Social Credit: Make Your Own Bank

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Economy

The economic prescriptions and principles that work for industrialized countries and even for the capital cities of developing nations break down when it comes to bringing prosperity to an area with no infrastructure and a hungry population. The usual prescription is the stimulation of SME - Small and Medium-sized Enterprise - activity, but the bottleneck is credit availability. Robert J. McIntyre acknowledges this in a recent paper, when he says:

Outside the capital cities, most of transition economies have not yet achieved broad-based and sustainable growth. Misguided assumptions that the small enterprise sector would by itself create successful economic growth, that individual private ownership was the only viable form and that local banking services are best provided by large, usually foreign-owned, national units, have together wasted much time.

But even a smaller banking unit, such as a credit co-operative as advocated by McIntyre, would have to rely on local savings for its capital base and may still run into trouble, especially if the situation has degraded to a point where there is little or no local capital to draw on.

Let's speculate for a moment. Would it be possible to bypass that financing bottleneck and activate productive local exchange by creating an independent local currency and payment system that does not depend on any outside "credit"?

Tom Kennedy, also known as Tommy-Usury: free definitely thinks so. He forwarded a transcript of a talk by Francois de Siebenthal, an economist and Filipino Consul in Switzerland given at the headquarters of the Pilgrims of St. Michael in Rougemont, Canada, with the following words:

You are invited to give this article by Francois de Siebenthal a careful read. What they are doing in the Phillipines and elsewhere is a simplified version of what I have been advocating. We have the modern tools of high technology to perfect this model here in Canada and in the rest of the developed world. What are we waiting for? Readers are invited to enrol with 'Hour' Third Market Network and list their offers of products and/or services that others can purchase...

Of course there are many competing networks in this jostle. Which one is going to make the big breakthrough? My personal preference would be for a fully internet-based open source, user-defined and user-controlled system of exchange such as envisaged in Ryan Fugger's Ripple project.

However, I believe that the description of de Siebenthal can bring us closer to a conceptual understanding of how this might work even without any hard cash. If you are not religious, I ask your patience. Just read over the references to rosaries and prayers - the real information is in the economic concept. That one will function or it won't. My bet is that it will.

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How to apply Social Credit locally
A simple system to exchange goods and services
How you can open a local debt-free bank with the use of simple cards

by Francois de Siebenthal

The following is a lecture given by Mr. François de Siebenthal - an economist and Filipino Consul in Switzerland - at our headquarters in Rougemont, Quebec, Canada, in March, 2005. Mr. de Siebenthal demonstrated to those present on how easy it is to open a local bank with just the use of simple cards.

Mr. de Siebenthal had gone to Madagascar with Mr. Marcel Lefebvre, to the Philippines with Mr. Melvin Sickler, and to Poland with Mr. Janusz Lewicki to explain this system to various interested audiences. In fact, Social Credit is no longer only a theory, but is put into practice in these countries, with local debt-free banks multiplying.

In an age where the use of the microchip is becoming a real threat, this is certainly one way one could exchange one's goods and services without having to bow down to the use of this microchip. Why not read and study what knowledge Mr. de Siebenthal has on this subject. It could prove to be very useful in the future!

A simple bank

I will speak to you now just to teach you how to open a local bank with the Social Credit principles. It is very easy to do and everyone can do it.

It was already done in past history, especially small banks in Switzerland. And those small banks, local banks, were done by farmers. The banker is a farmer, the bank is in a farm house, the customers are farmers, and the owners of the bank were and are farmers. These little banks, put all together, in Switzerland, make the third largest Swiss bank actually in operation with the best ratio and the best management because the costs are very low. Being the banks are very small and in small houses, and because you do not need big armour cars and security personnel, these banks are very efficient. These little banks can also be found in Austria and some other countries.

The tragedy of debt money

You know that money comes from debts with interest rates, and you know that all the theory of Social Credit is true, and that interest kills. The statistics of the International Labor Organization in Geneva state that every day you have 5,000 people dying at their work places. That makes more every day than the people who died in the Twin Towers. Every day! That means that because of capitalism and because of exaggeration in productivity, you have every day 5,000 people dying on the work place. And I do not count all the stress, all the psychological problems, the suicides, alcoholism, the drugs, the children at home without the parents because the father and the mother are both working.

Now, with our system, you can imagine that a system without interest rates will save a lot of money. It will save at least three hours every day for each one of you, it will cut the prices by half, and it will give the houses 77% more space because the interest rates are taking a lot of productivity in the whole world.

So now I am teaching you how to found a bank. These banks were already founded in Switzerland, in Madagascar, Africa, in the Philippines, in Poland, and in Canada. These banks have had such a success that now the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are already attacking these banks. In the Philippines there are already attacks in the government and in the newspapers. That means this system is interesting and the forces in front of us are already attacking this kind of banking system.

Where to start

How do we make such a bank in a country? What we did first was to listen to the people. What are their real needs? What are the real needs in Madagascar? What needs, the real needs, the basic needs just to survive, because in most of those countries the people do not have enough to live. Then listening to them, we learn too the mentality of those people. We have to adapt to the culture and the local mentality.

Social Credit is really the answer to the real needs, the basic needs of those poor countries. After having listened to the people, we tell them that we have something that can help them; it is not a magic wand that will give them paradise on earth, but it is a system that will guarantee each individual access to the basic necessities of life and allow the poorest countries to make use of their resources to help their own population.

The main thing is to look for the Kingdom of Christ and His justice: "But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides." (Matthew 6:33.) This is really what we are doing here with this local exchange system; we are dealing with justice, the justice of God. Work for justice, and everything else will follow!

A Christian coin
                           
At this point of my talk, I would like to show the 5-franc coin that is currently in circulation in Switzerland. (See picture above.) On one side, one can see the Swiss cross, which represents the Kingdom of Christ, and on the other side, social justice is represented by William Tell, the Swiss national hero and liberator of the poor and of the oppressed. On the edge, one can read these Latin words: "Dominus providebit - God will provide", which specifically refers to the line of the Gospel of Matthew mentioned above.

In all our meetings to organize local debt-free banks, we need to remind people that God does provide, that He is indeed very generous. In the Philippines, for example, they can raise three crops of corn. If you take one seed of corn, this seed will give you three stalks which will give you around 200 seeds. So if one gives you 200, then ten gives you 2,000; one-hundred then gives you 20,000. Three crops per year (20,000 X 3) yields 60,000%. And the banker will probably give you 6%. This means that God is very generous.

There are fish in the sea you can fish. With the earth, you can till, and the earth is very generous. You know that the earth could feed many times the world's population. It is not a problem of food but a problem of distribution. Then it is important to remember how the earth is generous and that there is enough room for everybody on this earth.

In Switzerland, as I told you, this system of small banks is working. And there is another system working too which is a parallel money called "wir", a German name which means "we" in English. That involves a notion of community. This money is existing since the year 1933 during the crises, and it is working very well. It is parallel money. Nobody knows about this money but, because of this money, Switzerland, the poorest country in the world as far as natural resources are concerned, is one of the richest countries in the world because of its organization of small banks and this kind of parallel money.

Usury is condemned by the Church

You know too that the Church, the Catholic Church, has always condemned the charging of interest on the loan of money, calling it usury. As a matter of fact, the social doctrine of the Church, which supplies principles of justice to be applied in human activities, is probably, among all the teachings of the Church, the part that is the least known. And the least known part of this social doctrine, the best kept secret, is certainly the encyclical letter Vix Pervenit, issued in 1745 by Pope Benedict XIV, and addressed to the Bishops of Italy, about contracts, and in which usury, or money-lending at interest, is clearly condemned. In 1836, Pope Gregory XVI extended this encyclical to the whole Church. The text of this encyclical was destroyed in many countries of the world just to hide this most-kept secret of the social doctrine of the Church. It says:

"The kind of sin called usury, which lies in the loan, consists in the fact that someone, using as an excuse the loan itself - which by nature requires one to give back only as much as one has received - demands to receive more than is due to him, and consequently maintains that, besides the capital, a profit is due to him, because of the loan itself. It is for this reason that any profit of this kind that exceeds the capital is illicit and usurious.

"And in order not to bring upon oneself this infamous note, it would be useless to say that this profit is not excessive but moderate; that it is not large, but small... For the object of the law of lending is necessarily the equality between what is lent and what is given back... Consequently, if someone receives more than he lent, he is bound in commutative justice to restitution..."

What you need to start a bank

To found a local debt-free bank is very easy. You just need small sheets of paper, which we will call the accounts, and a general ledger. In fact, we will do exactly like the five people in the tale of Salva