Greens for Monetary Reform

Part 3: Curiosity —

How Humans Learn About the World and About Money

by Sue Peters GPNY

Series Title: The Nature of Man and the Nature of Money

An infant is born curious. The infant's sensations, inside and outside their body, inform the infant of the brand-new world. Given tenderness and satisfaction of needs, the child continues to grow throughout their entire life.

he growth of an economy includes human curiosity also. There is the worker's curiosity in learning a trade or skill, finding a job, raising a family, and passing on this growth and satisfaction of needs to future generations.

But, why is there worrisome, damaging unemployment? Why so much debt on the shoulders of business, workers, families, governments? Why so much concentration of wealth?

Human curiosity can uncover the answer to these questions, by learning about our human-made monetary system. Since this information is purposefully not taught in our schools, one needs to go to the library (The Lost Science of Money by Stephen Zarlenga) or the internet (monetary.org and greens.money) and discover:

• the nature of the monetary system creating our money supply
• the monetary system responsible for economic instability (inflation/deflation/unemployment)
• the monetary system responsible for unfairly distributing our material wealth (concentration of wealth)
• FACT: whoever controls the monetary system controls the society

Today, we live in a privately-controlled monetary system! Our money is CREATED by private commercial banks! Every time a private commercial bank makes a loan with a borrower, the bank has the right to CREATE the deposit in the borrower's account. The deposit is new money and adds to the total money supply. Therefore, our money supply is DEBT.

Does this explain economic instability? Yes. Since our money supply (debt-money) is continuously erased from the banks' books as it is repaid by the borrowers, our society constantly needs to borrow to maintain a stable money supply. If the banks do not grant these new loans, we have recessions, or worse, depressions.

Does this explain the concentration of wealth? Yes. The banks decide who will get their loans. The banks make more profit with loans to the largest corporations and wealthiest individuals. In addition, the entire money supply is generating interest income to these banks, day and night.

These are just a few examples proving "whoever controls the monetary system controls the society." Our monetary system is controlled by bankers. As Aristotle wrote in Politics: "Men called bankers we shall hate, for they enrich themselves while doing nothing."

America — One Big Beautiful Company Town

by Kevin McCormick GPTX

The Trump Administration has bludgeoned the cares and concerns of the Green Party membership. Yet, we must look behind the curtain to see what power enables the dictatorial aggression of the Trump Administration. This administration is characterized by dedication to fossil fuels, which reflects the enormous investment made by the banking cartel, which is central to the entire Wall Street structure. As reported by the Sierra Club, "Since the Paris Agreement, from 2016–2023, the world's 60 largest private banks financed fossil fuels with USD $6.9 trillion." In 2004 there was an additional $869 billion of bank finance for fossil fuels.

The financial elite have made steady progress toward the goal of fabulous wealth with little or no tax obligation. The "One Big Beautiful Bill" recently enacted will make tax cuts for the rich permanent, while tariffs on imports will supplement tax revenues. Since the Supreme Court has ruled many of these tariffs illegal, it remains to be seen whether the tariff concept can be a replacement for taxes the wealthy would have paid. The likely result will be higher prices and severe cuts to social programs that benefit lower and middle class Americans.

The Vision

Nevertheless, it appears the corporate royalty have chosen to follow the path of an AI generated South Sea Bubble. The projected visionary future is characterized by robotic workers, surveillance controlled public, huge fossil fuel consumption, imperial domination, and a winning response to China. It is a collection of corporate ideologue dreams wrapped up in one big beautiful narrative, fairy tale style. Like the historic South Sea Bubble, the context is competition to control government finance — stable coins versus treasury bills — widespread bribery: the fossil fuel industry spent $450 million to support Trump and Republicans in Congress — and imperial wars: Ukraine and Israel. The allure of a miraculous silver-bullet solution to the predicaments of a troubled empire seems not to have lost its appeal.

Back to Reality

The other side of the visionary future is the inflation and austerity that the ruling elite will seek to impose on the American public. We may anticipate this inflation and austerity in light of the 3-3-3 plan of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. This plan calls for 3% GDP growth, 3% of GDP federal budget deficit, and 3 million barrels per day increase in oil production.

This plan attempts to hide the structural weaknesses of the Federal Reserve Monetary System — an excess of debt, gross economic inequality, and an inability to address climate change. It does this by focusing on the financial issue of excess debt, increasing oppression of the working class, and denial of climate change. My humble opinion is that the financial issue will not be solved, oppression of the working class will continue, and climate change will slowly ruin whatever future there is for American society.

The notion of 3% GDP growth is colored by the protectionist and anti-worker features of the Trump Administration economic strategies. It will require a much more transformative economic policy than the present Trump policies of tariff protection and worker suppression, what I call the "company town America" policy. Yet, the 3% GDP growth will probably be the easy part due to continuing monetary inflation. One thing that makes GDP growth questionable is the present slump in the housing market.

The "rate of change" chart shows, since the year 2000, the publicly held federal debt growing at a 9.5%, the gross federal debt growing at 8.1%, and the GDP growing at 4.5%. This indicates that major, dramatic changes in these patterns are necessary for the 3-3-3 plan to work. Bringing the federal deficit to 3% of GDP will likely prove an impossible goal. (Graph data from fred.stlouisfed.org, series FYGFDPUN, GFDEBTN, GDPA. See this article for an explanation of the federal debt graph.)

At this pace the federal debt will rise to $100 billion in 2036. The Government Accounting Office (GAO) has said:

"The federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path that poses serious economic, security, and social challenges. . . . Publicly held debt is projected to grow more than twice as fast as the economy, reaching 200% of the size of the economy by 2047. "

The 3 million bbl/day increase in oil production will encounter the headwind of flat to declining global demand. For example, China is consuming less gasoline and India is electrifying at a similar rate to China with fossil fuel imports flat to declining. In India, Fossil fuel power generation declined from 249 gigawatts to 240 gigawatts in 2025. Thus, U.S. fossil fuel consumption must rise to counter the lack of increase in global consumption. The Trump Administration hopes to accomplish this through blocking renewable energy and electric vehicles, as well as the energy demand of AI infrastructure.

Moreover, oil must be purchased with U.S. dollars in order for this aspect of the 3-3-3 plan to work, as the kidnapping of Venezuela President Maduro demonstrates. The implication is that we may expect the Trump administration to attempt to reverse the Saudi Arabia decision to sell oil in Chinese currency and to force Iran to sell oil in U.S. dollars only.

While the 3-3-3 plan seems implausible, the austerity program is clearly present. From a Food Bank crisis in the midst of growing hunger, to cutting wages for federal contract workers, to terminating union contracts of federal workers, the Trump administration is waging a comprehensive assault on the working class. Indeed, the One Big Beautiful Bill, also known as the 2025 budget reconciliation package, cut deeply into social safety-net programs while providing tax-cuts for the wealthy.

Beside safety-net and wage cuts, the Trump administration also denies that greenhouse gases endanger public health and is turning the Environmental Protection Agency into an agency that is willing to do everything in its power to prioritize corporate profits and capital. The EPA places no value on human life, but does place value on corporate profits.

The Remedy

The 3-3-3 plan is promoted as a plan to restore growth and balance to the U.S. economy, but behind the curtain is the maintenance of the Federal Reserve Monetary System. Were we to replace the Federal Reserve with the public money system described in the NEED Act, we would not be faced with an out-of-control federal debt, constant inflation, or incredible economic inequality. But the financial elite would lose their ability to create and issue money for profit, leading to loss of their control over the economy and the government. Thus, to protect this monetary system, we have the 3-3-3 plan showing our way to one big beautiful company town.

Our Love of Money Vs. Our Love of Life

by Howard Switzer GPNC

Message from the Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers:

"As you move through these changing times... be easy on yourself and be easy on one another. You are at the beginning of something new. You are learning a new way of being. You will find that you are working less in the yang modes that you are used to.

You will stop working so hard at getting from point A to point B the way you have in the past, but instead, will spend more time experiencing yourself in the whole, and your place in it.

Instead of traveling to a goal out there, you will voyage deeper into yourself. Your mother's grandmother knew how to do this.

Your ancestors from long ago knew how to do this. They knew the power of the feminine principle... and because you carry their DNA in your body, this wisdom and this way of being is within you.

Call on it. Call it up. Invite your ancestors in. As the yang based habits and the decaying institutions on our planet begin to crumble, look up. A breeze is stirring. Feel the sun on your wings."

Indeed we must create new institutions based on the feminine principle, and this goes especially for the monetary system, or reciprocity system, the root operating system of the economy that is creating such havoc in the world today.

Money is a vital cultural artifact that has been captured by ruthless men and used to enslave people and extract their wealth. To keep the attention off of them they create division, left vs right, science vs religion etc. One very basic one is Our Love of Money Vs. Our Love of Life. David Korten has written three beautiful essays on how to create an ecological civilization in which this was mentioned and it inspired me to challenge that notion.

I was once told by a native American that his people didn't vote because they didn't like the concept of winners and losers. His people used a process for consensus. That is how I felt seeing that phrase. It seemed to me the problem wasn't the love of money; it was the "vs.", the pitting of life against money. Or maybe it was how love was being defined.

The problem oft stated is the love of money is the root of evil, meaning not the money but the love of it. Now that seems odd to me because love is normally considered a positive emotion, the opposite of fear, so how could that be a problem? We believe it is bad because it refers to the lowest form of love, that lustful possessive and selfish kind of love. The kind of love that wants to accumulate as much of it as possible. The ancient Greeks had identified four kinds of love and I read that the Hmong people have six. Here are 6 characteristics of higher forms of love. They are:

• Unconditional Love: Love that is given freely without conditions or expectations.
• Selfless Love: Prioritizing the well-being and happiness of others above your own.
• Sacrificial Love: Willingness to make significant sacrifices for the sake of another's happiness or safety.
• Agape Love: A spiritual love that transcends personal feelings, often associated with compassion and empathy.
• Enduring Love: A commitment that withstands challenges and grows stronger over time.
• Forgiving Love: The ability to forgive and move past grievances, fostering healing and connection.

For the indigenous there is no vs between the love of money and the love of life. Money originated as an expression of love, a sacred symbol of reciprocity, for the gift of life and sustenance that is the Great Mother, Earth. That is certainly not at all true of the money we use today because money is issued as interest-bearing debt (credit) by private banks, a form of slavery. Money should be created by the government exclusively for productive public purposes as an asset for paying a debt, like Lincoln's Greenbacks. This is what the Greens' monetary plank proposes. It would shift the paradigm from fear to love, from greed to care, and transform the system from private to public, from debt to asset which would eliminate the systematic concentration of wealth to the few and instead systematically distribute it among the many. There is hardly any issue we struggle with for which money is not both a problem and a solution. That is because it is the connecting tissue between the human economy and the natural world of life it depends on.