discussion:  'a wonderful talk' said one; another said he had never heard such a clear explanation of the current economic mess. 


Werner surprises you. You think you have understood his drift pretty well and then he slips in on your blind side with a whole new area of understanding and learning that gives dramatic colour to his expositions. Hey! He is talking about banking and money supply of all things!  With a fascinating narrative, this time out of English history starting at 1120 AD, he illustrated yet again that unless we tackle at the most fundamental level where we get our money supply from, and how we allocate it, we are doomed to yet further cyclical economic disruptions.  


Starting with King Henry I at Winchester and its treasury and hazelwood tally sticks he showed how this created the  government money supply without interest. The 'no usury' rule of the Bible, Werner says, means none other than 'no interest'. Forget clever and convenient interpretations like 'no excessive interest'. 'No interest' means: no interest. Then on to the later role of goldsmiths who charged interest on their imaginary loans of gold (actually bits of paper that they declared were as good as the gold which may or may not have been in their vaults), which gradually usurped the role of interest-free tally stick money. Then the usurping role of William from Holland, the deposition of the rightful King James II and, with the help of bankers from Amsterdam, the setting up of the Bank of England in 1694, which consolidated and made fully legal the doubtful goldsmith banking practices. [As Rebecca Fraser has it in 'A People's History of Britain' (Pimlico 2002), with the founding of the Bank of England the country now had very deep pockets to fund the war with King Louis of France who lost and settled up at the Treaty of Ryswick].


Werner touched on the Corporation of London with its ancient rights, unique in England, and confirmed by the same William and Mary in 1690. He said that the Corporation is still a very privileged body based in a money-creating system which makes 98% of our money supply and allocates it to its own profit-maximising ends. This City is a strange enclave that is somehow not really a part of England - the Queen is not allowed to enter the City boundaries without the Lord Mayor of London. 


It looks as though the Bishop of London is actually grasping the nettle of this financial cataclysm. He would have gained much clarity from Werner's 'sermon' in Occupy's Tent City University in the shadow of St Paul's that day.
posted by Charles Bazlinton
The Free Lunch- Fairness with Freedom


      

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