Of the People, By the People, and For the People

George Washington's Blog
Thursday, Dec 11, 2008

There are 3 important - but seemingly unrelated - trends:

• The banks have been given hundreds of billions of dollars, but refuse to lend to people

• Investors are so afraid of losing money, that they are buying short-term treasuries with negative return

• Many thousands of people in developed countries are making small loans online to poor entrepreneurs in developing countries. The percentage of borrowers who repay the loans is very high

Banks are ripping off our money, and giving us nothing in return. People who have saved money don't know what to do with it, and are so desperate that they will pay the government to hold it temporarily. The microcredit movement has proven that small loans can be made and tracked online. The guy who invented the idea behind microcredit lending won a Nobel prize for doing so.

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The financial elite are ruining our countries, stealing our money and robbing us of our future.

In the same way that we need to "be the media" - since the mainstream press censors the truth and serves as the stenographer for those in power - let's "be the financial system" as well. We could charge 1% interest: its much lower than the banks, and its much higher than the negative returns on short-term treasury bills.

Why not set up our own system of lending and borrowing? Let's create a financial system ourselves that really works. One of the people, by the people and for the people.

The big banks are broke anyway. They owe more than they can possibly pay on derivatives and other bad investments. The sooner we create our own financial system, the less painful will the transition be to a post-Wall Street world, and the sooner we can start to "free up liquidity" and to re-build a sustainable economy.