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Soddy, Frederick – Soddy's role as prophet - 09 The curse of Economic theory and fiscal practice
Identifier
024776
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Lecture to The Economic Reform Club (c. 1950):
Mr. Gaitskill, writing a section entitled 'Four Monetary Heretics' in a book edited by G. D. H. Cole, found as a trained economist so little heretical about my proposals that he was forced to the criticism that my economics were not altogether divorced from morals... I trust that now he has become our Chancellor of the Exchequer, his economics also may not be altogether divorced from morals.
The claim that a banker had the right to lend his customers money while they did not require it, is a claim that the banker has the right to issue and withdraw money from circulation at will, a power no autocrat would allow for a single moment, and one which in its modern development has simply led to the financier usurping powers which no autocrat in history has wielded ... the effects are precisely the same as if the banks had themselves coined the money they loaned.
The future of democracy and its power to govern itself depends very largely upon sufficient people getting clear ideas of money from the standpoint of the community.