So Greece has now “defaulted” on its international “obligations,” thereby becoming the first developed nation to challenge the hegemony of the international system of finance—as opposed to the actual economy—by simply not paying.  Russia Today puts it thusly:

The International Monetary Fund has confirmed that it didn’t receive the €1.6 billion payment from Athens that was due by the end of June 30, Brussels time, making Greece the first developed country to default on its international obligations.

IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said in a statement that Greece had asked for a repayment extension earlier Tuesday and that the fund’s board will consider it “in due course.”

This very simple yet profound act of not “paying back” so-called creditors who supposedly “took a risk” by “lending” to Greece is widely touted in the press as making the “collapse” of Greece more or less inevitable:

However, a “collapse” of Greece or Puerto Rico or Ukraine—or even the United States—is completely unnecessary for a very simple reason we have spoken of many times here at LRM: all money is fake, without exceptions (including gold and silver).  I briefly will outline the reasons why a collapse is unnecessary below:

1. Money is a concept, not something you can touch or even own

Indeed, money is a unit of measurement, like inches or miles.  Despite the bills and symbols and coins and other representations of money, money remains a unit of measurement, not something by which people should live or die, starve or gorge themselves, succeed or fail.   Felix Martin describes it very well in his book “Money: The Unauthorized Biography”:

What actually is a euro, a pound, or yen? Not, of course, a dollar note, or a euro coin, or a pound coin, but the dollar, the euro, the pound itself. Well, as Alfred Mitchell Innes, the great but neglected monetary scholar of the 20^th century said, ‘the hand has never touched nor the eye seen, a dollar.’ That, of course, is true, because a pound, a dollar, a yen, a euro, they are just units of measurement of an abstract scale of value. It is very easy to think, of course, that they are something physical, and many people have thought like that over the years, particularly in times when we had forms of currency that were made of precious metal and therefore had some intrinsic value of their own. It is more difficult to think of that when we really consider it these days, when most money is electronic, when most money is composed of the liabilities of banks, and yet we do still have the habit of thinking like that.

Indeed, no one has ever not been able to draw a line 6 inches long because he didn’t have enough inches.  That’s absurd—no one even thinks about units of measurement that way.  So why do we allow a starving man to not be able to have a 6-inch sandwich simply because he doesn’t have enough “units of measurement of an abstract scale of value,” i.e. so-called money?  Why would we let a country like the legendary Greece collapse for the same stupid reason?

2. Money does not exist in nature and has to be created by people

I have written about this many times here at LRM, but perhaps nowhere more clearly than here:

Money must be created by someone, somewhere, because money does not exist in nature–except to the extent that a natural item like gold or salt might be assigned the properties of money.  Despite what the typical Western economics professor might say, money does not just naturally come into being as a consequence of people needing to exchange things.  Indeed, as Bartolome de las Casas observed of the native Cubans in the 16th century:

“…[the natives] put no value on gold and other precious things. They lack all manner of commerce, neither buying nor selling, and rely exclusively on their natural environment for maintenance. They are extremely generous with their possessions and by the same token covet the possessions of their friends and expect the same degree of liberality.”

That is to say, money is a creation of man, and as such, it should serve man, not enslave him.  Can it be that the “uneducated,” “pagan,” and “savage” natives of Cuba from centuries ago were more civilized and wiser about economics than we are today?  It certainly would seem so.

To get right to the point, modern currency is fraudulent for the following reason:  all modern currency is actually created by the participants in a currency system but it is legally treated as though it is created by, and therefore owed to, banks.  That’s it in a nutshell.  That’s the entire problem.

Let me try to explain what I mean as clearly as possible.  The Federal Reserve itself tells us that “banks actually create money when they lend it.”  The emphasis in that little nugget is on the role of the bank in the money-creation process, but that emphasis is completely misplaced.  That’s because what is implied in that statement is that for a bank to “create money,” someone first has to come to the bank and ask to be lent money.  In other words, a bank is powerless to “create money” unless a “borrower” comes along.

There are other good, nay better explanations than mine of this same concept, such as this one: “Where Does Money Come From? The Giant Federal Reserve Scam That Most Americans Do Not Understand”.   Or this one:

3. The international system of finance is antithetical to the actual economy

The media tend to have us focus on things like the stock market, treasuries, the stock market, mergers and acquisitions, the stock market, and the stock market—heh—to indicate the health or slightly-less-than-absolutely-optimal health of the economy.  In reality, the stock market has nothing to do with the economy.  The stock market (and other similar indicators touted by the media) is merely the indicator of the health of the international system of finance, which is nothing more than a vehicle for indebting nations and individuals by pretending to create money (see #2 above) while really creating nothing but debt and the servitude that necessarily goes along with that debt.

The economy, on the other hand, is the things that real people do every day—working, shopping, fixing their cars, painting their houses, preparing meals, washing clothes, bathing, eating, drinking, etc.  You get the picture.  Those activities are not indexed at all in the typical economic health indicators.  That’s because they are the stuff of which real life is made and have nothing to do with the stock market and the international system of finance.

And yet we see that the international system of finance has encroached upon the actual economy of the world via the enforcement of so-called “austerity,” which you can read all about here.  This austerity is the international system of finance’s way of punishing those people and countries who don’t—whether they cannot or will not—play by the system’s rules.  Paul Craig Roberts describes the situation well here:

“The ‘Greek crisis’ is not about debt. Debt is the propaganda that the Empire is using to subdue sovereignty throughout the Western world.

The Greek government asked the collection of nations that comprise the ‘democratic’ European Union for one week’s extension on the debt in order for the Greek people to give their approval or disapproval of the harsh terms being imposed on Greece by the EU commission, the EU Central Bank, and the IMF with Washington’s insistence.

The answer from Europe and the IMF and Washington was ‘NO.’

The Greek government was told that democracy doesn’t apply when creditors are determined to make Greek citizens pay for the creditors’ mistakes with reduced pensions, reduced health care, reduced education, reduced employment, and reduced social services. The position of the Empire is that the Greek people are responsible for the mistakes of their foreign creditors, and the Greek people must pay for their creditors’ mistakes, especially those mistakes enabled by Goldman Sachs.

As has been proven conclusively, the Empire’s claim is false. The austerity measures that have been imposed on Greece have driven down the economy by 27%, thus increasing the ratio of debt to GDP and worsening the financial situation of Greece. All austerity has accomplished is to drive the Greek people further into the ground, thus making debt repayment impossible.

The Empire rejected Greece’s democratic referendum next Sunday, because the Empire doesn’t believe in democracy. The Empire, like all empires, believes in subservience. Greece is not being subservient. Therefore, Greece must be punished. The Persians Darius and Xerxes had the same view as Washington and the EU. The Greek government is supposed to do what previous Greek governments have done, accept a pay-off and allow Greece to be looted.

Looting is the only way left for the Western financial system to make money. In pursuit of short-term profits, western corporations, encouraged and coerced by the financial sector, have moved offshore western industry, manufacturing, and professional skills such as information technology and software engineering. All that remains for the West are highly leveraged derivative bets and looting. Apple is an American corporation, but not a single Apple computer is made in the US.”

So the goal has been for the international system of finance to make it all but impossible for the real economy to function.  Because the system is about control of humanity, not about enabling humanity to be the best it can be.

4. No risk was taken by any so-called lender or creditor in making any of these so-called loans

Angry yet?  If none of the info mentioned so far has moved you, it’s probably because you think that these countries and individuals owe these banks because damn it, the banks took a risk in making these loans, and the banks will be hurt financially if they aren’t “repaid.”  And of course the reliable old saw that says—I’m paraphrasing—if you take a big risk you deserve a big reward.

But ask yourself this question: how can creating money out of thin air be risky?  Short answer: it isn’t, not even a little bit.  Go one further and ask yourself: if there’s no risk to these lenders, why do they deserve a reward or even to be repaid at all?  Short answer: they don’t.  Here’s a little discussion of why that is so:

“…if we return to the opening paragraph of this post, we see the money that Evans “borrowed” was actually created out of thin air by the act of Evans asking for a “loan.”  Again, this is not my opinion.  The Bank of England explained it quite clearly in a recent press release:

“Commercial banks create money, in the form of bank deposits, by making new loans. When a bank makes a loan, for example to someone taking out a mortgage to buy a house, it does not typically do so by giving them thousands of pounds worth of banknotes. Instead, it credits their bank account with a bank deposit of the size of the mortgage. At that moment, new money is created. For this reason, some economists have referred to bank deposits as ‘fountain pen money’, created at the stroke of bankers’ pens when they approve loans.”

Did you get that?  They said it themselves—banks do not give “thousands of pounds of banknotes” when they make a “loan,” banks just credit an account with a bank deposit “of the size of the mortgage.”  In other words, bank “loans” are not cash, they are merely keystrokes in a database that says you now have money in an account whereas you didn’t have that money the few seconds before the keystrokes were made.  That’s it.

So since bank loans aren’t cash—says the Bank of England, not me—what risk is there in bank lending?  None at all.  But the idea that a bank “loaned” someone like Kevin Evans money—and took a real risk to do so—is the entire logic behind punitive wage garnishment, foreclosure, debt collection, etc.  But that idea is totally false.

How many times have we heard those words—“did you borrow the money?”  That’s the justification for our entire system, but it is based on an entirely false premise.  The question should really be asked back—“did you loan the money, or did you just hit an ‘Enter’ key on a computer?”  Because the real answer to that question is the latter, and that means that there is no risk in bank lending, whether that be for a mortgage, education, car, credit card, or what have you.

Some might scoff and say, “Well, but that’s the way the system works, and so you have to live with that.”  For now, maybe.  But that is the entire point of this site and the thousands of others like it—to raise awareness of what is actually happening and to question the not only the morality of such a system, but also the wisdom of such a system.  Yes, it may be legal, but is it right?  Hell no, it isn’t right.  It’s slavery by another name.  It certainly isn’t capitalism.”

Capitalism IS risk, so we are not living under capitalism

Indeed, as Simon Heffer put it in The Telegraph when discussing the bailout of Northern Rock:

“All capitalism is about risk. Rewards do not come otherwise. Sometimes risk is high; at others it isn’t. ”

So since banks can “lend” money at zero risk—as we have shown that banks do as a matter of course—there is no capitalism.  There’s especially not capitalism when the same banks can use the state to extract the artificial, fictional, risk-free money from people who can ill afford it, or even from those who can afford it.  The lie that banks lend money and take risks in doing so is now so thoroughly discredited that the current system which enforces that lie needs to be junked immediately in favor of one that accepts that all money is fictional and is only a means to an end, not an end unto itself.

5. Since no risk was taken, there is no economic or any other kind of damage done to these so-called creditors if Greece—or anyone else—”defaults”

This point is obviously closely related to #4 above, and I separate it only to specifically point out that a jubilee, or forgiveness of debt, would have no ill effects on any “lender”/”creditor” that isn’t a private individual that directly lent cash.  And in the case of Greece, Puerto Rico, and almost every individual and country, the debts we are talking about are “owed” to banks that create money out of thin air.  So completely forgiving the debts of Greece, or Puerto Rico, or you, or me would have exactly zero ill effects for the banks involved.   Those who still haven’t gotten the picture from the above statements might well be saying, “This isn’t true—the banks lent money and will definitely suffer if that money isn’t repaid.”  If such people cannot see that banks did not lend money that existed prior to a “borrower” asking for a “loan,” then that can only be because such people do not want to see the very plain truth.

6. The so-called collapse is so-called inevitable only because the so-called creditors and lenders do not want us to realize the first 5 truths mentioned above.

I know, that’s a lotta “so-called.”  But I don’t know any other good, quick way to get people to question the assumptions that are being made in many reports on the Greek situation and others like it.  In other words, what I’m trying to say is that a collapse is separate from repaying fraudulent loans to the international system of finance.  The collapse the mainstream is really worried about is the collapse of the international system of finance, which will certainly collapse when people realize and take to heart the truths pointed out here.  But if these truths are taken to heart, the only collapse will be of the vampire squid that is sucking out the soul and sustenance of humanity, because the real economy in which we all participate just by being alive is in no danger, while the international system of finance is in very real, very palpable danger, and it wants us to feel its fear.  Don’t give in to it!