Bill Still is a former newspaper editor and publisher, best-selling author and award-winning documentary writer/director. He has written 20 books, including his latest "No More National Debt".
He has also produced three feature-length documentaries, including "The Money Masters", which is one of the most watched films in Internet history. "The Secret of Oz" won the 2010 award for Best Documentary at the Beloit International Film Festival.
Bill has written articles for USA Today, The Saturday Evening Post, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, OMNI magazine and produced the first syndicated radio "shorts" program, Health News.
Bill's lecture is entitled "The Future Monetary System -- No More National Debt". According to Bill, the global monetary system has been revised every 30 - 40 years through history. He predicts that our current monetary system will collapse within a few years. Also included in Bill's lecture is a potential model for the monetary system of the future.
It is well known in economics academia that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baum in 1900 is loaded with powerful symbols of monetary reform which were the core of the Populist movement and the 1896 and 1900 president bid of Democrat William Jennings Bryan.
The yellow brick road (gold standard), the emerald city of Oz (greenback money), even Dorothy's silver slippers (changed to ruby slippers for the movie version) were the symbol of Baum's and Bryan's belief that adding silver coinage to gold would provide much needed money to a depression-strapped, 1890s America.
We believe Baum's symbols represent the only solution to relieve the growing economic hardship here in America -- and the rest of the world. Practically speaking, 2009 marks the 70th anniversary of the 1939 MGM release of the The Wizard of Oz movie, so interest will be very high. Even Oz websites put up by kids get millions of hits.
Who's In It?
· Joseph Farah, Founder and CEO of WorldNetDaily.
· Peter Schiff, President of Euro-Pacific Capital, the leading "bear" on Wall Street, author.
· Byron Dale, author and monetary reform expert, author of many books.
· Ellen Brown, author Web of Debt, attorney, and monetary reform expert
· James Robertson, former official in a variety of slots in the UK government, and head of the Inter-Bank Research Organization, author of many books
· Prof. Nick Tideman, VA Tech University School of Economics
· Prof. Michael Hudson, President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1972 and 2003)
· John Keyworth, Curator, Bank of England Museum
· Prof. Quentin Taylor, professor of political science at Rogers State University
· Reed Simpson, banker, asset manager
Intro
"In 1996, in a documentary called "The MoneyMasters", we asked the question why is America going broke. It wasn't clear then that we were, but it is today. Now the question is how can we get out of this mess. Foreclosures are everywhere, unemployment is skyrocketing -- and this is only the beginning. America's economy is on a long, slippery slope from here on. The bubble ride of debt has come to an end.
"What can government do? The sad answer is -- under the current monetary system -- nothing. It's not going to get better until the root of the problem is understood and addressed. There isn't enough stimulus money in the entire world to get us out of this hole.
"Why? Debt. The national debt is just like our consumer debt -- it's the interest that's killing us.
"Though most people don't realize it the government can't just issue it's own money anymore. It used to be that way. The King could just issue stuff called money. Abraham Lincoln did it to win the Civil War.
"No, today, in our crazy money system, the government has to borrow our money into existence and then pay interest on it. That's why they call it the National Debt. All our money is created out of debt. Politicians who focus on reducing the National Debt as an answer probably don't know what the National Debt really is. To reduce the National Debt would be to reduce our money -- and there's already too little of that.
"No, you have to go deeper. You have to get at the root of this problem or we're never going to fix this. The solution isn't new or radical. America used to do it. Politicians used to fight with big bankers over it. It's all in our history -- now sadly -- in the distant past.
"But why can't we just do it again? Why can't we just issue our own money, debt free? That, my friends, is the answer. Talk about reform! That's the only reform that will make a huge difference to everyone's life -- even worldwide.
"The solution is the secret that's been hidden from us for just over 100 years -- ever since the time when author L. Frank Baum wrote "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz."
97% owned present serious research and verifiable evidence on our economic and financial system. This is the first documentary to tackle this issue from a UK-perspective and explains the inner workings of Central Banks and the Money creation process.
When money drives almost all activity on the planet, it's essential that we understand it. Yet simple questions often get overlooked, questions like; where does money come from? Who creates it? Who decides how it gets used? And what does this mean for the millions of ordinary people who suffer when the monetary, and financial system, breaks down?
A film by Michael Oswald, Produced by Mike Horwath, featuring Ben Dyson of Positive Money, Josh Ryan-Collins of The New Economics Foundation, Ann Pettifor, the "HBOS Whistleblower" Paul Moore, Simon Dixon of Bank to the Future and Nick Dearden from the Jubliee Debt Campaign.
What is happening in Europe in the name of the troika? A must-see for anyone who wants to understand the situation in Greece. The European Union and International Monetary Fund have lent more than 400 billion Euros to Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus to keep these countries solvent. The lenders granted enormous power to the three institutions of the so called troika: the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission. Without any public accountability, the troika is forcing the crisis states to implement policies that are tearing the social fabric of their countries apart. German journalist and best-selling author Harald Schumann travelled to Athens, Lisbon, Dublin, Nicosia, Brussels, Washington, New York and London, in order to find out who has actually benefited from austerity measures. He puts this question to ministers, parliamentarians, economists, bankers, doctors and also to the victims of these policies, the unemployed and the ill. Among the many people we meet are Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, IMF Director Paulo Batista and Yanis Varoufakis, the newly elected Greek finance minister. Schumann's revelations are often devastating and shocking. Given the negotiations currently taking place between the newly elected Greek government and their European partners, this film is of great political and economic relevance.
Want to get even more detail information? You will find all interviews made for this film in full length on "HARALD SCHUMANN ON THE TRAIL", here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoZV...
Current Affairs / Economy Film by Harald Schumann, Árpád Bondy Co-Production Árpád Bondy Filmproduktion with RBB/ARTE, 2015 Original title Macht ohne Kontrolle – die Troika / Puissante et incontrôlée – la Troika
Le second volet montre comment, à travers l'éclatement de la bulle immobilière et la crise des subprimes des années 2000, le "piège à pauvres" s'est refermé. Il décortique les rouages de la "machine à dette" et expose avec clarté les logiques boursières qui ont mené à la crise mondiale actuelle. Dénonçant l'impunité des "banksters" et leur emprise sur la classe politique occidentale (aux États-Unis, on parle même d'un "gouvernement Goldman Sachs"), les réalisateurs concluent leur enquête sur un chiffre éloquent : les principaux dirigeants financiers mondiaux totalisent 95 milliards de dollars de salaire alors qu'ils ont accumulé 1 000 milliards de perte…
Pourquoi faut-il donner de l'argent public aux banques privées en faillite ? C'est par cette question sans ambiguïté que s'ouvre ce passionnant documentaire qui, pendant plus de deux heures, nous entraîne dans les arcanes d'un système financier devenu incontrôlable. Y répondre n'était pas gagné d'avance, tant est opaque l'univers de la finance. Mais Jean-Michel Meurice et Fabrizio Calvi (déjà coauteurs pour ARTE de Série noire au Crédit Lyonnais et de ELF : les chasses au trésor) nous ont habitués depuis longtemps à traiter sous une forme accessible des dossiers complexes. Noire finance s'inscrit dans cette veine : un montage très éclairant de propos de spécialistes, émaillé de scènes d'animation, retrace l'histoire politique des déréglementations qui ont abouti à la financiarisation de l'économie mondiale, au profit d'une spéculation criminelle.
Peut-on encore arrêter la finance folle ? Une enquête magistrale au cœur d'un capitalisme financier que plus personne ne maîtrise, et qui a plongé le monde dans de graves turbulences.
Dans ce premier volet, les auteurs remontent au fameux jeudi noir d'octobre 1929 à Wall Street, pour montrer comment une crise boursière se transforme en crise bancaire, qui elle-même se développe en crise économique mondiale. Des "barons voleurs" d'hier aux golden boys des années Tapie, des accords de Bretton Woods à la création de l'euro, il retrace ensuite les différentes étapes qui ont conduit à la libéralisation des flux financiers. Assurances, produits dérivés, fonds spéculatifs (hedge funds)… : les dispositifs techniques se succèdent pour accroître les profits, augmentant toujours plus le risque et la fraude systémiques.Pourquoi faut-il donner de l'argent public aux banques privées en faillite ? C'est par cette question sans ambiguïté que s'ouvre ce passionnant documentaire qui, pendant plus de deux heures, nous entraîne dans les arcanes d'un système financier devenu incontrôlable. Y répondre n'était pas gagné d'avance, tant est opaque l'univers de la finance. Mais Jean-Michel Meurice et Fabrizio Calvi (déjà coauteurs pour ARTE de Série noire au Crédit Lyonnais et de ELF : les chasses au trésor) nous ont habitués depuis longtemps à traiter sous une forme accessible des dossiers complexes. Noire finance s'inscrit dans cette veine : un montage très éclairant de propos de spécialistes, émaillé de scènes d'animation, retrace l'histoire politique des déréglementations qui ont abouti à la financiarisation de l'économie mondiale, au profit d'une spéculation criminelle.
Bio: Damon has had two fairly different lives—one as an overachiever serving the financial empire, and another as a hopeful advocate for the victims of the empire: local community, indigenous population, the American republic, and the individual heart. He graduated from the United States Military Academy, served as an officer in the US Army, then graduated from Harvard Business School, took a short detour on Wall Street, and had a career in Silicon Valley in several leadership positions in technology corporations. Since leaving empire service, he became a mountaineer, attended Mars Hill Graduate School, and now works toward redemption as a writer and post-neoclassical economic philosopher. Damon can be reached at: strabes23@gmail.com http://www.csper.org/
The twentieth century produced a very clear sense of what the future was to be, but we now seem unable to imagine any sort of redemptive future. How did this happen? One reason is the replacement of what might be called poetic technologies with bureaucratic technologies. Another is the terminal perturbations of capitalism, which is increasingly unable to envision any future at all. David Graeber likes to say that he had three goals for 2011: to promote his new book, Debt: The First 5000 Years (Melville House), learn to drive, and launch a worldwide revolution. He's done well on the first, failed the second, and the third may be on the way, in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement that Graeber helped initiate. He teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is also the author of Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, and Direct Action: An Ethnography, among other books.
David Graeber gave this talk in the School of Visual Arts theater on 19 January 2012 at 7.
This documentary was idealized, conceived and produced by Miguel Marques, Yolanda Rienderhoff, Pedro Bruno Carreira and LIGHTS ON(E). We had no sponsors whatsoever.
If you liked it and you have the means, feel free "to pay your ticket". You can make a bank transfer of 1 to 5 euros to:
International Bank Account Number: PT50 0035 0549 0005 4403 9005 4
We also have the film available on DVD. Just write an email to potspans2012@gmail.com with your name, postal address and a proof of the bank transfer -- 10€ (europe) or 12€ (rest of the world) to cover expenses.
Your donation will make it possible for us to go on working.
Feel free to make public exhibitions of the documentary. You can ask for the film poster by email.
In Iceland, the first European country to wake up to an economic crash, people became aware that they could and should intervene in society and started demanding more democratic participation.
The payment of bank debts by citizens went to referendum. The government was forced to create a Council to write a new constitution: a citizens' group - without politicians, lawyers or university professors -- who opened the discussion process to everybody and managed to approve by consensus a draft proposal.
In Iceland, many citizens are now organized in associations and have substantial proposals for a society where everyone can participate.
Let's meet the Icelanders that the media refuse to talk about.
David Graeber talks about the history of debt and its impact in the world over thousands of years. During this event from Melville House Bookstore in Brooklyn, New York, Professor Graeber is in discussion with Left Business Observer editor Doug Henwood, author of "Wall Street" and "After the New Economy" http://www.booktv.org/Program/12768
Eduardo Galeano: "El mundo se divide en indignos e indignados"
The Crime of Ecocide
http://www.pollyhiggins.com/
"... move away from property laws to trusteeship laws, so rather than I own, to I owe. I owe a duty of care to this planet."
12-year old Victoria Grant explains why Canada (her homeland) and most of the world, is in debt.
"How the Media Frames Political Issues" by Scott London
In The Emergence of American Political Issues (1977) McCombs and Shaw state that the most important effect of the mass media is "its ability to mentally order and organize our world for us. In short, the mass media may not be successful in telling us what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about."[13] The presidential observer Theodore White corroborates this conclusion in The Making of a President (1972):
The power of the press in America is a primordial one. It sets the agenda of public discussion; and this sweeping political power is unrestrained by any law. It determines what people will talk and think about - an authority that in other nations is reserved for tyrants, priests, parties and mandarins.[14]
McCombs and Shaw also note that the media's tendency to structure voters' perceptions of political reality in effect constitutes a bias: "to a considerable degree the art of politics in a democracy is the art of determining which issue dimensions are of major interest to the public or can be made salient in order to win public support."[15] http://www.scottlondon.com/reports/frames.html
I am just an anonymous citizen who firmly believes that we are the ones we are always waiting for. No saviors, heroes, leaders, gurus, or superior or inferior, we are all equals, and we need to think and behave as if it matters.
