Growth beyond limits is

not a policy choice,

it is a system requirement

Article by

Lewis: Verduyn-Cassels
June 25, 2013

Clutha River Forum

PO Box 124, Lake Wanaka 9343, New Zealand
cluthariverforum@gmail.com
DISCLAIMER:
Analysis not intended to represent the views of all forum members

The idea that we should pursue economic growth beyond the carrying
capacity of our finite Earth is obviously irrational, if not insane. But that is
exactly what policymakers are doing. Why?
You may believe that pursuing ever more Gross Domestic Product (GDP) year after
year, counting all economic activity as gain, despite the environmental and societal
costs, is pointless, immoral, and ultimately suicidal.
And you may despair that governments around the world often ignore heart-felt
protests and petitions to save our Earth so that present and future generations may
have a life worth living.
It is only logical to say Lets stop focusing on growth because perpetual growth is
destroying the ecosystems that support life on our finite Earth. But when it comes to
the limits to growth,1 governments are not logical.
What do policymakers mean by economic growth?
There is a critical difference between quantitative growth that expands resource
extraction and material consumption, and qualitative development that improves
efficiency and reduces environmental and social impacts.2
Growth is more of the same stuff; development is the same amount of better stuff (or
at least different stuff). Herman Daly
Politicians routinely cite the need to grow productivity to generate more jobs. This
usually involves more industry, more exports, more highways, more houses, more
consumption of everything that adds to GDP.
The fiscal need to grow GDP is never ending, so economic policies are primarily about
expansion and intensification. Even when innovation is encouraged, it is often to
enable more profitable exploitation of shrinking resources.
Many people suppose that quantitative growth the production of more stuff, is
necessary because of population growth, making quantitative growth the inevitable
default policy setting for economies.
Is GDP growth needed to keep pace with population growth?
This seems plausible, because more people create more demand, but the answer is no.
According to UN data, almost all developed nations are reproducing at below
replacement level. Europe as a whole has had a declining birth rate for over 40 years.
Every country in the European Union, as well as Canada, Japan and China, now has an
annual birth rate below the 2.1 children per woman replacement rate.3
Germany is at 1.42; France, 2.08; Spain, 1.48; Italy, 1.41; Greece, 1.40; Portugal,
1.51; and Cyprus, 1.46; while the U.K. is at 1.90, boosted by immigrant parents.
The United States, at 2.06, also has a birth rate below the replacement level. Australia
is 1.77; Japan, 1.39; and New Zealand is 2.06.4
Singapore has a birth rate of 0.79; Hong Kong, 1.11, which will to see its population
almost halve in a generation; Taiwan is 1.11; China, 1.55; Thailand, 1.66; Vietnam,
1.87. Even Indonesia is only at 2.20, just above the replacement rate and falling fast.
Malaysia and the Philippines are still growing, as are the south-Asian countries, but this
is not projected to last more than a few decades.5

Birth rates decline in developing nations as living standards improve, with more
healthcare, contraception, education, womens rights, financial security, and so on.
Death rates also decline, causing a net increase in population prior to falling.
The population will peak in 2040 at 8.1 billion people, and then start to decline and
continue declining throughout the second half of this century. Jorgen Randers,
2052: A Global Forecast For The Next Forty Years (2012)6
Why do countries with declining populations need growth?
As a rule, governments, regardless of birth rates, are committed to policies that
promote quantitative growth and consumption.
European Union member nations, the United States, and Japan, all have stable or
declining populations, and yet policymakers in these countries are desperately
attempting to revive growth in their stagnating economies.
Having a falling birth rate impedes economic growth. An ageing population with fewer
young people means less demand, less consumption, less tax, and less GDP.
It seems perverse that despite global population overshoot, many governments now
offer incentives for couples to have children,7 8 9 10 and some use immigration as a
means to grow their population, in order to grow their consumption, in order to grow
their GDP, in order to reduce their debt to GDP ratio.
So, economic growth is not needed to serve population growth, but vice versa.
Is conventional economics driving population overshoot?
It is estimated that developing nations have 80% of the worlds population and
generate 96% of the population growth. These nations are beginning the demographic
transition to lower birth rates as their living standards gradually improve.11
Therefore, poverty reduction to reduce birth rates is the key to lowering peak
population. This hastens the demographic transition to lower birth rates, reducing both
the level and duration of resource demand during the transition.
Lowering birth rates would obviously improve global food, water, and energy security.
But our financial system is geared to increase poverty through debt. Furthermore,
neoliberal free market policies, since the 1980s, have accelerated the debt-poverty
machine, hollowing out the incomes of the middle and lower classes, and worsening
population overshoot in the poorest nations.
Everywhere, wealth is constantly transferred upward via the interest mechanism.12
In the O.E.C.D., income inequality has soared to record levels in recent decades.13 In
the United States, from 1979 to 2007, about $1.1 trillion was transferred to the top
1% of Americans, more than the entire income of the bottom 40%.14
Ironically, The World Banks bi-line is Working for a World Free of Poverty.15
Why are governments obsessed with growing ever more GDP?
The answer is the debt-money system, or to be specific, debt measured against GDP.
Rising debt is the fiscal motivation for economic growth.
After WW2, from 1945 until the 1970s, growth was so rapid that GDP was sufficient to
more or less control debt, while poverty generally receded.16 Growth was therefore
the goal of every government. However, the basic pre-conditions for such growth,

abundant fossil energy and expanding consumer demand, have been declining for
decades. The pre-conditions have changed, but the growth policy has not.
Although neoliberals have found new ways to boost corporate growth, by promoting
trade deals that allow better access to foreign wealth, and by easing international
capital flows, this has only fast-tracked environmental decline and sovereign debt.
Financial deregulation vastly increased debt by allowing runaway gambling in real
estate markets and a plethora of derivative instruments, prior to the 2008 crash.

(See graphic for correlation between US debt to GDP and related policies.)
The pursuit of GDP to settle debt is futile and destructive
So we just need to grow more GDP, right? Wrong, because total global debt has
already exceeded global GDP (about $83 trillion in 2012), many times over.17 18
All debt is a promise to deliver something of real value from our limited physical world,
and therefore a system of ever expanding debt is nonsense.
The monetary economy is a social invention not constrained by the physical laws of
the planet. Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (2012)
GDP serves the growth-based monetary system of interest-bearing debt, which is
divorced from reality, placing impossible claims on the future, like a cancer on all life.
Servicing interest-bearing debt demands exponential growth in GDP, rapidly depleting
finite resources for example, a goal of 3% GDP growth means that the productive
economy must double every 24 years.19
We simply havent got enough planets to exploit. Next, there will be pressure to mine
Antarctica, the ocean floors, even the moon and asteroids.20 21
Not only is the pursuit of GDP to settle debt an exercise in futility, GDP is a false
measure of economic success. GDP was never intended to measure national welfare.

Designed in the late 1940s to gauge the military capability of economies, GDP makes
no distinction between good and bad outcomes.22 In terms of growing GDP, even
weapons sales and wars can be effective strategies.
In many ways, GDP is an indicator of Greed, Destruction, and Pollution.
Why does the debt-money system require endless growth?
Only about 3% of a nations money is created by the government, as notes and coins.
The rest is created digitally by private banks, out of nothing, when they issue loans.
Banks do not lend reserves or customer deposits.
"When banks extend loans to their customers, they create money by crediting their
customers' accounts." Mervyn King, Governor of Bank of England (2012)
The private debt-money system has three fatal defects:
Firstly, the interest mechanism systemically transfers wealth upward, increasingly
enriching the minority at the expense of the impoverished majority.
Secondly, the banks create about 97% of the money supply as debt, which when
repaid shrinks the money supply and the economy. So the economy depends on the
constant creation of new debt, without which the loss of money leads to a recession.23
Thirdly, the banks do not create the interest, which must be serviced with the creation
of more debt. The interest is a negative phenomenon that compounds over time,
requiring the creation of ever more debt to service ever more debt.
The system depends on growth to function, for the simple reason that interest is added
to debt. To service exponential interest-bearing debt,24 the system must continually
expand, violating the laws of nature.
The debt-money system has been likened to a ponzi scheme.25
Due to the requirement for interest payments, debt-based currency can only function
well in an expanding economy. Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth (2011)26
Individually, we may pay off our debts, but collectively we must always be in debt to
the banks. Debt servitude is the system.
Nave politicians sometimes urge us to save money to reduce our debts, and yet all
money in savings accounts also represents debt somewhere in the system. They also
urge us to spend only what we earn, i.e. stop borrowing and live within our means, but
if we all did that, most of the (debt) money supply would disappear!27
The two modes of the system are growth and collapse
Despite the evident failure of growth-based policies, economists and policymakers
blithely talk about a recovery midst a global scramble for resources in a race to the
bottom of the barrel.
Even though the benefits of further growth are now less than the costs, our
decision-making elites have figured out how to keep the dwindling extra benefits
for themselves, while 'sharing' the exploding extra costs with the poor, the
future, and other species. The elite-owned media, the corporate-funded think
tanks, the kept economists of high academia, and the World Bank not to
mention Gold Sacks and Wall Street all sing hymns to growth in perfect unison,
and bamboozle average citizens. Herman Daly28 29

Like deadly Pied Pipers, the growth junkies are leading us to destruction.
The conundrum of neoclassical economics is that the debt-money system only has two
modes of operation, growth and collapse, usually referred to as boom and bust.
The first mode, growth, depends on ever more people producing and consuming ever
more stuff. The second mode is the failure of the first.
In the present debt-money system, policymakers have no option but to pursue growth.
Basically, their toolbox allows them to either shrink or expand the debt-money supply.
Which suicide policy do you prefer: public austerity or private stimulus?
Austerity shrinks the spending power of the people
Government austerity policies involve cutbacks on spending and borrowing. This
reduces the money supply circulating in the economy, which reduces the demand for
goods and services, which reduces employment. Poverty increases along with the
demand for social services. Commodity prices weaken as consumption declines, and
even large businesses become vulnerable.
A shrinking money supply deflates the economy, leading to defaults, foreclosures,
bankruptcies, unemployment, depression, and, historically, social unrest and war.
Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently described European Union
austerity plans as a suicide pact.30
Less obvious, is that neoliberals are using austerity to force down wages, strengthen
corporate power, and launch a second wave of privatisation through public asset fire
sales. Privatisation is a core requirement of austerity plans.31 32
Neoliberal governments, committed to expanding the private sector, are selling off
public assets at bargain rates, and further opening up their economies to exploitation
by transnationals in exchange for a debtors hand-out, sacrificing environmental
protections and sovereign freedoms.33
Stimulus expands the gambling power of the brokers
Quantitative easing (QE) is meant to stimulate growth in the economy by adding to the
money supply. Central banks create new money to buy up toxic financial assets, such
as long-term government bonds and junk mortgages, from too-big-to-fail-banks and
other private institutions.34
QE expands the liquidity of the banks, providing the elite managers, bondholders and
brokers with more funds with which to speculate in shares and commodities, raising
their stock portfolios. The QE is base money added to bank reserves, which are
loaned between banks, but never actually loaned to the public. The result is a net loss
of credit to the economy.35 This explains why $3 trillion of QE in the United States has
not caused hyperinflation, and why it does not benefit the government, most
businesses, or the people on the streets. 36 37
The result is a growing unproductive financial sector becoming more decoupled from
the productive economy, which is starved for currency and beset with unemployment,
while CEOs collect outrageous bonuses.38
Stimulus, to actually be effective, must deliver circulating money to the people in the
productive economy. This was the original intention of QE as proposed by the inventor
of the term in the 1990s, U.K. Professor Richard A. Werner.39

A recovery for the 7%, and a depression for the 93%

The overall global trend is declining growth,40 while in the United States 93% of
households are losing net worth.
Growth policies are driving a two-tier economy; one serving the wealthy elite who play
the markets, while the other bleeds the majority and expands poverty.
From the end of the recession in 2009 through 2011 (the last year for which Census
Bureau wealth data are available), the 8 million households in the U.S. with a net
worth above $836,033 saw their aggregate wealth rise by an estimated $5.6 trillion,
while the 111 million households with a net worth at or below that level saw their
aggregate wealth decline by an estimated $600 billion. Pew Research, An Uneven
Recovery, by Richard Fry and Paul Taylor.41
During the so-called US recovery from June 2009 through 2011, the wealthy gained
28% in their net worth, while everyone else lost 4% of their assets.42
The banking sector made record profits before the crash in 2008, and is again making
record profits in the post-crash Great Recession economy.43 44
Is the debt-money system a bankers welfare scheme?
Yes. Whether or not economies grow or collapse, the banking sector always wins.
During boom times when banks create money as debt, the interest mechanism
automatically transfers wealth upward from those who have the least to those who
have the most, widening the gap between the rich and the poor.45
And during a bust, when mortgagees default and businesses go bankrupt, the banks
foreclose and pocket the assets. Even when the too-big-to-fail-banks collapse, the
financial elite are rescued by bail-outs or bail-ins.46 47
So the banks expand the money supply during a boom, and shrink it during a bust,
which is the reverse of what a healthy economy needs.
The debt-based financial system primarily serves the welfare of an autocratic banking
cartel.48 They maintain their power because they have captured the state's sovereign
money, turning it into debt with interest. The power equation is: money scarcity equals
dependence equals control.
The system is designed to protect the money masters who created it. The golden rule
is that those with the gold make the rules. Or to be more blunt, the masters of the
debt-money system pull the strings of puppet governments.
Market and government manipulation, once insidious, now occurs openly in defiance of
the rule of law. So far, fraudulent banksters are too-big-to-jail.49 50
Forget growth, economies need permanently circulating money
The obsessive pursuit of growth, under policies of austerity or stimulus, or any
combination thereof, will only worsen every global crisis.
The growth dogma is so embedded that even well-intentioned analysts overlook the
underlying imperative for perpetually expanding GDP interest-bearing debt.

The death-grip of the private central bankers on the economy is seldom questioned,
despite the critical failure of their debt-money system to provide a permanently
circulating medium of exchange.
We are absolutely without a permanent money system... It is the most important
subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our
present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects
remedied very soon. Robert H. Hemphill51
Simply, an economy is a body of exchange, and money is its circulating blood, without
which its life can only fail and wither.
The monetary lifeblood of a nation not itself a commodity, is the intermediary that
allows people to trade goods and services of value.
A nations money is backed by the full faith and credit of the people. Sovereign
governments have always had the authority, vested by the people, to issue public
money debt-free and interest-free.
Public money is the domain of a sovereign nation.
Survival within limits depends on an economic steady state52
Populations in most developed countries are relatively stable, and the world overall is
moving toward a peak population followed by a decline.
Our civilization is on the brink of multiple collapses; financial, energy, climate, water,
food, and biosphere. We have an enormous programme of work ahead in order to
adapt our lifestyles to a saner world of less, but ample.
Economic growth as we have known it is over and done with. Richard Heinberg53
What is missing is a stable, sustainable, and democratic money system, necessary for
our evolution to a steady state economy.54
The modernisation of money is a taboo subject among economists and policymakers
rooted in the narrow orthodoxies of the IMF private banking system.
But those who understand that economics must be consistent with the real world in
order to succeed are being heard more often midst the mounting failures of austerity
and QE.
One of the most influential financial policymakers in the world, Adair Turner, chairman
of Britains Financial Services Authority, in a speech on February 6, 2013, advocated
the public issuance of money. His recommendation was backed by a 75-page paper
explaining why public debt-free and interest-free money, created for citizens and
governments, would restore economic health without leading to hyperinflation.55
Governments are failing in their duty to serve the people
A freely-elected government is instituted by the people to serve, not rule.56
Such governments derive their authority from the sovereign people, whose power is
the source of law. As a Public Trust, its public officers are trustees with a fiduciary duty
to serve the private people according to their public Oath of Office, being sworn to
uphold the law of the land, protecting justice and life.

Centuries of monetary, legal, and political manipulation, have deeply subverted

governments, establishing a global financial oligarchy at the expense of the people and
the planet.
So entrenched is this psychological control, that people living in common law nations
almost entirely forget that their legal fiction governments still operate under the lawful
de jure jurisdiction of the people.
Our government public servants depend for their authority, in all statutory matters,
upon the willing consent of each and every man and woman.57 Our singular right to
contract is inviolable.
By relinquishing the publics monetary power to the private bankers, our government is
failing in its fiduciary duty. We are, in effect, being constitutionally betrayed by our
disobedient servants.
Government policymakers, having revealed their corporate colours, are now engaged
in a deadly economic experiment to revive growth at any cost.
Mass impoverishment, and unemployment exceeding 50% among the youth of some
debt-ruined nations,58 59 can only lead to a more dangerous crisis.
The perpetual growth of GDP is not a policy choice it is a systemic requirement to
service interest-bearing debt, and a prescription for economic and environmental
collapse.
Interest requires growth, forever.
And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money of all modes of
getting wealth this is the most unnatural. Aristotle 325BC60

Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis Meadows (2012) Limits to Growth, The 30-Year Update
http://www.sustainer.org/pubs/limitstogrowth.pdf
2

Herman Daly. The closer the economy approaches the scale of the whole Earth the more it will have to conform to the
physical behavior mode of the Earth. That behavior mode is a steady statea system that permits qualitative
development but not aggregate quantitative growth. Growth is more of the same stuff; development is the same amount
of better stuff (or at least different stuff).
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3941
3

Christian Neocons Want A Whiter World

http://www.american-reporter.com/4,706W/959.html
Every single member country of the European Union, as well as Canada, Japan and China, now has an annual birth rate
below the 2.1 children per woman "replacement rate."
Global Fact Book
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html
Global fertility rates are in general decline and this trend is most pronounced in industrialized countries, especially
Western Europe, where populations are projected to decline dramatically over the next 50 years.
4

Ponzinomics - The Entire Global Economy Is an Insolvent Ponzi Scheme

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article39938.html
Europe as a whole has been reproducing at well below replacement rate for close to 40 years. The last period for which
UN data showed Europes total fertility rate above the replacement rate was 1970-75. The United States also is
reproducing at below replacement rate, and its birthrate has declined sharply in recent years. Half the world, including
almost all the developed world, now is reproducing at below replacement level.
In the longer term, the world will have to adjust its economic system to cope with the novel concept of less.
Fewer people, less consumption, lowered need for resources, energy, housing, roads, you name it.
6

Professor Jorgen Randers (2012) 2052: A Global Forecast For The Next Forty Years
http://cms2.unige.ch/isdd/IMG/pdf/jorgen_randers_2052_a_global_forecast_for_the_next_forty_years.pdf
The population will peak in 2040 at 8.1 billion people, and then start to decline and continue declining throughout the
second half of this century. This is very low compared to the UN forecast, which talks about 9 billion people in 2050 and
numbers rising from there. I have such a low forecast because I think fertility trends will continue downwards at the
stupendous rate that has occurred over the past 40 years.
7

Warning Bell for Developed Countries: Declining Birth Rates

http://www.forbes.com/sites/currentevents/2012/10/16/warning-bell-for-developed-countries-declining-birth-rates/
To encourage marriage and parenthood, Singapores government has instituted a wide array of measures: improved
accessibility to quality child care, leave entitlements for new mothers and parents of young children, and financial
incentives to help defray the costs of raising children. We created a special account for each child in which parents
savings have been matched, dollar for dollar, by the government, with caps ranging from $6,000 to $18,000, depending
on the birth order of the child. This was done to encourage parents to have three or fouror morechildren.'
8

Baby Bonus
http://www.babybonus.gov.sg/bbss/html/faq.html
9

Washington Post (2006) As Europe Grows Grayer, France Devises a Baby Boom
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/17/AR2006101701652.html
10

UN Calls For Population Control as Global Birthrates Decline

http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/11/un-calls-for-population-control-as-global-birthrates-decline/
Russia, recognizing its demographic crisis, is hosting the Moscow Demographic Summit on June 29-30 of this year.
Russia is also providing monetary incentives to families that have more than one child.
11

The World At 7 Billion

http://www.prb.org/pdf11/world-at-7-billion.pdf
Demographic Transition
12

Margrit Kennedy. (1995). Interest and Inflation Free Money. Creating an exchange medium that works for everybody
and protects the earth. Published by Seva International, ISBN 0-9643025-0-0.
http://kennedy-bibliothek.info/data/bibo/media/GeldbuchEnglisch.pdf\
On an average we pay about 50% capital costs in the prices of our goods and services. Therefore, if we could abolish
interest and replace it with another mechanism to keep money in circulation, most of us could either be twice as rich or
work half of the time to keep the same standard of living we have now.
13

OECD. (2011, December 5). Governments must tackle record gap between rich and poor, says OECD.
http://www.oecd.org/document/40/0,3746,en_21571361_44315115_49166760_1_1_1_1,00.html
14

Top 1% Got 93% of Income Growth as Rich-Poor Gap Widened

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-02/top-1-got-93-of-income-growth-as-rich-poor-gap-widened.html
From 1979 to 2007, about $1.1 trillion in annual income shifted to the top 1 percent of Americans -- more than the entire
earnings of the bottom 40 percent, according to Alan Krueger, chairman of Obamas Council of Economic Advisers and
an economics professor at Princeton University.

15

The World Bank, Working for a World Free of Poverty

http://data.worldbank.org/
16

Post World War II Economic Expansion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_economic_expansion
17

The Global Debt Clock

http://www.economist.com/content/global_debt_clock
18

Gross World Product

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
19

The Rule of 72
http://betterexplained.com/articles/the-rule-of-72/
20

Mining and Manufacturing on the Moon

http://www.isset.org/nasa/tss/aerospacescholars.org/scholars/earthstationmoon/Unit6/Unit6_ch3.htm
21

Asteroid Mining Becoming More of a Reality

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kitconews/2013/01/25/asteroid-mining-becoming-more-of-a-reality/
22

Editors: Philipp Schepelmann, Yanne Goosens, Arttu Makipaa. (2010). Towards Sustainable Development.
Alternatives to GDP for measuring progress. Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Dppersberg 19,
42103 Wuppertal, Germany.
http://www.wupperinst.org/uploads/tx_wibeitrag/ws42.pdf
23

Steven Sorrell. (2010, June 18). Energy, Economic Growth and Environmental Sustainability: Five Propositions.
Sussex Energy Group, SPRUScience and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex, Sussex House,
Brighton, BN1 9QE, UK. [Debt-growth impetus is removed when money supply is balanced, as described here.]
http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/6/1784/pdf
A crucial consequence of this system is that most of the money in circulation only exists because either businesses or
individuals have gone into debt and are paying interest on their loans. While individual loans may be repaid, the debt in
aggregate can never be repaid because this would remove more than 90% of the money supply from circulation. The
health of the economy is therefore entirely dependent upon the continued willingness of businesses and consumers to
take out loans for either investment or consumption. Any reduction in borrowing therefore threatens to tip economies into
recession. As a result, the only way that firms can make profits and borrowers can repay their loans in aggregate is if
the volume of new borrowing exceeds the amount that is being withdrawn through both principal repayments and
additions to bank capital. In other words, total debt must increase.
24

Washingtons Blog (2010, October 30). The Elephant In The Room: Debt Grows Exponentially, While Economies Only
Grow In An S-Curve..
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/10/the-elephant-in-the-room-debt-grows-exponentially-while-economies-onlygrow-in-an-s-curve.html
Hudson says that - in every country and throughout history - debt always grows exponentially, while the economy always
grows as an S-curve. Moreover, Hudson says that the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians knew that debts had to be
periodically forgiven, because the amount of debts will always surpass the size of the real economy. One thing is for
sure. The exponential growth of debt is a structural problem which - unless directly addressed - will swallow all
economies which try to ignore it.
25

Ponzinomics - The Entire Global Economy Is an Insolvent Ponzi Scheme

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article39938.html
26

Richard Heinberg {2011) The End of Growth, page 241, 'Due to the requirement for interest payments, debt-based
money can only function well in an expanding economy.'
27

Steven Sorrell. (2010, June 18). Energy, Economic Growth and Environmental Sustainability: Five Propositions.
Sussex Energy Group, SPRUScience and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex, Sussex House,
Brighton, BN1 9QE, UK.
http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/6/1784/pdf
'A crucial consequence of this system is that most of the money in circulation only exists because either businesses or
individuals have gone into debt and are paying interest on their loans. While individual loans may be repaid, the debt in
aggregate can never be repaid because this would remove more than 90% of the money supply from circulation.'
28

Herman Daly (2012, May) What is the Limiting Factor

http://steadystate.org/what-is-the-limiting-factor/
29

Michael Lewis (2013) The Resilience Imperative and Civil Disobedience

http://learningfromdogs.com/tag/herman-daly/
30

The Telegraph (2012, January 17) Stiglitz says European austerity plans are a 'suicide pact'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9019819/Stiglitz-says-European-austerity-plans-are-a-suicide-pact.html
31

The Real News (2013, April 24) Privatising Europe

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9934

32

The Independent (2012, February18) Everything Must Go! The Great European Fire Sale
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/everything-must-go-the-great-european-fire-sale-7079815.html
33

Stuart Moriarty (2012, December 5) How the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement would undermine New
Zealands sovereignty
http://nzccl.org.nz/node/183
Quantitative Easing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing
34

35

Richard A. Werner, Prof. International Banking (2012, February 8) Policy News, Centre for Banking, Finance, and
Sustainable Development. Time for Green Quantitative Easing: How to Generate Green, Sustainable Growth at No Cost
http://www.greennewdealgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Green-QE-report-CBFSD-Policy-News-2012-No-1.pdf
So bank credit growth has stagnated and last year turned negative, meaning that banks are on a net basis withdrawing
money from the economy.
36

Ellen Brown (2013, February 8 February) How Congress Could Fix Its Budget Woes, Permanently
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/budgetfix.php
The base money to which we have no access includes that created on a computer screen through quantitative easing
(QE), which now exceeds $3 trillion. That explains why QE has not driven the economy into hyperinflation, as the deficit
hawks have long predicted; and why it has not created jobs, as was its purported mission. The Feds QE money simply
does not get into the circulating money supply at all.
37

QE for the People: Grillo's Populist Plan for Italy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/qe-for-the-people-grillos_b_2829729.html
The problem with today's QE is that it has not gotten money into the pockets of consumers.
The Highest-Paid C.E.O.s
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/05/business/the-highest-paid-ceos.html?_r=0
38

39

Richard A. Werner (2012, February 8) Why I Proposed the Concept of Quantitative Easing in the 1990s
http://www.greennewdealgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Green-QE-report-CBFSD-Policy-News-2012-No-1.pdf
'Thus my original definition of quantitative easing was an expansion in broad credit creation.'
40

Gross World Product

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
41

Paul Craig Roberts (2013, April 28) Recovery for the 7%

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/04/28/recovery-for-the-7-percent-paul-craig-roberts/
42

Richard Fry, Paul Taylor (2013, April 23) A Rise in Wealth for the Wealthy; Declines for the Lower 93% Pew Research
Social and Demographic Trends
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/04/23/a-rise-in-wealth-for-the-wealthydeclines-for-the-lower-93/
43

Reuters (2013, February 26) US Banks in 2012 Post Highest Profit Since '2006 FDIC
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/26/us-usa-fdic-earnings-idUSBRE91P0N820130226
44

The Wall Street Journal (2013, May 8) National Australia Bank Profit Surges
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323744604578471700767723038.html
45

Margrit Kennedy (1995) Interest and Inflation Free Money. Creating an exchange medium that works for everybody
and protects the earth. Published by Seva International, ISBN 0-9643025-0-0.
http://kennedy-bibliothek.info/data/bibo/media/GeldbuchEnglisch.pdf\
On an average we pay about 50% capital costs in the prices of our goods and services. Therefore, if we could abolish
interest and replace it with another mechanism to keep money in circulation, most of us could either be twice as rich or
work half of the time to keep the same standard of living we have now.
46

IMF Staff Discussion Note (2012, April 24) From Bail-out to Bail-in: Mandatory Debt Restructuring of Systemic
Financial Institutions
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2012/sdn1203.pdf
47

Silver Doctors (2013, May 3) Banksters Plan Use Of Bail-ins To Fund Their Own Bonus Payouts
http://silverdoctors.com/banksters-plan-use-of-bail-ins-to-fund-their-own-bonus-payouts/
48

Norbert Hring (2013) The veil of deception over money: how central bankers and textbooks distort the nature of
banking and central banking
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue63/Haring63.pdf
We are led to believe by central bankers and by textbooks, like the ones of Krugman and Wells (2009) and Mankiw and
Taylor (2011), that central banks have always been government institutions acting in the public interest. In reality, central
banks historical origin and role had more to do with the desire of private bankers to control and coordinate the process of
private sector money creation. That most money is created in the private sector is something that central bankers like to
gloss over and textbooks explain in a distorted and unnecessarily convoluted way. If there is an important element of
central banks serving the interests of the financial industry, this unchecked power should be regarded as highly
problematic.

49

Washington's Blog (2012, July 2) European and American Governments Encourage Bank Manipulation and Fraud to
Cover Up Insolvency
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/european-and-american-governments.html
Update: The Fed appears to have known about the Libor manipulation as well. We noted yesterday that the big banks
have criminally conspired since 2005 to rig $800 trillion dollar Libor-based market. Barclays chairman says that the Bank
of England gave explicit approval for the manipulation.
50

Matt Taibbi (2013, April 25) Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425
51

Robert H. Hemphill Credit Manager, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Georgia (1935) In the foreword to a book by
Irving Fisher, entitled 100% Money (1935) ' We are absolutely without a permanent money system... It is the most
important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may
collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.'
52

Herman Daly. 'The closer the economy approaches the scale of the whole Earth the more it will have to conform to the
physical behavior mode of the Earth. That behavior mode is a steady statea system that permits qualitative
development but not aggregate quantitative growth. Growth is more of the same stuff; development is the same amount
of better stuff (or at least different stuff).'
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3941
53

Richard Heinberg (2011) The End of Growth, page 1, 'Economic growth as we have known it is over and done with.'

54

Andrew Jackson, Ben Dyson and Graham Hodgson (2013, April 28) The Positive Money NZ Proposal to Modernise
New Zealands Monetary System Modified and adapted for New Zealand, with the permission of the lead authors, by
Peter J. Morgan
http://www.positivemoney.org.nz/includes/download.aspx?ID=127543
55

Anatole Kaletsky re. Adair Turner (2013, February 7) A breakthrough speech on monetary policy
http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2013/02/07/a-breakthrough-speech-on-monetary-policy/
56

Roger Hayes (2010, September 28) British Constitution Group. Living By The 'Rule Of Law'
http://www.thebcgroup.org.uk/article/living-rule-law
57

Roger Hayes (2010, November 15) British Constitution Group. CONSENT The Most Important Word In The
English Language
http://www.thebcgroup.org.uk/article/consent-most-important-word-english-language
58

The Telegraph (2012, April 2) Youth unemployment passes 50pc in Spain and Greece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9181776/Youth-unemployment-passes-50pc-in-Spain-and-Greece.html
59

Mishs Global Economics Trend Analysis (2013, March 28) Youth Unemployment Rates: US, Germany, Italy, Spain,
France, Greece: Where to From Here?
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/youth-unemployment-rates-us-germany.html
60

'Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the
birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money of all modes of getting wealth this is the most
unnatural.' Aristotle 325BC The Story of Philosophy, quoted by Will Durant (L.1258B4).