Tim Harrington, in his parallel universe, should take note and David Gilet (Letters, July 7) take heart that three of the four professors of economics on the ABC’s Q&A (7/7/14) declared that Australia does not / did not have a budget emergency – and the fourth professor could not find a good word for the Hockey budget. In short, the budget is based on falsehood and we do not need to be ‘forced to take medicine’ for an ailment that does not exist.
But there are problems that need attention. The treasurer claims ‘we’ are spending a billion dollars per month paying interest on ‘our’ debts; the ‘we’ and ‘our’ refer to the government. If he was talking ‘we the people’ he would need to say ‘we are paying eight or nine billion dollars per month in interest!’ Reserve Bank statistics show that bank lending to government totalled $183bn, lending to us ‘persons’ $1355bn – 7.4 times the government level – and commercial lending was $827bn. All up, collectively, we owe $2365bn to the banks – and it is this interest-bearing debt that fuels the economy.
Ninety-six per cent of what we use as money in our everyday transactions is interest-bearing debt issued by the banks, created from nothing. (Notes and coins account for the other four per cent.)
The interest on $2365bn at a modest seven per cent interest would be $14bn per month. This is the cost paid by the nation for allowing the banks to create practically all our money supply – by one means or another we all pay. And worse, the money to meet interest payments can only come from further borrowing. Not only are we all in debt, that debt must keep growing.
The prime minister declares, ‘We can’t go on living in debt forever.’ But until the creation of our money supply is brought into the public domain, there is no alternative – TINA.
PS: David Gilet calls the ‘trickle-down effect’ a fraudulent theory; Willie Gallagher, Scottish MP, says, ‘’tis the rich piddling on the poor’!
Colin Cook, Bangalow
