Letter in Newcastle Journal, 13th June 2012:
Barclays bank must be congratulated for training young people to manage their money (Views of the North, 9 June). But while able to give financial advice, don’t the educators themselves need educating?
Do bank staff – even managers – understand that most debt is unavoidable? Do they realise, when they decide who receives a loan, for how much, and for what purpose, that they are issuing the nation’s currency and choosing how it shall be spent?
Professor Werner of Southampton University asked around 1,000 people, “Would you agree to a system whereby the money supply was created and allocated by profit-oriented private enterprise?”
The answer was “No!”
Yet this is the system we have.
Why is this not taught in our schools and universities – not least in the Oxford Politics Philosophy and Economics course followed by so many politicians?
Instead of allowing youngsters to be taught, by a company which issues “credit” at huge profit, how to survive the duty of borrowing our means of exchange into existence at compound interest, shouldn’t we be questioning the wisdom of preserving, at vast expense to the electorate, a system which they would never have sanctioned, had they been consulted?
Money is a public utility, and should be created free from debt by public authority, as proposed by Positive Money’s Bank of England (Creation of Currency) Bill – available online.
With interest no longer creamed off our means of exchange at source, all of us, young and old, would be better able to live within our means.