Who should control credit ?

The question here concerns financial credit. Or, if you wish, money, whatever is used to pay for things.

And what is control of credit? - The control of credit is the power to impose such acts as will determine the volume of money in circulation.

If I have the power to issue a country's money and the power to recall the money of a country, I control the means of paying which are in circulation. I can issue more than I recall, or I can recall more than I issue. In the first case I increase the volume of money in circulation. In the second case I diminish it.

If I had this power I would be a most powerful individual, I would control the lifeblood of the economy.

The founder of the house of Rothschild understood this very well when he said: "Give me the control of a nation's money and I will care not at all who makes this nations's laws".

Pope Pius XI also understood it when he said: "Those who control money and credit have become the masters of our lives".

Today it is the banking system which controls the birth and death of money.

Should this control be passed to the government? If this control is passed to the government, then it is the government which becomes the master of our lives. This would be State monopoly in place of bank monopoly. We should be the losers, for against private monopoly we have some recourse, but what recourse have we against State monopoly?

Social Credit wishes to place the control of money in the hands of individuals, in the hands of all the members of society. How can this be done? By making the flow of credit an exact reflection of the flow of production and the rate of consumption. Then by channeling this flow of credit to individuals, to all individuals so that the individuals themselves can command production of the things of their choice.

Naturally there will be needed some office set up by the government to administer the accounting necessary in such a system. But accounting methods being determined by statistics, and statistics being determined by the recording of figures, it will be the producers producing and the consumers consuming who will be the true controllers of credit. Credit will follow the activities of both producers and consumers.

When the flow of credit will be a reflection of the activity of free producers and free consumers, then the individuals themselves will be free. This will be economic democracy without which political democracy is not worth the ink used to print the words.

"But when Christ said: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's", He gave to the State a legitimacy it had never before enjoyed, and set bounds to it that had never yet been acknowledged."

- Lord Acton by Gertrude Himmelfarb