TITLES, POSSIBLE ONES, THAT CAME TO MY MIND SO FAR:

MONETARY FREEDOM, TERMS, DEFINITIONS, IDEAS, ARGUMENTS, -COUNTER-ARGUMENTS, EXPERIMENTS, PROPOSALS, REFORMS, REVOLUTIONS,- THEORIES, EXPLANATIONS, OBJECTIONS & PREJUDICES AGAINST IT, -STEPS TOWARDS ITS. - An alphabetized notebook of words, ideas, -notions, definitions, explanations, arguments, distinctions, facts, observations, predictions, beliefs, refutations, dogmas, -economic laws, arguments, objections, etc., all helping to lead- us towards full monetary and financial freedom.
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Alphabetized notes on competitive paper monies "as good as gold, which only monetary freedom could supply. ---  SNIPPETS, NOTES & QUOTES TOWARDS FULL MONETARY FREEDOM.
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How to stop inflation and end mass -unemployment and depressions from one day to the other. - Try to- refute this, if you can. Otherwise, do act upon this information -and become monetarily emancipated, too. - J. Z., n.d. & 29.5.97.
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A - Z of FREE BANKING. Attempts to define -and explain aspects of monetary freedom and monetary despotism- alphabetically, with some cross references. An open book, not- copyrighted, inviting and welcoming corrections and supplements- from anyone. Also a list of literature and addresses of interested individuals and organizations. To serve as a handbook -and clearing centre for views on this subject. Ultimately, to -include ideas, plans and projects on how to best and most easily -introduce monetary freedom for all who desire it for themselves. -- J. Z., n.d., 28.4.97.
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PERSONAL NOTES & SOME QUOTES ON MONETARY AND FINANCIAL FREEDOM. I do usually prefer rather to talk to myself and write for my own benefit than trying to talk to or write to people who do not share my interest in such subjects. Moreover, I have come to rather let them seek me out and my offers on monetary and financial freedom and other rights and liberty and peace writings than try to seek them out. I am quite willing to let whatever there is already of the information revolution work for them and for me, without any extra effort by me. - J. Z., 24.5.97. (Well, since then I have tried to push, also largely in vain, not only the microfiche self-publishing and reading option for libertarian writings but also the floppy disk and CD-ROM publishing and reading options for such literature. - J.Z., 16.9.02.
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Talking to myself and to imaginary -discussion partners about monetary freedom in attempts to clarify- doubtful points and counteract popular errors, absorbing as much -wisdom as possible from others on this, through quoting them-e extensively and ordering this compilation merely by- alphabetisation under catchwords.
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Alphabetical Entries, rough notes, some quotes and comments towards a free banking- handbook.

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AN ALPHABETIZED COLLECTION OF NOTES AND QUOTES ON THE ROAD TOWARDS FULL MONETARY AND FINANCIAL FREEDOM. - J.Z., 30.8.02.
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How to stop inflation and end mass -unemployment and depressions from one day to the other. - Try to- refute this, if you can. Otherwise, do act upon this information -and become monetarily emancipated, too. - J. Z., n.d. & 29.5.97.
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The following are some notes & quotes accumulated, over a period, and here transcribed, with some re-writing and additions. They are later to be integrated with previous alphabetized notes on free banking. Ten to hundred times that number of entries, from a variety of advocates of monetary freedom and xyz more sources than I have available to me, would be required to come closer to usefulness as an alphabetized handbook on aspects of monetary freedom. For now this very limited compilation, mostly of my own and still flawed views and expressions  on this subject will have to suffice. I am not prepared to work all of the next years on in or for whatever remains of my life, although I consider this topic to be very important. It is, after all, only an aspect of all individual rights and liberties and of comprehensive panarchism and tolerance.

Nevertheless, the whole topic of monetary freedom is already too large for a systematized treatment in a single volume and such a volume would either remain largely unread or lead to more misunderstandings than comprehension.

Thus, I believe, it should be broken up into manageable alphabetized segments with cross references. A number of handbooks on banking have attempted to do so - but, most of them, without including the ideas, terms, practices and experiences of free banking and concentrating merely upon what the laws permitted or prescribed in this sphere and what was approved by the ruling school of monetary despotism.

The final aim is an alphabetized encyclopedia on free banking, including a directory, comprehensive bibliography, abstracts and review collection, with many different contributions on the same subject by various contributors and based on the full and permanent publishing of all relevant texts, cheaply and permanently, in an alternative medium.

Open entry for all kinds of well reasoned contributions on any related subject is one of the conditions to attain this publishing aim. Microfiche, floppy disks and, more so, CD-ROMs, DVDs & the upcoming Blue Light CDs, with 27 Gbs each side, have more than enough space for this, even if websites do not.  - J.Z., 25.8.02.

For collaboration with Thomas Greco it is to be considered whether multiple files are to be kept: For example, for:
1. His version of explaining terms,
2. My own version of FB terms
3. One version we both can agree upon
4. An open input version in which all such explanations or comments are included, from anyone.
On the other hand and at least initially, not such file separation might be undertaken.  - J.Z., 26.8.02.

The length of several entries shows that for each term perhaps at least three different explanations should be given: A very short one, a more detailed one and a lengthy explanation. Also: Sufficient cross references should be added.

To be included or extracted for this compilation:

1) Comments added in all PP cover sheets.
2) Comments made in letters and articles in digitized FB files on disks.
3) Comments in Ulrich von Beckerath's books, drafts and correspondence.
4) Comments in manila folders on fb subjects.
5) Relevant entries from the Slogans for Liberty files.
6) Translation of a previous German A-Z compilation.
7) Previous English A-Z compilations on free banking. (Only this has been done so far.)
8) Extracts from the writings of Dr. Walter Zander and Prof. Heinrich Rittershausen.
9.) Extracts from e.g. PP  41, 19 A & C  & all other monetary freedom writings in the LMP series.
10.) Extracts from correspondence, with e.g., de Fremery, O'Donnel, Greco, Carnaghan. -

WARNING: These notes are so far quite insufficiently proof-read and edited, sorted out, cross-referenced and not indexed at all. No attempt has been made to eliminate repetitions and flawed terms. Not enough time and thought has been spent upon choosing the most appropriate catchwords in front of an entry or to separate notes under different headings.

Introduction
The accumulated wisdom, experiences with,- arguments, refutations of arguments and proposals and ideas and -theories, speculations, hypotheses etc. on money cannot, I believe, be- sufficiently expressed in a few pages or, sufficiently, in short dogmatic- statements. (Nevertheless, such attempts should always be made, from "Slogans for Liberty" to one page explanation attempts, platforms or manifestos. When they are sufficiently backed by readily accessible and much longer explanations then they can do some good.)
Here only a few personal notes and selected quotes on -monetary freedom and monetary despotism are offered, -alphabetized, appealing for corrections and supplementation by anyone interested, preferably via disked entries in RTF or e-mail.
My- memory and attention span are rather limited. I can't easily or -at all remember the ideas and arguments of previous pages,- chapters or of whole books. But what I can remembers, dissect and -reassemble, sometimes in different ways and details, are -particular points of view, terms, ideas and arguments. These I -can somewhat deal with, piecemeal, point by point. Their -alphabetical arrangement, under catchwords, for reference -purposes and later re-writing or editing, correction and supplementation, whenever I feel like it, are an aid intended -primarily for myself. If, alternatively, they remain spread,- unsorted and forgotten for years, over hundreds to thousands of- slips of paper, clippings and papers and in numerous manila files, or texts in my microfiched series or online, or numerous books and journal articles, mostly not readily accessible, then their thought contents is not as readily accessible -to myself, for my own purposes, or for others, as I wish it to be. -
I do hope that such an arrangement, rather than a- systematic treatise, which I have only rarely tried to provide, -will help others, too. They do not have to remember the whole monetary freedom- system or read and study a whole and systematic book on it. They can tackle entries that -interest them and follow up related points, if they want to,- without having to read the whole book, laboriously, page by page,- chapter by chapter, thus, possibly, getting turned off and -forgetting most of what they have read, because it was not of -primary interest to them.
Moreover, I do intend to offer this manuscript -as an unfinished work, one to be gradually improved and- supplemented by any of its readers who have something to- contribute to it or believe that they do.
The errors on money and -related subjects are almost as important as the truths are, for -so far they have dominated our beliefs and actions in this sphere. So all of them should be registered and refuted, as best- as we can at present. That is a job much too large for a single -person to tackle. But, it does not matter how many pages the -total effort will take. The more people participate in this -co-writing and co-editing, the better. Microfiche, floppy disks,- text only CD-ROMs and other modern media have all the pages and- volume space required, and this at prices almost everyone could- afford.
If the publication would have to be done by a- conventional publisher, at his risk and expense, then, if- interested in this work at all, he would, probably, have to -insist that it be confined to no more than 500 pages. - In this- open and participatory format it might finally come to 5,000 or even 50,000 pages. Never mind. Not all would want to possess and use the unabridged version. And this, in print, could not be updated often and cheaply enough, except, perhaps, in editions that are merely computer printouts from the latest digitized version. But everyone would be- free to offer his own abridged version, if he likes to do so.
-No one has the time and energy to read all the writings on money. In them one usually finds are endless repetitions of basic truths and, still more -numerous, endless repetition of basic errors. Here the -basic truths could be gradually compiled, explained, proven and popularised and the- basic errors stated and gradually be confronted with the best -refutations so far found for them.
For style and good English -and always correct spelling and punctuation, as far as my own contributions are concerned, look somewhere else. -Likewise, for a comprehensive handbook on banking and finance and -all their terms and practices. This effort is confined to monetary- and financial freedom notions, ideas, proposals and practices and errors on these subjects.
-Help me, please, to catch most of these truths and refute most of -these errors, in as concise, convincing, popular and interesting- way as you can manage. If you have, for instance, some relevant jokes to offer, -to lighten the reading load, by all means, do so to. If you can- chop up my often all to long sentences into clearer and shorter- ones, by all means, do so, under your own name, or offer clear- abstracts of what I tried to say.
Never mind some repetitions on this important -subject. They are as likely to occur as they occur in oral- discussions. Any truth needs repeated statements to finally sink into enough heads. Refutations, too, need frequent- repetitions, since errors are almost forever repeated, again and -again. Microfiche etc. do have space for numerous repetitions. Easy -reading and concise versions can be provided later by anyone who -can and will do so. - J. Z., 23.4.97.
SUBJECTS NOT YET DEALT WITH: They should at least be included, -in catchwords, with an appeal for contributions to them.

DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE SAME ARTICLES MIGHT BE OFFERED LATER: -1. A short version. 2. A medium sized best version so far -compiled or found. 3. The complete treatment, at lengths that are -often boring to many and with many repetitions, too. Articles to- complete monographs. But full books merely to be referred to, with details on -where they can be accessed, if they are rare titles.

That I have often repeated ideas, arguments and wordings here does not worry me but that, most likely, I have still missed out on good expressions of facts, ideas and arguments or included errors and wrong observations of my own - does. So point out all flaws to me and find and state better and more accurate expressions in your own terms and also in terms that would help to make others understand the issues better. -J. Z., 25.5.97.

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ABC AGAINST NUCLEAR WAR: It contains some entries which might be- worthwhile including here. (Formerly in print only in PP 16-18, then microfiched in PP 16-18. Now digitised as PP 16 & 17.)
ABILITY TO PAY & FREE BANKING: When you are buying the markets -are open, it's when you are selling that you find the markets- closed. - Klahn's law of marketing, in a letter by Robert W.- Klahn, in ANALOG, 7/95, p. 312. - Free banking can turn each- large supplier of wanted consumer goods into a large scale money--issuer and buyer of the goods and services of others, rather than -entering into a competition with them for the scarce, exclusive- and forced currency of monetary despotism. Your own money issues -will also act like advertising leaflets and drive potential- customers into your "net" - by inducing them to return your money -to you, claiming the promised and available consumer satisfaction -from your stores. You would only have to market your own money and not your goods and services directly and exclusively only for- a monopolised money. To market any useful additional money is- much easier than to market any goods and services. And your own -money would inevitably return to you in payments. What more could- you ask for than such freedom, practised alone or in more -suitable local associations? - J. Z., 19.3.97.
ABILITY TO PAY & INABILITY TO PAY, BOTH UNDER MONETARY FREEDOM- AND UNDER MONETARY DESPOTISM, SHOULD BE SEPARATELY CONSIDERED: -...
ABILITY TO PAY & INTEREST RATES: The ability to pay ANY interest -rates or not is often more important than the fact of either -high or low interest rates. High interest rates do not matter as -much when sales are easy to achieve, profit margins are high and- do not merely represent, to a large extent, high inflation rates. -Low interest rates are not an encouragement to take up loans and to- increase production when customers are missing, sales are low and -factories work only at a fraction of their potential, while -unemployment is high. Nor do low interest rates CAUSE inflation -or do high interest rates CAUSE a deflation. To judge the economy- and economic developments only by interest rates, especially only -the interest rates for monopoly and forced currencies, is almost -as one-sided as is phrenology, in trying to determine a person's- capabilities and character merely from the shape of his skull. -- J. Z., 22.4.97.
ABILITY TO PAY & UNEMPLOYMENT: Unemployment will be reduced to a minimum only once ability to pay or to clear is maximised, developed to its natural limits, which consists in the ability and readiness of people to offer productive labours and services in return, at market rates. - J. Z., 25.9.93, 24.5.97.
ABILITY TO PAY, IOU'S & CLEARING: Pay your debts with -acknowledgments of your debts. And back up your debt certificates- with your ability and readiness to supply goods, services and -labour for them. Fully acknowledge your own debt certificates -when offered to you in payment by anyone, at any time (when they -are currency, not capital debt certificates). Choose whatever- value standard unit is acceptable to you and your creditors and do -price all your offers in these units. Then, by accepting your- IOUs back, from anyone, you will have cleared what you owed to- others against what some others owed to you. And neither of you- will have had to own or use a single gold or silver-coin in the- process - as a means of payment or cover or guarantee. Such coins,- in the hands of others, freely rated and traded, would just be -your reckoning units, for your means of payment, not your means -of payment themselves. To that extent you would be independent of -their availability to you, in coin form. - J. Z., 30.9.94, 17.4.97.
ABILITY TO PAY:  Freedom to pay your debts with whatever means of -exchange medium or clearing process and value standard is acceptable to your -creditors, be they your employees, your suppliers, your -financiers or your bank. - J. Z., 18.4.93, 15.4.97.
ABILITY TO PAY: Desperate sellers of goods and services, as well -as unemployed and underemployed should cease to think that their- only rightful and sensible action would be to consider themselves- as "hunters" for the scarce "game" of a government's exclusive- and forced currency.  Instead, they should consider themselves as rightful and potential buyers first, who could freely and widely- purchase, when they have no government monopoly money at all or -are short of it, - with assignments upon their own readiness to -immediately supply wanted goods, services or labour for all the notes that they issued. Especially if at least locally -they combined their readiness to accept their own token money at -par from anyone. Then, and to the extent that they could thus offer a convenient and attractive enough local currency, they- could first "import" and then, and automatically, balance their -import expenditures by "export" in which their issued money- tokens stream back to them in payment.  They would thus have made -possible extra sales and jobs and would even have been able to- anticipate their returns from them. To prevent them from engaging -in such self-help steps is a great wrong and one they do not -always have to put up with. At least under certain circumstances -monetary revolutions are not only desirable but possible and one might even say obligatory. - As -Ulrich von Beckerath used to say: Combined purchasing power is- one of the potentially largest and yet least appreciated- revolutionary powers in this world. It can e.g. be used to -purchase the enterprise one works in and to supply oneself with -jobs and sales. - J. Z., 19.11.92, 14.4.97. - It does not only apply to combined savings but also to combined issues of currencies, that oblige only the issuers. The acceptors are thus offered the combined redemption capacity of the issuers, with their goods, services and ready and willing labor. - J.Z., 5.9.02.
ABILITY TO PAY: It should be limited only by one's ability to -supply wanted goods, services and labour in exchange. Under -monetary freedom this readiness to supply consumer goods and- services that are in daily demand, could be easily monetised by- these suppliers and their associations, thus supplying a common- local token currency or ticket money (goods warrants, purchasing- certificates, IOUs, clearing certificates). Thus they could come -to pay and clear their ways without the help of any exclusive or- forced paper currency and without possessing a gold stock between -them, that would be large enough to mediate all the exchanges -they can and want to make between them. - J. Z., 6.12.92, 30.4.97.
ABILITY TO PAY: The ability of most people to pay their debts, -to find employment or sell their goods and services, does become -greatly improved once they become free to offer to pay for all -their expenditures with their own optional money, freely rated -against an agreed upon value standard, which is also used in -pricing out their labour, services and goods. They should not be- forced to ask for and accept only the government's monopoly money- or non-cash payments ultimately based upon it. Their own money, thus -issued by them, would inevitably return to them. Only they would -have to accept it at any time at par. The combination of several -potential issuers of private money tokens, e.g. in a shopping- centre's  bank of issue association, would make their alternative -private or cooperative exchange medium even more acceptable, as a- local currency, to many if not most of the local people. Territorial government stands helpless before the economic crises which their -monetary and other economic despotism has caused in the first- place. It does not see or admit its own mistakes - but has- outlawed monetary self-help steps. Thus something like a monetary -revolution is required to get rid of its monetary despotism. Such- revolution requires a prior sufficient monetary enlightenment, one -not offered by governmental educational institutions and also a- careful choice of opportunities for it and timing and speed of -execution, so that its successes would be rapid and-, under sufficient publicity, overwhelmingly convincing. Then politicians and judges would no longer dare to suppress monetary freedom self-help steps but, -rather, jump on this band wagon. Those already fighting any- oppressive government, somewhere in the world, would, naturally, not greatly add to the -penalties that their despotic government would want to put upon them, if they -made use of monetary and financial freedom steps to finance their -resistance or revolutions or insurrections properly and overcome -the existing crises, whether deflationary, inflationary or- stagflationary. Thereby they could win with greater certainty,- faster and with much less bloodshed. Dozens of revolutionary -attempts occur every year in the World. The revolutionaries are, as a rule,- not monetarily enlightened and thus the fighting and bloodshed- becomes prolonged and even when they win, the economic problems -they suffered under will not be solved by them when they only -know the rules of monetary despotism and thus will practise them -again. - J. Z., 19.6.93 & 15.4.97.
ABILITY TO PAY: The unused and undemanded ability to pay and to- clear, via privately or cooperatively issued money tokens and -cooperatively organized clearing facilities, upon the unused own ready-for-sale goods and service -potential depends, is enormous - and still largely unknown in every -country. Otherwise, inflations, deflations, stagflations, mass -unemployment and unwanted and not merely accidental poverty could- be done away with within hours or days at most - while- governments do not even foresee their total abolition within years- or even decades - and continue to stumble around in the dark, -causing much wrong and damage with their "activities" and "measures", unaware that and how they caused most major social -problems in the first place. Alas, the billions of victims of- monetary despotism have so far shown little awareness of its- existence and desire for its replacement by monetary freedom. The- situation is as bad as in the Dark Ages, where religious -tolerance was not appreciated or in the times of slavery, when- most slaves would rather be masters but very few slaves wanted -the abolition of slavery and all too many "free" people were opposed to the abolition of slavery. - J. Z., 29.7.96, 19.3.97, 28.8.02.
ABILITY TO PAY: Under monetary despotism the ability to supply wanted goods and services is not equalled by the ability to pay, because it is artificially separated from it. Under monetary freedom the two are naturally combined. The producers and traders can issue sound money to sell all the goods and services they do offer between them, at market prices, to those who want them, because they do, directly or indirectly supply their customers and clients with the exchange media to purchase their goods and services. - J. Z., 27.6.89.
ABOLITION OF MONEY & ABOLITION OF PROPERTY & ABOLITION OF FREE -TRADE & FREE ENTERPRISE: Many consider this kind of utopia still -to be an ideal. They do not distinguish e.g. between the abolition -of the money of monetary despotism, the abolition of all monopoly -property, e.g. in land, or public utilities, the abolition of government ownership of its whole territory and of all its -inhabitants as tax slaves, military and brain-washing slaves, the- abolition of the protectionist variations of international trade- and the abolition of privileged or monopoly enterprises, - from- the optional, competitive, cooperative and voluntaristic alternatives of monetary freedom, self-managed and cooperatively- owned and run productive capital, free trade and free market- alternatives and the limited territorial State options from the -almost unlimited options of panarchism or voluntarism that are all -based on exterritorial autonomy for all volunteer communities, in -which they could even practise freely all their anti-capitalistic -and anti-individualistic ideals - at their own risk and expense. - I, too, would find the abolition of all forced and exclusive- currencies very desirable and that of all special privileges, -grants and subsidies granted by governments to some of their- subjects, at the expense of others. And I would not want to see any form of government to government "trading" and "enterprise" -continued otherwise than at the expense of consenting victims. - -From the wrongful application of the property rights principle to -property in people, slavery, all too many descendants of former- slaves or serfs seem to have inherited an emotional aversion- against all property claims, even quite rightful ones. Perhaps -there is something physical remaining in their genes, an -inherited memory of their ancestors standing on the auction block, as -slaves, at a slave market. Our present economic system has -not made it easy for them to acquire and maintain productive- property and to profit from it. The class warfare mentality, the- split into employers and employees and the anti-industrial- warfare between them for their "right shares" in the added value- of production, has coloured most of their thinking and their- actions. But from the admitted and so far all too neglected evils- and wrongs of the State paper money of monetary despotism and of -the scarcity problems with any forced and exclusive rare metal- currencies, one should not conclude that all kinds of monies must be alike despotic and difficult to attain. The situation would be- completely different under freedom to issue, clear, accept,- refuse, rate and discount alternative currencies, with legal- tender confined to the issuer and his own notes. Least of all -should supposed enemies of property discard "self-ownership" and -self-management and cooperative ownership options and render -themselves the helpless victims of central planners,- decision-makers and owners of themselves and of all other- "public" property. Without monetary freedom all the other rights -and liberties and opportunities were incomplete and one's -potential could not always be fully realized. One restriction and -suppression led to many others. The full release of all creative -energies (Leonard E. Read) can only be achieved when monetary freedom is realized, -too. Otherwise we all live in nation-wide prison-yards, confined -to the productive and exchange activities permitted to us  and- which we can manage to arrange with the exclusive and forced- prison currency provided by the authorities of this prison. That- situation does, often, provoke strong anger, even destructive and- riotous behaviour and terrorist and mass murderous actions based- on the "principle" of collective responsibility. Then scapegoats -are sought and prosecuted or even brutally abused and murdered as supposed culprits: supposed conspirators, members of other races- and religions or nations, as immigrants and settlers and- competitors for jobs and business opportunities. - Money,- property & trade must be liberated rather than abolished or -suppressed. The forms in which they presently do exist do not -really deserve their names. However, volunteer communities should- be at liberty to keep them for themselves, as long as they are -not forced upon any dissenters. - J. Z., 17.4.97.
ABORIGINES' BANKS OF ISSUE: There is much more to independence -for Aborigines than ownership of land, traditional life-styles,- dances, languages, arts and crafts activities and the primitive- and limited trades they engaged in across the continent, access -to alcoholic drinks, drugs and government schools and hand-outs at the expense of taxpayers. - If they started to organise their- own banks of issue and provided jobs for themselves in this way,- the governments would have a very hard stand in suppressing this -self-help effort and would be more likely to grant them- exemptions from monetary despotism or even repeal these laws when -other ethnic groups would thereupon claim the same liberties for -themselves. Voluntary taxation for Aborigines could also- become a popular issue, when the same people declined, at the- same time, to accept any further handouts at the expense of- taxpayers. Fully self-employed and not forced to pay taxes to- governments that they do not want for themselves, their combined purchasing power could be large enough to commercially acquire more land than has -already been granted to them. Actually, per head of the- Aborigines population in Australia probably much more land- already available to them than is to any other ethnic -group or to the average Australian. Admittedly, this land is often among the least fertile land and they and it are still under all too many government restrictions. But how much could really free people achieve even upon- such land? Compare the development of Hong Kong and of some areas of Israel. - J. Z., 27.5.97.
ABSTRACTS COMPILATION OF ALL MONETARY FREEDOM WRITINGS:
ABSTRACTS: Should be asked for of all monetary freedom writings -and schools of monetary freedom thoughts.
ACADEMIC WRITINGS ON MONETARY FREEDOM IN RECENT YEARS: Some -modern economists have finally rediscoverd some aspects of -monetary freedom, especially since Hayek wrote "Choice in -Currency" and "The Denationalisation of Money", in 1975 & 1976.- But even these are usually still far behind the monetary freedom- theories and practices offered decades e.g. by Ulrich von -Beckerath since World War I. - J. Z., 7.11.96.
ACCEPTABILITY OF MONEY, REJECTABILITY, REFUSABILITY,- DISCOUNTABILITY, READINESS TO ACCEPT FOUNDATION, MARKET RATING,- LEGAL TENDER, SEPARATION OF VALUE STANDARD & EXCHANGE MEDIA -FUNCTION: Currency cannot be acceptable unless it is -rejectable. Liberty to use or refuse it is essential to -desirableness. - Ezra Heywood, Hard Cash, 7. - Money should be optional, refusable and discountable, in its exchange medium function as well as in its value standard function. Only the issuers should always be obliged to accept it at par with their nominal values. - J.Z., 6.9.02.
ACCEPTANCE VS. REDEMPTION FOUNDATION: When paper money is not -redeemable (by the issuer in gold) then it will suffice, in -order to preserve the parity of the paper money with gold, to -arrange for the acceptance of the paper money like gold money - by -institutions which sell goods in daily and general demand. (Such institutions are e.g. the taxation department - when it "sells"- tax receipts, the railway, the P.O., and shops which owe -something to the bank issuing that paper. Their indebtedness may- arise out of the discounting of sound commercial bills and the -corresponding contractual obligation to accept the notes of the -bank like gold money. Naturally, in all such cases, the bank must- concede its debtors the right to pay back all their bank debts- with that paper money as soon as they receive it, at par,- regardless of the exchange rate of the paper money.) -  Ulrich- von Beckerath, 25.1.52.
ADDRESSES OF MONETARY FREEDOM SEEKERS, INDIVIDUALS & -ORGANIZATIONS:
ADVANTAGES OF MONETARY FREEDOM: Advocates of monetary freedom, like myself, claim that the competitive supply of exchange media would end any currency or cash famine, and could do so quite rapidly. If not effectively repressed, it would drive unsound exchange media and value standards, like most of the government paper money and its associated paper standard, out of circulation. - Moreover, the free choice of value standards would lead to a wide acceptance of the best one (or best ones, most widely - J. Z., 14.9.02) -  most likely a gold weight unit for account that is based on a free gold market, free private coinage, and gold redemption almost completely transferred to the free gold market and to gold-weight-unit pricing of goods and services, with private and optional exchange media being kept at par with their nominal gold weight value or close enough, in general local circulation and strictly at par when returned to the issuer in any payment. It would also lead to the rating of all exchange media against this standard and would thus prevent inflation, even when some exchange media would still and temporarily suffer a small discount. - Over-issues would then be to the obvious and rapid disadvantage of the issuer and not any longer, as at present, to his advantage. - With this monetary freedom, all the illiquid capital of a short term nature, especially working power and consumer goods and services, soon to be used or consumed, could be fully mobilised in monetary form and thus much easier exchanged and with less transaction costs. That is what the money of monetary freedom can do, has done wherever, whenever and to the extent that it was allowed to and will do also in the future, with or without the use of computers and the Internet. It should be the equivalent of labour, goods and services ready for sale, especially of consumer goods and services in daily demand and labour for their production and should facilitate their exchange. - The money types arising under monetary freedom would be very closely tied to this labour, service and goods basis, could not exceed it, i.e. could not inflate the money circulation and thereby the prices beyond this cover. One of the main safeguards would be the right of everyone to refuse to accept suspicious means of payment - like you would refuse my cheques or IOUs - knowing my financial situation. Full publicity for private issues and free and rapid clearing for all such tokens which went astray, would be essential features of the system. No fraud or coercion would be practised any longer in this sphere. - The most suitable issuers would be associations of retailers of consumer goods and services that would use the variety of goods and services they offer between them as a redemption fund for their local currency. These stocks and this service potential form anyhow and in all cases the short term backing of any currency, even of a gold coin currency. Fully mobilised, this capital could provide the sound exchange medium and the additional sales required to employ all the unemployed. In a city like Sydney, thousands of millions could thus be mobilised almost instantly for turn-over and wage payment credits, at all stable gold prices. - So far the retailers have not bothered to explore and state their issue potential and to demand that they be freed to utilise it, to their own advantage, that of the unemployed and of the rest of the economy. - J. Z., 1985 & 21.5.97. - To that extent they are not retailers in the same way as employers are not employers as long as unemployment exists. - J. Z., 14.9.02.
ADVERTISING COSTS WILL BE REDUCED: The rapid and automatic -reflux of this private currencies to the issuers, to be redeemed -in their goods and services, seeing that they have no other value -and only a limited circulation period, turns them also into -advertisement leaflets and reduces the need for advertising the -goods and services, thus making extra competitive price -reductions likely. There will also be less need for advertising -than under monetary despotism where free competition is confined -to a struggle for scarce and exclusive forced currency. - J. Z., 3/97.
AGGRESSION & MONETARY DESPOTISM:
AIRLINE MONEY: Air transport, at least in some countries, and- internationally, is to a large extent replacing shipping, railway- and road transport. Thus it could, like other transport -facilities, issue its own competing currencies, mobilising more- of its so far unused capacity, while helping to provide sound- supplementary currencies. - Air lines are considered as rich and -powerful but, under monetary despotism they are still struggling and many have failed, if not government subsidised or granted- privileges. Nevertheless, so far and as faras I know, no struggling airline has seriously considered becoming a note or service -certificate issuer and used its influence upon government- legislators to permit such self-help actions. - J. Z., 22.4.97, J.Z., 7.9.02..
AMERICAN OPINION, June 1983, contains an article of free banking -interest, critical of Social Credit.
ANONYMOUS MONEY, CENTRAL BANK MONEY, PUBLICITY ON ISSUERS & THEIR READINESS TO ACCEPT FOUNDATION, LOCAL MONEY VS. CENTRALIZED OR WORLD MONEY:  If I had a choice, I  would not readily trust and accept any money of which the issuers or acceptors remain anonymous or remote (like money of a central bank) and which relies upon compulsory acceptance and compulsory value, in combination with a monopoly for its issue. Such monies deserve, instead, extreme distrust and refusal to accept them whenever possible and other and better payment arrangements can be achieved. Central banks do not provide the goods and services consumers need. So why should they be entitled to issue claims to them? Any electronic currency has purchasing power towards those of the local suppliers who do accept them in payment or, for supplies from distant places, only to the extent that the additional transport costs and delays are considered to be acceptable. But for the required supplies from local suppliers it would be much more sensible to accept a local currency issued by them. For these neither a central bank currency nor an electronic world currency is required. The currency issues of distant issuers, which only they and their distant debtors have to accept, both of them unknown to me, have some value to me only if I can exchange them, at an acceptable rate, at a local money exchange bureau. They are not ready cash for me. The real backers of any sound local currency tokens are the local providers of goods and services, who have issued these tokens. Their readiness to accept them would also be sufficiently publicized. Acceptance in distant localities, by suppliers unknown to me, would not be good enough for me for most purchases. What value have "tickets" to performances for me when issuers, times of performances, their kinds and their locations are not known to me or too far away from me? Who in the world or in a country can rightly issue liquid claims to all the goods and services of a country or the world? The very concept is absurd. What can I know about the soundness of the issues of the central bank of a country or of the issues of a world bank or European Bank issuing notes? Historical experience rather teaches their unsoundness, at least in the long run. But I can easily become familiar with the soundness of the notes of a local shopping centre. - J.Z., 17.6.01, 26.8.02.
APHORISMS ON THE MONEY PROBLEM, by Ulrich von Beckerath, 1932, in- BANKWISSENSCHAFT, also in PP 587/588: - The question whether one- could utilise non-interest bearing, long-term loan certificates -and mortgage bonds in small denominations, e.g. "Wagemann Money", -"Feder Money", etc., as a means of exchange, could perhaps be put -into the following formula: MONEY IS A MEANS OF TRANSPORT. It- serves to overcome spatial distances. With money one exchanges -values that do already exist in the present. The exchange of -harvested grain for clothing, household goods and hay forks is- done through MONEY. - MONEY is necessarily interest-free. Both- justifications for interest, namely a) difference between future- and present services and b) a just share for the creditor in the- production of the debtor, do not apply to MONEY. - The notes- issued by a note-issuing bank or clearing bank are, by their very -nature, clearing certificates (settlement scrip). As such they -should not remain in circulation as long as possible but, -instead, disappear from it as soon as possible. - To oblige any- issuing centre (Zettelbank, note-issuing bank) to exchange its -clearing certificates at any time for metal, is not only -superfluous but harmful and contradicts the nature of this paper--money as a clearing certificate (or settlement scrip). - The interest rates charged by a note-issuing clearing centre are not- interest but fees. Insofar, a properly conducted issuing centre- operates INTEREST-FREE. Only when any customer of the -note-issuing centre delays the clearing (settlement), does the -bank charge INTEREST FOR LATE PAYMENT. This interest is something -quite different from clearing, although both are CALLED interest- and are ACCOUNTED as interest. (It is more in the nature of a contract fine. J. Z.) - Credit instruments that are FORCED INTO -CIRCULATION, like e.g. interest-free mortgage bonds in small- denominations, must lastly DESTROY credit. They amount to putting- warehouses on wheels and wanting to drive in them. That is- POSSIBLE but the goods storage business is thereby ruined -- although it appears, at first, as if one had solved two problems -with one stroke. It reminds of the famous rifles that were to be- at the same time useful as umbrellas, telescopes, lances and tobacco pipes. But they were somewhat IMPRACTICAL. (Lombard loan -certificates do often represent present goods, in large -quantities, that are kept out of the present market in the -expectation of future price rises. If such certificates are -monetised then, obviously, the present purchasing power is -increased but the present goods offered on the market are not- correspondingly increased. - J. Z. ) - Inflation is impossible -without forcefully equating future services with present ones. -Many do not realize this as yet. - Interest bridges differences- in time. It makes possible the just exchange of FUTURE services- with present ones. Between the present and the future neither- TRANSPORT takes place nor CLEARING. Consequently, to bridge the -present and the future is not a task for a CLEARING INSTITUTE- like a note issuing bank (Zettelbank). - Indeed, a credit -instrument with a properly certified interest claim, does have a- value in the present and can thus be exchanged for other, present- goods. Such a credit instrument (mortgage bond, annuity- certificate) is even the natural means of payment for goods that- exist in the present but are not PRODUCED in the present, e.g., -for REAL ESTATE. For this reason, mortgages are often used as- means of payment in REAL ESTATE PURCHASES. But goods PRODUCED in the present do require scrip as means of payment (notes or -clearing cheques), if the producer wants to consume the- equivalence in the present. If he does not want this but wants to- consume only in the future, then the proper means of payment is, -again, the credit instrument, e.g. the standardised mortgage -bond. - Feder wants to create a means of circulation that at the -same time bridges differences in SPACE and in TIME. That can NOT- be done. (A sound commercial bill does it, to some extent, in a- limited circulation sphere and only for a short period. Moreover, the bill debtor has immediately a corresponding quantity of goods -for sale, payable in banknotes, with which the real bill had been- discounted. - J. Z.) A railway has to overcome e.g. the distance -between Berlin and Hamburg as fast as possible, if it is a GOOD- railway. But if, at the same time, it is to act as a STORAGE facility, too, then it can no longer serve as a means of- TRANSPORT.
APHTONIOS' SCHEME: Various ways of filling it with monetary -freedom proposals.
ARBITRATION SYSTEM FOR WAGE DETERMINATION UNIONS, NATIONAL WAGE CASES, INFLATION, WAGE INCREASES, STRIKES, COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, VALUE PRESERVING CLAUSES: National wage case decisions raising the general wage level can act inflationary.  - You can try to demand money, to steal it or rob it, try to order people like employers to pay it, or to extract if from consumers via increased prices but what you will in effect achieve is no more than people are able or willing to supply. An employer has always the option to dismiss you instead of paying you a raise. If he is not allowed to dismiss you then he might not be far from bankruptcy. The taxpayers can only support so many otherwise bankrupt enterprises for a while. Nor will you be able to force consumers to pay for goods that are overpriced due to your wage demands. If it were really possible to arbitrarily increase wages by more or less judicial decisions of arbitration courts, then we should demand of them that they each entitle us to demand a million dollars every week as our rightful wage, to maintain us in style. Why be satisfied with anything less. And if they cannot provide us with a wage increase of one million then they, by their decision, cannot even provide us, on their own, with a wage increase of a single cent. - However, we tend to overlook this reality under a system of monetary despotism, which distorts not only our paper value standard and monopoly means of exchange, but also our vision or understanding of it. The arbitration system can "allocate" wage increases only when they are paid in additional forced currency, directly or indirectly. Their purchasing power would soon tend to be only the same as the former wage - and it might even amount to less. We might also lose our job in the process and the employer might be driven into bankruptcy, because the monetary despotism does not supply all employers evenly and all potential customers for him with sufficient of its scarce monopoly money, not even in times of galloping inflations, when prices and wages might race far ahead of the fast inflation rate. Usually the arbitration system's  wage increase decisions and the "wage gains" through anti-industrial and coercive union actions are only responses to an inflation that has already increased many or all prices and has left wages behind, at their formerly fixed nominal rates. Then, while no more than an adaptation to the past inflation is achieved and no indemnification is offered for the inflationary losses in the meantime, the unionists and arbitration court supporters want to be praised for the merely nominal wage increases that supposedly were due only through their actions. If they were getting out of the way and individuals, in their wage contracts, could propose and contract value preserving clauses, then their purchasing power might thus not only be preserved but even be increased, corresponding to their own contributions to increased productivity. Union and arbitration court monopoly "actions" prevent this kind of self-help and self-promotion. They also tend to prevent the spread of productive cooperative enterprises, with no wage problem and personal subordination that is not warranted by a job. - J. Z., 24.3.97.
ARMAMENTS, ARMS RACES & ALL KINDS OF MILITARY SPENDING DO INEVITABLY LEAD TO INFLATION: A popular view. It is true only if all such spending is "financed" by the government's printing presses for forced and exclusive currency. Without legal tender and the issue monopoly, it could not take place. Attempts to finance it then by additional paper money issues would depreciate this paper - but not sound value reckoning, and lead to more and more people totally rejecting government paper money issues. Under financial freedom they would then also effectively refuse to pay taxes to such a government and could not be forced to subcribe loans to such a government. Under monetary and financial despotism this kind of war promoting exploitation can, indeed, take place. This is one more good reason to abolish this despotism. - Before the Prussian wars of 1864, 1866 & 1871 Prussia was also well armed but it did not inflate its currency and could not because it had not given it legal tender, not even for the financing of these wars. But it did introduce legal tender for the conduct of WW I and maintained it, most of the time (a short period of the Rentenmark of 1923/24 excepted, I do not know exactly when that was ended ), for WW II and the "liberating" Allies maintained this monetary despotism for the old RM and their occupation marks, to June 1948 and then tolerated it for the new DM ever since, i.e., a totalitarian and communist money system even for supposedly anti-communist States that were sometimes in armed conflicts with communist States.  - J. Z., 24.3.97.
ASSET CURRENCIES OR TURNOVER-CREDIT CURRENCIES? Some notes by J.Z. on an exchange between Don Werkheiser and Theo M, March 23, 1990. Houses and note issues upon them: Assume the asset of a house, estimated to be worth $ 180,000 and notes issued upon that asset, valued, coming nominally, only $ 120,000. - Seemingly, and in the eyes of some, these notes are then "well covered". In reality, they are only small and standardised mortgage bonds that do not even pay interest. Only the house owner would be morally obliged to accept them - if and when he wanted to sell the house. Others would accept them from him only if they are potential investors or buyers of that house. They would have to be tempted by the offer of interest.  Why should any shop owners or businesses accept such notes from such an issuer, if they are not interested in buying his house or investing in claims to it and no interest is paid and if there are no ready acceptors for such notes? What could they do with them now? Who would be contractually obliged to accept them from him? Why should they act as brokers for such mortgage bonds? There is a difference between mortgages and sound bills of exchange and between mortgage letters (or bonds) and banknotes based upon real bills. The difference lies in the securities offered, the value of a house vs. daily wanted consumer goods and also in the time factor that is involved. For the house-currency there is only a very limited readiness to accept (in case of the sale of the house) by the single issuer. The shop-foundation and short-term debt-foundation of banknotes, on the other hand, is offered by many acceptors and they offer a great variety of daily wanted goods and services. They offer something useful to the note holders, immediately or soon, a considerable and sufficient choice. The house owner would hardly want to sell his house brick by brick etc., after wrecking it first,  nor would he find many buyers for such a limited offer - or takers for his thus "secured" mortgage bonds. What an honest house owner, issuing notes "covered" by the value of his house, should explicitly declare on his "banknotes" is something like the following: "I want you to give me the values I want now, for these, my notes. But I am not willing to give you, with these notes, the values you want and might be able to get from me now - apart from the value of the house, which I have not even placed on the market as being for sale. All I offer you with my "house notes" are small mortgages secured by the market value of my house. I do not even offer to accept my notes e.g. in rent-payments to me, in case I were to let this house to you, which I do not intend to do. I do not offer you any interest payment for the period that will pass until you manage to fob of these mortgage letters upon other victims with capital, goods, services or labour that they do want to thus invest. I merely rely on your good faith, trust and confidence, for which I can offer no other basis than that the total present market value of my house, which is not ready for sale now, is larger than the total number of notes that I have issued upon this value. So, they are not altogether value-less but more than "covered" by their visible and properly estimated "security" and "cover". - If  I were to issue notes for the total value of my house and if I were to set a date for its sales and if you had managed to accumulate all these notes in your hands and would want to buy my house, then I would be obliged to hand over the title to it, in return for you handing over to me all these notes. But, since I haven't made this sales offer, I do entirely rely on your unfounded trust and confidence that these notes do have their full nominal and free market value now, equivalent to the sales price of my house, if and when I would sell it. I also trust that you will be ingenious enough to fob them off unto others, also believing in the possibility of "asset currencies", thus passing on the problems of immediate redemption for these notes to them. - I cannot say why I prefer to call these notes my "banknotes", fully covered by the value of my house, instead of mortgage bonds or mortgage letters." - Money in the own eyes is not automatically money in the eyes of others, no matter how confident the issuer is or the person who assumes that he is a potential issuer for banknotes. One should try to think through every issue and reflux, every cover and redemption and security, step by step, taking all the liberties and rights involved in consideration, all the special and general interests of all the parties involved. Then one will find that it is not just a matter of a "unilateral issue" into "circulation", a "single convenience action", as Don Werkheiser called it, but that a "mutual convenience action" must be involved, in which potential acceptors would only accept what they want to accept and to the extent that they do want it and only at times that they do. That means, in practice, that a free and informed market, made up of all the potential acceptors for such notes, would largely refuse them and the few who would accept them would greatly discount them, so much so, that a potential buyer of the house could very cheaply buy up these claims and with them, if they came, nominally, to the value of the house, could make a for him very cheap bid for that house. The issuer, if he had persisted in issuing these mortgages in spite of their great discount, would have got only whatever values he would have been able to buy with them, at their discounted rate. - J.Z., 17.9.02.
ASSET CURRENCIES: Asset currencies have been proposed and tried -out again and again, largely without awareness of their- historical precedents and failures and of the inevitability of -their failures. See: LAND BANKS, REAL ESTATE AS COVER FOR- CURRENCIES, BONDS & GOVERNMENT SECURITIES AS COVER FOR CURRENCIES. The issue principles and practices of financial -freedom are different from the issue principles and practices of  monetary freedom. They should not be mixed up. In both cases one- deals with valuable properties. In both cases the transactions -should be voluntary. In both cases free market rating should -apply and in both cases value preserving clauses or value -standards should be applied and expressed in them and in prices, wages, rents etc. Ready for sale consumer -goods and services, through suitable claims upon them, could be used for subscriptions to capital securities, rather than the latter being wrongly used as a the basis of currency issues. Capital securities can and should be issued upon capital assets. Notes for apples and meat, mortgages for houses, shares for factories. Security issues can be -sold for cash or clearing certificates. Currencies or clearing certificates can be used to buy capital securities. But this limited and in each case to be voluntarily agreed upon exchange still does not make them -identical, in the same market, among the same people, which each a full substitute for the other, immediately, among all people. Capital securities have their special markets and their separate circles of sellers and buyers. Securities represent rather land, bricks & timber and -steel, hardware - machinery, resources or the expectation of providing them and of benefiting from them in the future.- Currencies, on the other hand, represent goods, services and- labour for immediate use and consumption and already produced- & sold at least to wholesalers, on the road to retailers or already -waiting for sales there. Next year's birthday or x-mas isn't -today's birthday or x-mas. One should keep the two apart. Time- differences do matter as you will notice when you are separated -from your beloved ones for 3 months or 3 years. Future values are not -present values. Present values are not future values, although -the two are related and can be somewhat interchanged, at the -prices and costs involved. Consumers who want a currency for -today's and next week's purchases, do not want, instead, a security -for a future capital value, although sometimes, and to some -extent, they want such values, too. In some heads a real block exists against such distinctions. They imagine that only useless -hair splitting is involved. It would help if the experiences of a -number of sound banks of issue for turnover-credit banknotes were -put side by side with banks of issues that issued bank bonds, -mortgage letters and shares and if these were also compared with -the experiences of banks that tried to turn assets like land,- private shares, government loan certificates, into currency, -immediately useful for consumer shopping, although they would be- given no exclusive currency status and legal tender power. A- fourth table might indicate the experience with asset currencies,- where the assets became irrelevant because the paper supposedly backed by them were in reality only accepted because they were -given exclusive currency status and legal tender power (forced -acceptance combined with forced value. - Then the different -recorded experiences might speak for themselves and suffice to -convince. - J. Z., n.d., 30.4.97.
ASSET CURRENCIES: Assets have no real currency - except e.g.-, among brokers, financiers and real estate agencies - and those- who happen to be in the market for some assets, for a while and to some extent, with a fraction of their earnings. -- J. Z., 23.4.97.
ASSET CURRENCIES: Just because the laws have allowed them or even prescribed them in some instances, and this, sometimes, under the misnomer of "free banking", does not make them  right, honest or economically sound and efficient or competitive under conditions of full monetary freedom. Modern views on this are nothing better than a revival of the old "land bank" schemes, by which the issuers attempted to foist fractions of mortgages upon the population as if they were and could be a sound currency. This particular fallacy was often refuted in the literature. But the general asset currency notion is still very much alive and all too widely practised by central banks. They even accept government "insecurities", or investments in tax slaves, as assets. When such issues are monopoly issues then the issuers can get away with them for all too long - for people often accept bad forms of money if that is the only one which is made available to them or permissible for them. But under monetary freedom no one would be obliged to give any real purchasing power to any such currencies, by accepting them for his goods, services and labour. They would, as currency, have no more status and ready acceptance, far less par acceptance, than have mortgages, bonds, shares and other securities have in most daily exchanges for most people. I.e., they would not be currencies. They would be useful only on the capital market, which embraces only a fraction of all buyers and a fraction of all their purchases and sales. That is the main reason why they cannot be sound currencies in local circulation. Their circulation sphere and volume is all too limited. They are not tickets or vouchers to daily wanted and ready for sale consumer goods and services. That is an essential requirement even for gold coins. - J. Z., 25.12.88, 16.5.97.
ASSET CURRENCIES: The only assets which asset currencies could- effectively move are capital assets and capital securities. E.g., -mortgage letters can move large mortgages, which otherwise would- not be as easily transferable. But asset currencies do not -represent and cannot, therefore, easily transfer ready for sale- goods, services and labour. These require currencies based upon- them. - Only when all other currencies are effectively outlawed -can any monopolistic asset currency somewhat replace them, in- spite of its unsound foundation for currency purposes. Rather -than doing without monetary exchanges altogether, people would -then even accept an asset currency - up to a fraction of all the -capital assets, without responding to the asset currency issue -with inflated price and wage demands. (These price and wage- increases would not indicate a dearness of goods and labour but a depreciation of the forced and exclusive "asset currency" imposed -upon them. - J. Z., 6.4.94, 24.4.97.
ASSET CURRENCIES: To try to turn capital assets like raw- materials, premises, and machinery or the capital securities that -represent them, directly into currency, supposedly useful for the- current purchase of consumer goods, is a great mistake because at -the same time no equivalent consumer goods and services are -provided by the issuer to redeem them with. The holder of the -certificates could only force the issuer into liquidation and- then claim his share in raw materials, premises and machinery - -but few would want to acquire them. On the other hand, if there -is someone prepared for a take-over bid for the business of the -issuer, then such issue attempts would be very much welcomed by -him, for this scrip would rapidly depreciate in a free market and- could thus be bought up very cheaply and used in the take-over -bid. A few such experiences, well publicised, will serve as a- deterrent.  But that does not mean that there should not be full -freedom to issue financial securities, too, which quite clearly -represent capital assets and are bought up and traded by people -interested in capital investments. To reduce this kind of mix up -of capital securities with turnover bills and notes, the issue -departments for both should be as far as possible kept separated because- for people have fallen for the errors of "asset currencies" again- and again and they have often been embodied in banking laws.
ASSET CURRENCY: An unsound turnover currency system is not- sufficiently remedied by there existing, in case of its -bankruptcy, some securities for the benefit of its creditors. Its- function is not to provide such an ultimate guaranty or backing- for its currency but, rather, to provide for its currency a ready -backing right now, especially by short term securities and by the- ready for sale goods, services and labour which the issuers of -the short term securities have to offer to the holders of the -banknotes of the bank. Only such turn-over function and security- and guaranty and convertibility arrangement or cover can keep a- currency sound and current, by exerting a sufficient daily demand -for bank notes, to keep them at par with their nominal value. (A sound reflux.) If- the issuing banks do not provide such an instant cover, security -and convertibility and no one is instantly obliged to accept all -the currency issued by the bank, i.e., if there is no instant- demand for it but only the distant redemption via the capital securities, then such a currency must inevitably depreciate. --J . Z., 6.4.93, 27.5.97.
ASSET CURRENCY: Just because the law has permitted or even -prescribed it in some or many instances does not make it rightful- or economically sound and a desirable and predictable practice -under monetary freedom. "Modern" views on this are often merely a- revival of the ancient "land-bank" and "assignat" fallacies that -have been refuted by their practice and several scientific -studies. - J. Z., 8.4.97.
ASSET CURRENCY: See: APHORISMS ON THE MONEY PROBLEM.
ATCOPS : Roger Young, in TC144p43 reports that ATCOPS is alive -and well and in its 20th year.
ATKINSON, EDWARD, Pamphlet, title unknown, referred to by TANDY,- Voluntary Socialism, p. 103, stated on a legal tender act : "...-an act by which bad money may be forced into use so as to drive -good money out of circulation." - All correct versions of- Gresham's Law, with their author, title and date of publication,- preferably also page reference, are wanted by LMP, towards a -monograph on this subject. - J. Z., 12.4.97.
AUDITOR, Periodical published by WESTRUP, ALFRED B., for free -banking. At least 2 issues appeared. I have not seen any yet. -- J. Z., 28.4.97.
AUSTRALIAN MADE, BUY AUSTRALIAN! - If you want to sell Australian- goods, services and labour, then monetise them freely and thus -spend their value even in advance, before they are sold for this- kind of privately or cooperatively issued competing currency. - -Australian made goods, if up to world standards and at world- prices, are good enough for such currency issues, too, for international trading. If they- were not then there would be something wrong with these -recommendations. Why should Australians be foolish enough to buy- Australian goods and services and labour, if they were of- inferior quality or offered only at excess prices? - J. Z., -6.10.93, 1.5.97. - If you spend Australian paper money overseas then there is only one rational use for them, namely, to use them in payment for Australian exports. Competing Australian clearing certificates that are redeemable only in Australian goods and services, freely market rated, refusable and obligatory only for their issuers, also time-limited, would be more obviously balancing imports with exports. See the writings of Prof. Edgard Milhaud and of Ulrich von Beckerath on this subject. - J. Z.,
AUSTRALIAN MADE, BUY AUSTRALIAN: Permit the owners of all- "Australian Made" goods to issue goods-warrants and purchasing -certificates as well as clearing certificates based upon combined- goods and service offers, for goods and services that are in daily -demand by consumers, and allow wages, salaries and other debts to- be paid in them, if the acceptance is voluntary and then, to the- extent that such alternative monies will be readily accepted, the -purchasers will buy goods made in Australia with money freely -made and freely valued, accepted and spent in Australia. To the extent that such- private vouchers, in money denominations, can be freely issued,- they will stream back with much greater certainty to the issuer -and his debtors, for their goods and services and labour, than -any rare metal coins or legal tender money spent by them. They -will be busy and employed and achieve sales to the extent that- they can issue their "tickets" and get them readily accepted.- Moreover, they are morally entitled to thus offer their own -property in a monetised form. No government owns them and their -property and stocks and services and labour for sale. Thus no -government is morally authorised to issue assignments upon their -property, for which, in the act of issue, it has to give nothing- in return but a scrap of printed paper and the option to use this -in payment of tax tributes which it extorts from its tax slaves. -Government cannot provide such a soundly based money. It can only -requisition, with its paper money, the real redemption fund for -any currency in any country, one that belongs to the producers- and traders themselves: the ready for sale goods, services and -labour. - The Australian nationalists should seriously consider -how free and independent they are when they are only allowed to buy their goods, services and labour provided by Australians with -the monopolised and forced paper money by a single privileged and -legalized despotic institution in Australia, its central bank,- called the Reserve Bank. - Why should all Australians, for all- their economic activities, have to depend upon its good will and- abilities - if any - and this in spite of all the evidence that- speaks against any central bank? - When and to the extent that- Australians can issue their own competing and optional -currencies, they will, inevitably, "buy Australian!" - The same applies for competitively issued international clearing- certificates that can only be used, after imports have been paid- for with them, to purchase Australian export goods. - With government paper money, often under a controlled exchange rate,- and with foreign central banks mad enough to hoard such notes, as "-foreign exchange reserves" or foreign private citizens being -inclined to hoard such notes, because they are better than the -still more inflated paper currency of the own government, the -reflux of such paper money as purchasing certificates for- Australian goods, is much less certain. - To speed up the reflux- and make it more regular, all internal and external clearing- certificates and goods and service-warrants should also be given- a limited life span only, for 3 months to 12 months at most, thus -appealing to the self-interest of the holders to redeem them in- Australian goods, services and labour within that period. -Alas, -this kind of "buy Australian" with competing Australian monies,- is not yet popular. - Help to make it so. - J. Z., 5.10.93,- 24.4.97.
AUSTRALIAN OWNED? Because something is "Australian owned" or "produced in Australia" or "bought in Australia", following the command: "Buy Australian!" - does not mean that it is cheaper or better than other businesses or goods or that Australia, as a whole, benefits more from such enterprises, purchases and sales than it does from others. If, instead of buying from an Australian owned firm, you buy from a foreign owned firm in Australia or one overseas, then you do, thereby, enable that foreign firm, whether situated in Australia or overseas, to buy the corresponding values from Australia. And these values, sold to foreigners, and paid with by the return of the Australian paper currency, would then be proudly claimed as Australian export achievements! (They are objectively achievements, like any other sales, but in contradiction to the insistence upon buying only Australian goods.) - If the owners of Australian enterprises were not free to sell them to foreigners, i.e., if most of their potential buyers were excluded, then they would thus be robbed of part of their property rights. Each foreign owned firm means: This firm has not been given away, stolen or occupied but SOLD by an Australian, who managed to get a higher price for it than other Australians were willing to pay him. Should his property rights be overlooked? Should he be penalised, taxed or should the buyer be boycotted? His property belonged to him, not to the nation. Those Australians, who did not buy it, did not offer more for it than a foreigner or foreign company did, have no right to complain. Every transaction that is free and voluntary, i.e., as a rule for mutual benefit (apart from some errors or misjudgements or frauds on one side or the other), is right, thereby, and the nationality of the seller or buyer, or their race or religion or sex or age or ideology should have nothing to do with their trade or exchange. Nationalism, statism and borders should be entirely excluded from economic and moral considerations, as irrelevant, if not outright, wrong, harmful and anti-economic. If any Australians can make a better deal with foreigners than with other Australians, let them. The total of all earned economic satisfactions in Australia would be increased thereby - even while the number of dissatisfactions based upon ignorance, prejudices and myths would also be increased.  Mercantilism and State Socialism were and are wrongful and harmful utopias. Only those individuals who voluntarily subscribed to them should have to suffer under them. - PIOT, J. Z., 22.5.97, 15.9.02.
AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ON MONEY: Austrian economists often asserted -that the interventionism with currencies consisting in legally -establishing an exclusive and forced currency would not matter -at all if that were only done for gold coins and gold- certificates. They could not do any harm, or so they believed, said and wrote. They could not be -arbitrarily multiplied and thus would be the only exchange media- and value standards that should be permissible and that should -also be legally enforced as exclusive exchange media and value- standards. They did this under the assumptions that prices and- wages would be infinitely, fast enough and completely enough adaptable to any changes that might occur in the quantities of- gold available for monetary transactions or to changes in the -monetary demands for gold. - This belief is dogmatic for them, fixed idea.- They do not bother to check it against the facts. They ignored -the numerous reports of currency shortages and currency famines.- They ignored the ten-thousands of reported cases of the issue of emergency- ,token- and truck-money, hundreds of years after the invention of rare metal coins and gold and silver- certificates and even the millions of incidents in which people in their exchanges were being -reduced to primitive barter transactions - although, somewhere, -the same quantities of gold and silver did still exist. Nor did -they consider the different effects which falling price levels- have upon all sellers & buyers, to the extent that the buyers can -postpone purchases, as opposed to fallen prices, e.g. due to some -technical innovations. (Even here some buyer restraint results,- e.g. in the purchase of computer hardware, in the expectation of- even further price falls in spite of continued improvements in -the hardware.) They do overlook the stickiness of prices and- wages. They do overlook the numerous contracts which nominally- express debts over a time period and which debtors would find it -hard to fulfil with severely deflated currencies, which they -would find it much harder to earn, in the same nominal quantities,- while the prices for their goods, services and labour have been- deflated. - If gold and silver were so abundant and so useful,- there would also exist the possibility to provide them in weight- units for the black market and have black market transactions -finally take over the whole market. But that hasn't taken place,- either. By now many people may never even have seen a gold coin. -Then there is the fact of trade having existed even among- Australian Aborigines, across the continent of Australia. However, -gold coins or nuggets or dust did not become currency among them,- either. The distribution of gold standard gold coins and- certificates was rather limited to a few of the more developed- countries. In others they were hardly ever seen, not even coined- out in mini-weights, for very depressed monetary prices. Nor do -most Austrian School economists seem to be aware as yet, that -clearing underlies all money transactions and that pure clearing -transactions do not require any gold coins or gold certificates- at all to become possible and wide-spread, even though they might -prefer to use gold weights as their value units. Blinded by their dogma on "-convertibility by the issuer, upon demand of the gold certificate holder", they remained blind to the -possibilities and functioning of the real bills doctrine or -banking principle and their functioning even without- metal convertibility, even after their banks were declared failed and- bankrupt, because they could not longer redeem their notes fully -in gold. The clearing function involved in the real bills- doctrine or banking principle, continued to function for a while, -because the debtors of the bank exerted a strong demand for the -notes, which enabled them to pay their debts to the banks. - The -minds of the Austrians were so focused on the metal convertibility or -non-convertibility of notes only, that most of them and -probably some of them still, overlooked the much greater -significance of legal tender - and the harmlessness and- self-limitation of banknotes not covered in gold but soundly-I ssued only in turnover credit transactions that are soon- self-liquidating. How often have they been aware and to what- extent are they aware now that without legal tender and the money -issue monopoly one cannot inflate a currency in a market that- enjoys monetary freedom and uses that freedom in freely competing- exchange media, clearing avenues and freely chosen and competing- value standards?  Held back by their limited money model, as they- are by their limited government model and limited defence model, -they have not extended their thinking to the full range of -monetary freedom, of free societal options and of libertarian and- anarchistic defence and war prevention possibilities. Anyone who- thinks that he already knows enough cannot be taught any more, as -long as this illusion persists in his or her head. - J. Z.,-26.1.94, 1.5.97.
AUTHORITY, AUTHORITARIANISM IN MONEY, MONETARY DESPOTISM, CENTRAL -BANKING, EXCLUSIVE & FORCED CURRENCY, PROUDHON : The fundamental,- decisive idea of this Revolution is it not this: NO MORE -AUTHORITY, neither in the Church, nor in the State, nor in land,- nor in money? - Proudhon, General Idea of Revolution in the 19th- Century. - Alas, in his practical proposal he always spoke only- of THE Bank of the People, not of banks of the people. - Maybe he spoke and wrote in this way because he had only a particular model for mutual banking in mind, the one for which his drafted his bank statutes. It would have been quite inconsistent for him as an anarchists to demand a monopoly for his Bank of the People. Alas, not all of his papers and correspondence seem to have been published as yet. That would help to settle this question. - J. Z.,-15.4.97.
AUTOMATION, ROBOTS & UNEMPLOYMENT: Many people believe that there is a link between automation, robots and unemployment, that people would be replaced from their jobs by machines, robots and automation and could not find new jobs. - "Japan, for example, has about 400,000 robots installed and a declared unemployment rate of 2 1/2 %, while Australia has about 1800 robots and a much higher unemployment rate. - The Australian Robot Association estimates that 118 robots were installed in this country last year. This number is too small to have had any significant impact upon unemployment. - In the past two years, IBM reduced its workforce by 90,000 jobs, Boeing by 28,000 jobs, and Digital Equipment Corp by 27,700 jobs. But few, if any of these jobs, were lost because employees were replaced by machines. Rather, according to a recent survey by Ms Trudy Bell, published in the engineering journal IEEE Spectrum, the job losses were due to factors such as the dwindling market for mainframes, diminished military orders brought about by the end of the Cold War, and reduced purchasing because of the global recession." - Michael Kassler, Survey explodes myth of the link to jobless queue, THE AUSTRALIAN, 5.10.93.
BALANCING THE ECONOMY THROUGH MONETARY CONTROLS OR MANIPULATION: The good intention is to keep goods production and service offers in balance with the money issued. Some attempt to adapt the money circulation to the increased goods and service offers and others want to adapt productivity to the currency they make available. Most think only in terms of a centrally managed, exclusive and forced currency and would not allow free and competitive or cooperative issue and reflux arrangements to keep the goods and service side automatically in balance with the money side, through market forces, i.e., free enterprise, free trading, free contracts, free acceptance or  refusals of currencies and free pricing for them, under full publicity for all details of issues and reflux arrangements. Under monetary despotism all these balancing attempts never succeed fully and for long and they cannot do so because almost all the automatically regulating indicators are stopped and no one is fully informed of what is happening and thus many false decisions result. Under monetary despotism the exchanges tend to be limited to those this despotism permits to occur and this often only under great difficulties, too. Despotic central banking and its forced paper standard, maintained by attempted quantity controls ("open market" sales or purchases of securities by the issuer, discount or interest rate policies, credit restrictions or grant of credits and increased spending via the note printing presses) can never sufficiently supply all the exchange media needed, everywhere and by everyone, nor keep those supplied sufficiently stable for long. It is an unbalanced and unbalancing system. It is so mad that in some instances it has led to "valorisation (i.e., the burning, plowing under or other destruction of crops) in order to artificially keep their prices up because, under monetary despotism and all too often, goods, labour and services cannot be sold at free market prices and the prices attainable under that despotic system might sometimes not even cover the costs, either, because they are too much deflated or, sometimes even because they are already inflated. (I have almost absolutely stopped getting hair cuts by a barber, many years ago, ever since their charges went above $ 1. That is not necessarily a rational response but it is an economic response.) That price controls and subsidies have sometimes misled producers to produce more, at artificially high prices, than the market really wanted at these prices, does, naturally, not help, either. Nor can stockpiling of such artificial surpluses, by governments, at the expense of the taxpayers, help in the long run. The economic indicators should never be artificially and coercively falsified - if equilibrium is to be maintained as much as is possible in human affairs. Neither the goods side nor the money side is to be artificially manipulated if trouble is to be avoided. - J. Z., 24.3.97, 30.8.02.
BANK CHARTERS, MONETARY DESPOTISM, RIGHT TO BANKING: Their (-bank charters ) effect is to give to individuals the advantage of- two legal natures - one favorable for making contracts, the other -favorable for avoiding the responsibility of them, when made. (-Spooner, Constitutional Law 21.) Spooner argues that all banking -charters are unconstitutional for they violate the natural right -of all men to make free contracts. Moreover, the legislature, in- granting special favors to some and none to others, abuses its -powers. - Charles Chiveley, introduction to Spooner, I/27.
BANK FAILURES: Those, who are all too readily and undiscriminately- prepared to accuse past and present banks of bank failures, have -usually not distinguished e.g. between 1.) Failure of the- issuing bank to redeem its notes upon demand fully and to their- nominal value in rare metals, or, nowadays, in legal tender money- or even in government insecurities.  2.) Failure to cover notes- issued and current deposits granted, by means of short term and- self-liquidating securities that represent goods produced and- already sold and on the road to consumers, 3.) Failure to provide -sufficient clearing facilities or debt foundation for all notes -to keep up a strong demand for them, that could keep them at par- until they are withdrawn in the final settlement or payment. 4.)- Failure via dishonesty, corruption or embezzlement among the -bank's officers. 5.) Failure due to malinvestments, large ones,- in unprofitable enterprises, so large in relation to the whole -bank business, that this single failure could send it broke. The- lending risk was then not sufficiently distributed, in accordance with insurance principles. 6.) Failure -through lending short term or medium term funds on long terms,- instead of only on the terms they were deposited on. 7.) Failure in- such cases to make contracts that would allow them such -investments but also allow them to postpone repayments until they -would be liquid again and in the meantime only offer to pay-out-s in bank-bonds, transferable ones, that would cover the remaining- outstanding loans. 8.) There are also various other forms , e.g. -"option clause" notes that would cover the risk of any temporary -illiquidity in normal business, when debt and credit terms and amounts do not exactly enough equal each other. 9) Failure of- other banks than the central banks of issue due to the -inflationary, deflationary or stagflationary policies of a -central banks. 10) Failure to sign up a credit insurance policy -for the ordinary risks of lending or undertaking sufficient- self-insurance precautions, alone or in association with other -banks. - J. Z., 11.4.97. - Runs on banks could have been prevented or greatly reduced in many ways. For instance, by starting a list for those who wanted to withdraw their money, in which those on the top of the list would have the top claim to monies received in payment of debts to the bank. The banks could have offered limits on the amounts of cash withdrawable immediately, without notice. Or it could have insisted on having been given sufficient notice for all withdrawals. (In the meantime, it could have accumulated the funds from repayments and by reducing further lending.) There is not fixed limit for the kinds of contractual safety clauses that could have been agreed upon. To promise something to all that could never be fulfilled if all suddenly claimed what was promised to them, was always wrong and bad business practice, even though, in normal times, they could get away with this for considerable periods. Generally speaking, banks and bankers do mostly not really comprehend the sound business of banking, or the "banking principle". Like politicians, they do engage in many wrongful and harmful practices, and, due to insufficient competition from alternative political and banking systems, they go on and on with their wrongful and harmful practices, all in accordance with all too widely spread popular prejudices, supported by supposed academic experts. Can one teach them to proceed morally and rationally in spheres where they imagine themselves to be experts? You try it! - J. Z., 5.9.02.
BANK ROBBERIES & OTHER CASH ROBBERIES: There would be less cash robberies under free banking because quantities of local cash that have thus gone astray are much harder to dispose of and at the same time much easier to trace than is, e.g., an exclusive legal tender paper currency or rare metal coin currency, that can be spent all over a large country. The same applies to forgery attempts. Moreover, freely competing currencies are likely to have only a short circulation period. Thus "hot money" cannot simply be hidden for a long period and then spent relatively safely. It would no longer be valid currency by them. If, after a robbery has occurred and the robbers got away, any strangers or locals were suddenly to spend large amounts of the stolen local currency, even if the numbers of the stolen notes were not known, they would immediately become suspects. - J. Z., 21.3.86, 16.5.97.
BANKERS & MONETARY FREEDOM OR FREE BANKING: You can no longer- bank on bankers. They will neither give you the highest interest -nor credit when you need it most, nor can they protect you from inflation or from credit restrictions and deflations, nor -from direct tax raids by governments, nor from the prying eyes of bureaucrats. They have let themselves be deprived of the business- of note issue and have let the capital market become -over-regulated. They know by now almost nothing about sound note -issue techniques nor do they show any interest in them. They help -the government to "invest" part of your savings in governmental- "insecurities", which you or your children and grandchildren then have the honour, -later on, to repay in parts, out of your taxes, or  in depreciated -currency. They have become mere agents for the government's -despotic monetary policy. You can rely on them only in one respect: They -will firmly resist, together with the government, all your- attempts to go into competition with them, opening competitive -and note-issuing banks and clearing centres, practising sound -free banking principles and all aspects of financial freedom. - J. Z., 12.7.78, -24.4.97, 8.9.02.
BANKERS OF THE OLD TYPE TO BE MOSTLY EXCLUDED FROM FREE BANKING & LAWYERS & POLITICIANS AS WELL: Their remaining privileges and the  mystique that surrounds banking still, in all too many heads, including those of most bankers and central bankers and economists, has allowed some or even many ignorant, stupid, prejudiced, careless and irresponsible bankers to get away with all too much, at other people's expense, while continuing to enjoy prestige, high earnings and high retirement benefits, no matter how many people they harmed or wronged. - Some people got even so disgusted with the false notions that most bankers entertain on bank note issues that they proposed that future note issuing centres should explicitly exclude anyone who had previously occupied any executive position in the banking world, unless they could prove that they were among the few exceptions in this business. The same might be said about lawyers and many of the brokers of our times. - That politicians should be totally excluded from this business seem self-evident, at least to me. No kind of confidence trickster, demagogue or power addict is suitable for it, while he persists in this kind of career and at least until he has been completely rehabilitated, as e .g., Auberon Herbert was. - I do know that there are SOME honest lawyers around - but what do they know about monetary freedom principles and practices and what opposition have they ever shown to monetary despotism? - If there are such exceptional people among them then they should not be kept out. - The free banking business, like the computing business, should be largely left to its fans, not to its enemies or disinterested, ignorant or prejudices people or those with a looter mentality. Luckily, the ones who are already in the business of providing consumer goods and services are also, through their local associations, the most suitable among all the potential issuers under monetary freedom and the ones who, apart from the unemployed, have the greatest possible interest in gaining and enjoying the benefits of monetary freedom. They would not need any politicians or lawyers- except in defence against the oppressive actions of other politicians and lawyers.  - J. Z., 15.5.97.
BANKERS, CREDIT & MORAL CHARACTER: Bankers perform the function- of the commercial virtues by demonstrating and advancing the -pecuniary value of a good moral character. - Henry Meulen, THE -INDIVIDUALIST, 10/75. - With their demand for securities or -guarantors for loans, governmental guarantees and deposit -insurance, bankers have either betted only on a sure thing or- have become so careless to lend even to despotic foreign governments, not only some wasteful and inefficient large private corporations. Their own government would not allow them to fail, regardless of the huge number of bad debts they managed to "expertly" acquire. They do no- longer have to be good judges of business opportunities or of good- moral character. A successful fraud was a often a better investment for -them, at least temporarily, even if, finally, he cheated the bank itself. Personal loans have -become only a very small fraction of the total loan accounts. In judging their security the assessors of personal loan- companies were, for many decades and probably still, much more competent. Bankers also refused the mini-development loans now -becoming popular in underdeveloped countries, although they have- a very low risk. The student loans, while self-administered, had- also a better chance of being repaid than most bank loans had and- have. - The number of bankers who really understood the note -issue business and who conducted their deposit and savings -accounts quite honestly has always been rather small. They were -mostly more gamblers and high risk taking speculators than sound- investors, at the expense of their note holders, depositors - or -the taxpayers. - The insistence of bankers on securities for- loans has been satirised by the remark: "Bankers lend money only -to those who can prove that they do not need it". - Moreover, the -fact that a special insurance is required for cashiers does also -seem to indicate that those who employ them are not good in- assessing their moral characters, either. - And how many bankers -do you know who have anything sensible to say on inflation,- deflation, stagflation, legal tender, the money monopoly,- devaluation or re-valuation? - Mostly the good reputation of bankers is as unearned as that of politicians is. - J. Z., 18. 4.-97.
BANKING PRINCIPLE: For me it is hard to comprehend how long two -(or more) different scientific schools of thought can co-exist, -side by side, without their differences becoming settled, or,- worse still, how representatives of especially the ruling school- of thought can simply ignore the facts and arguments advanced by- their critics, as the currency school did, largely, versus the- banking school and as is still being done today by various groups of "gold bugs" or "100% dollars". - Admittedly, much of the thinking of the free banking -school was flawed, too. E.g., many of its members did, unnecessarily and without- sufficient justification, adopt the obligation for rare metal convertibility for the issuer, although the banking principle or the real bills- doctrine indicated already the real cover involved as the only- cover required. - It is often not just one or two different views- that are mostly or habitually ignored but sometimes hundreds, if- not thousands. E.g., there are hundreds of different crisis -theories and types of socialism. Nevertheless, most write on- crises and socialism as if only their own favourite example of -them did exist  and were possible or worth talking and writing- about. How often have primitive notions on trust or confidence in currencies, as one of their basic requirements, been- thoughtlessly repeated, without mentioning the reflux and clearing foundation that is involved in short-term turnover -loans, which do not have to be covered by gold stocks at all but -are, like all debts and credits, clearable. There remain so many -unsettled questions among freedom lovers, e.g. limited- governments vs. anarchism, territorialism vs. exterritorialism, -abortion vs. right to life, mercenary defence vs. militia- defence, nuclear weapons strength and deterrence, vs. nuclear -weakness and all the possible failures of nuclear deterrence. The -money, currency, credit, clearing and value standard discussion -is full of arguments still unsettled by libertarians and- anarchists.  - J. Z., 31.7.82, 24.4.97. - It is high time to tackle all these differences of opinion fully and systematically and draw their balance sheets. -  Our very survival may depend upon it. - J. Z., 8.9.02.
BANKNOTES AS "CUT UP" REAL OR SOUND COMMERCIAL BILLS FOR GOODS ALREADY -PRODUCED & SOLD & ON THEIR ROAD TO THE CONSUMERS: Just -because SOME paper claims can in bill discounting be exchanged -into bills or banknotes suitable for temporary and local -circulation - and a short term later be withdrawn from -circulation, in payment for the real bills they were issued upon, -and then, preferably cancelled, rather than issued again in new- transactions (thus facilitating the control of the circulation,- issues and their reflux, e.g. by numbering and issues of series-), does not mean that ANY kind of paper claim can be thus and successfully discounted, especially not mere financial bills,- speculative and long term securities, or notes representing -speculatively warehoused commodities, not available on the -present market. Only goods, services and labour ready or very- soon ready for sale, can give a real and immediate purchasing -power to any kind of currency. Without it no currency is more -than a speculative security certificate that may or may not be -ultimately redeemed, one day, with interest, or that may lose its- value fast. No one is obliged to redeem it with his ready for -sale goods, services and labour - although at any time some fools -or speculators can probably be found to accept some such notes- for a while. A free market will not value them as currency at all or not for long and not at par. Seemingly, many issues had no -other foundation than long term securities or assets - because -the other foundations were overlooked or not reported. In these -cases the own capital of the bank or the private "securities" or- "government insecurities" deposited, were nothing but an ultimate -guaranty or insurance funds in case the currency had no other and sounder -foundation and did fail.  Especially their other debt, credit and -clearing foundations were all too often overlooked, although- without them all banks would have immediately failed, i.e. would- have been driven into bankruptcy and closure. That sound money is- merely a clearing certificate and does need no other value -than the acceptance or clearing readiness of its issuers, acceptors and users, -for the payments of all their debts and the receipt of all debts -owed to them, is even today not yet generally seen. Only -Professor Heinrich Rittershausen has based his unfinished work on -monetary theory upon this insight. And it is hinted at or implied- in all the writings of Ulrich von Beckerath and the monetary- writings of Dr. Walter Zander.
BANKNOTES, CURRENCY, COVER, REDEEMABILITY, CONVERTIBILITY INTO GOODS & SERVICES, AS OPPOSED TO CONVERTIBILITY OR BACKING BY SECURITIES, PRIVATE ONES OR EVEN GOVERNMENT "INSECURITIES": Banknotes and other exchange media should mainly represent the consumer goods and services that are already produced and offered for sale now. To that extent they should be merely "cut up" or discounted "real bills" or sound commercial bills or equivalent securities. They should not represent "cut up" or discounted capital assets, not wanted by most consumers at all or right now, or not to the extent that they are offered. The capital values, offered as "backing", might also be merely speculative. They might, in many instances, not even be ready for sale on the capital market but only may become ready for sale some time in the medium or long future. And they do not offer ready for sale consumer goods and services now, in form of ready or current claims against them. In some instance, they might be warehouse certificates, representing goods or mere raw materials, still to be processed into wanted products, that are currently not offered on the market at all but, rather, withheld from it, in the hope of higher future prices. Thus, instead of increasing the supply of wanted consumer goods and services, the backing for such currency is speculative, not ready for consumption but rather withheld from production or consumption. And yet the issuers of such "currency" believe that on a competitive currency market such exchange media could be kept at par without anyone being obliged to deliver any wanted goods or services at market prices for them. Somehow the notion of a monopoly and legal tender currency seems to have crept in, that would force the providers of goods and services to accept even such a badly founded currency, without sufficient reflux, if they want to engage in monetary exchanges at all. - J. Z.,9.11.88, 15.5.97.
BANKNOTES: How many wrong or only partly correct theories exist- on their origin, nature and function? See BANKING THEORIES & FREE- BANKING THEORIES, BANKING PRINCIPLE, REAL BILLS DOCTRINE, -CURRENCY PRINCIPLE. - I hold that all of them should be listed- and either proven or refuted. The same terms have all too often -different meanings for the banking traditions in different- countries and for different authors. Whenever such terms are used -then the origin or definer ought, perhaps, to be included in- brackets or the different definitions should be offered in a -numbered list and. whenever the term is used, then the meaning should- be indicated by its number being added in a bracket. - I hold- with Ulrich von Beckerath that banknotes should mainly represent -the consumer goods and services offered for sale now, within their private, -voluntaristic and competitive payment circles or payment- communities. Therefore, no "currency" should be issued that- merely represent "cut-up" medium or long term securities or- commodity or real estate capital values, whose medium or long- term value is merely speculative and whose equivalent is anyhow- not immediately available in form of ready for sale consumer goods and services and labour, at least not by the issuers of- such "asset currencies". Why should the issuers of capital- securities be allowed to thus dispose of goods, services and -labour of others, without the consent of the owners or providers- of these goods, services or labour? And why should these -providers accept such "currencies", when they are not prepared to -invest in the capital market?  There is, indeed, room for small- and standardised shares, bonds and other securities, but only in- the capital market, not in the currency market. The two should be kept quite apart, in theory and in practice. A mortgage bond or a- share does not have any immediate purchasing power. It does not- oblige any storekeeper or department store or shopping centre, -bus company, petrol station etc. to accept it, unless such- acceptance is contractually provided for. And then these -readiness to accept declarations would form the real and -immediate cover or foundation or reflux option for such -banknotes. But why should such providers depend upon others -supplying them with notes - when they could issue them -themselves? - Free after MFNL&MF 3/4, Feb. 89, & 8.4.97.
BANKRUPTCY AVOIDANCE VIA CLEARING OPTIONS: Enterprises that are- still basically sound but merely have a cash flow problem, under -conditions of monetary despotism, with its deflations, inflations- and stagflations, depressions, recessions and credit- restrictions, should be set free to offer, in settlement of their -debts, clearing certificates, in easily transferable money- denominations, that entitle the bearer to obtain from the debtor -his goods and services at par. Debtors should also be at liberty -to set up a common clearing house for this purpose, mutually guaranteeing their repayments and they should be free to offer -these certificates at a discount, that is attractive to their -creditors, while these certificates are not accepted at par -in general circulation. - With that liberty most of these debtors- would not have got into their precarious cash flow situation in- the first place. But once in it, they could trade themselves out -of it. Moreover, their creditors could get the full value of -their credits repaid to them, even if that required a larger- quantity of somewhat discounted clearing certificates. The right -of creditors to demand legal tender cash (or, as formerly, silver or gold coins ) in -payment, although that was not especially agreed upon in private contracts, should be abolished. All debtors and creditors should- be set free to enable them to pay and be paid as far as is -humanly and economically and monetarily possible, via clearing- options. If we consider that money itself is never the ultimate- objective but that it is merely a means to an end and that, with the curtain of the physical appearance of exchange media removed, in a thought-experiment, then not only the large number of non-cash transactions that do take place, invisibly for most people, but also the much smaller sums of cash transactions to merely achieve a mutual exchange for goods, services and labour for other goods, -services and labour. Only some limited time delays are involved in these exchanges. (Exchanges over longer periods are involved when some of the goods are capital values and their capital securities.) ANYTHING that facilitates this process,- through the technique of monetary exchanges or through clearing -exchanges or any other non-cash payment alternative, that can- satisfy debtors and creditors alike and that makes it easier to- satisfy both of them, should be set completely free. It would then become -obvious that, to the extent that an unemployed, a tradesman or- professional or a shopkeeper, could put into temporary -circulation his own notes, or clearing certificates or electronically accounted clearing credits, buying with them his requirements, he -would automatically, although indirectly, supply himself with- work or sales. His spending would cause his earnings, instead of-, as today, his spending would require first that he obtain scarce and- exclusive currency for it, somehow, in a considerable struggle for them, by offering his goods and services in -a market for such exchange media that is restricted through the coercive and exclusive- currency of monetary despotism. - J. Z., n.d. & 30.4.97.
BANKRUPTCY LAWS: "Would BANKRUPTCY LAWS be permissible in a -libertarian legal system? Clearly not, for bankruptcy laws compel- the discharge of a debtor's voluntarily contracted debts, and- thereby invade the property rights of the creditors. The debtor- who refuses to pay his debt has stolen the property of the -creditor. If the debtor is able to pay but conceals his assets, -then his clear act of theft is compounded by fraud. But if the -defaulting debtor is not able to pay, he has STILL stolen the -property of the creditor by not making his agreed-upon delivery of the creditor's property. The function of the legal system- should then be to enforce payment upon the debtor through, e.g.,- forced attachment of the debtor's future income for the debt -plus the damages and interest on the continuing debt. Bankruptcy- laws, which discharge the debt in defiance of the property rights- of the creditor, virtually confer a license to steal upon the- debtor. In the pre-modern era, the defaulting debtor was -generally treated as a thief and forced to pay as he acquired -income. Doubtless, the penalty of imprisonment went far beyond -proportional punishment and hence was excessive;" (even when he was a fraudulent debtor and cheated people for millions? - J. Z.)- "but at least the old legal ways placed responsibility where it -belonged : on the debtor to fulfil his contractual obligations -and to make the transfer of the property owed to the- creditor-owner. One historian of American bankruptcy law, though a - supporter of these laws, has conceded that they trample on the -property rights of the creditors." - Murray N. Rothbard, The- Ethics of Liberty, 142. - Here is Rothbard at his best, in -exposing a wrong. Alas, he does not conclude that the willing- debtor ought to be enabled, as far as possible, to clear his debt by clearing, in the interest of the debtor and the creditor alike, even -if, for this purpose, he could offer nothing but his own monetised IOU's,- based upon his own continued goods and service offers and even if -these would suffer a considerable discount, so that he would have -to offer correspondingly more of them to make up the total debt, accounted in a sound value standard. - Rothbard would be likely to- condemn such issues as mere fraudulent "fiat money" issues, even- if such a payment were acceptable to the creditor or to an- arbitrator that debtor and creditor had agreed upon. Thus,- Rothbard, instead of making debt settlement easier via the right -to clearing debts, would make the debt settlement harder to -impossible to achieve, by insisting upon debt payment only in -gold metal or 100% gold-metal-covered gold certificates. These the debtors are often -unable to obtain at all or in the required quantities and whenever needed and that -would apply also to his own debtors. Thus the debt settlement is -prevented rather than promoted. (To a large extent the bankruptcy laws were passed in recognition of such facts, such payment difficulties, even for quite honest and efficient debtors. - J. Z., 8.902.) Indeed, Rothbard assumes that, in- case of a shortage of gold, all prices, expressed in the exclusive -gold currency, would immediately fall correspondingly, so that- gold payments would continue to be as easy as before, due to the fallen gold- prices. Here he overlooks the often pointed out "stickiness" of -prices and wages and the fact that in prior centuries and in some respects even in our century, barter transactions still persisted- because gold prices never fell far enough to mediate all- exchanges monetarily. Moreover, he overlooked, like most other- economists, the different psychological effect of falling prices- vs. fallen prices upon potential buyers who do have some money -reserves which they do not have to spend immediately to survive. Falling prices- discourage buyers. Only fallen prices encourage them. Thus- falling prices lead to further falling prices, preventing for a-long time the price adaptation that Rothbard expected and predicted. In the meantime millions of unemployed and- ten-thousands of bankrupt employers ask themselves: How did we -get into this? Has Rothbard any sound advice to offer to use? All- he would tell us is: Reduce your wages and prices further. He -wants to confine our exchanges to his favourite exclusive and- forced currency, which we are short of, precisely at a time when- there is an abundance of real cover: consumer goods and- services, ready for sale, for alternative optional and market--rated currencies of our own, which we might even, to do ourselves- and Rothbard a favour, denominate in gold weight units as their -value standards and would readily accept as if they were- corresponding gold coins. But such self-help steps would be- condemned as fraudulent by Rothbard and as an unjustified- "expansion of fiat money". - He was a radical and helpful thinker, -in many respects, but not in all. Regarding money, he remained a -monopolist by prescribing "only gold" (or 100% gold covered certificates) instead of "only government- paper money". - In other words, Rothbard's ruling on bankruptcy- and on an exclusive gold currency (however competitively- supplied), would assure more bankruptcies and would not help- debtors and creditors to get the remaining debts settled, unless- they can manage to settle them in gold metal or 100% covered gold--metal certificates. - Nor does Rothbard offer clearing as a- solution. Mutual debts that can be cancelled, cleared or settled, -obviously do not require, for this kind of non-cash payment, any- gold coins or gold certificates, except for the balances -remaining. And the settlement of these can be postponed. - The clearing might well use a gold weight unit as a standard of- value for accounting purposes.  But that was not considered by- Rothbard or would not have satisfied him. He went on insisting on -gold coin or 100% covered gold certificate payments. - Or did I miss some of his writings? Did he anywhere concede the -possibility of non-cash gold value payments (using all kinds of -other means of exchange at their gold weight market rating) in -settlement of debts expressed in gold weight units? Sometimes- e.g., custom duties were so fixed and so paid. - Did he report any -complaints by debtors and creditors about such gold weight unit- accounting and clearing and payment transactions that made the -means of payment used optional? - He fruitfully pondered most- aspects of liberty but did not spend sufficient time and thought-energy- on this one. -  J. Z., 25.4.97
BANKRUPTCY RULES, See: FUTURES DEALINGS WITH CASH. See: -CLEARING.
BANKS & THEIR FEES & INTEREST PAYMENTS: You may earn the highest bank returns if you can manage no longer to go to the banks or to return to them. - More and more alternative payment methods are coming up. E. g., postal money orders are now sometimes cheaper than bank transfers. They are also not subject to taxes, like your bank deposits. Some traders, advertising on TV, allow you now to pay them through your telephone bills. Cash payments still give you the chance to arrange for discounts in all larger purchases. Unless you can establish your own or freely choose among free banks of issue and investments, you are often advised to avoid them if you want to save money. Alas, they have become paymasters for wages and salaries, which puts all too many funds at their disposal, for which they often pay an interest below the inflation rate. Your money in the bank is no longer safe. To some extent it has become the bank's money - and that of the tax department. Draw your own conclusions from this. Gain your independence from them. Use them only if you must. Safe as a bank has become a misnomer. They do not even guard themselves sufficiently against bank robbers. Nor do they offer you banking secrecy. They report to the tax department - and to who knows else. - J. Z., 11.11.92, 16.5.97.
BANKS OF ISSUE, NOTE-ISSUING BANKS: DO THEY NEED CAPITAL? Banks of issue need sense not size, sound issue techniques, not capital, sound value standards, and competition with other banks of issue, not government guaranties, self-management, not government supervision and controls. - J. Z., J. Z., 4.4.89,16.5.97.
BANKS UNDER MONETARY DESPOTISM: Banks today are not free and competitive, private or cooperative enterprises but, largely, from the central bank to the smallest bank branch at the corner, government controlled, regulated and mismanage institutions, even though they remain formally in private hands. Just consider the flood of laws and regulations on them. The "economy" of fascism and totalitarian communism should not be equated with that of a free enterprise and free exchange or capitalistic or market economy. Nevertheless, for all the mistakes of government banking, currency and credit policies, forced upon all, "capitalism" and the "market economy" and the "profit motive" and "private property" are usually blamed, even in a sphere where they do least of all exist. - J. Z., 28.7.93, 24.5.97. - See: CENTRAL BANKING, MONETARY POLICY, CURRENCY POLICY, CREDIT REGULATION.
BANKS, CREDIT OR LOAN POLICY & THEIR DEMAND FOR SECURITY: A- Banker is a fellow who lends his umbrella when the sun is shining- and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. - Mark Twain,- 1835-1910.
BANKS: Alternative names: Debt-shops. - Ezra Heywood, Hard-Cash, 7.
BANKS: Apart from the Central Bank all banks are now reduced to- being merely dealers in the nationalised exchange medium and its -forced paper "standard". Even in these limited dealings they are -highly regulated. Likewise, in their options to issue and deal- with capital securities. They are mere shadows of free banks. But, -at the same time, they are privileged banks, insofar as entry into -the business of banking is also highly restricted by legislation -and governmental compulsory licensing schemes. They and the note- acceptors are kept in a monetary kindergarten and thus are kept- ignorant and irresponsible in monetary matters. - J. Z., 4.9.86,- 29.4.97.
BANKS: Some banks really lock your money away from you. I- noticed in Los Angeles, near Union Station, a branch of the Bank- of America. It is only open on 3 week days and then only from- 11.30am to 2.30pm, at least that was its schedule indicated on 20 -Dec. 1990. And this in a country where many shops, e.g. photocopy- shops, are open 24 hours a day! - J. Z., 16.4.97.
BARTER IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR FREE CLEARING & FREE MONETARY -EXCHANGES: Only free clearing and full monetary freedom can -fully employ all people willing to work, at their highest -capacity and skills and can make them prosperous and independent.- - J. Z., 27.7.83, 17.4.97.
BARTER, MONEY & CLEARING: Any money transaction is essentially- an anonymous and multilateral barter or clearing transactions,- one spanning time and distance, in which goods, services and labour -are exchanged for goods, services and labour. - Any attempts to -issue monies that are not based such turnovers are condemned to failures. But debts that are shortly due can keep money issues -based upon them at par with their nominal value, so that they, -too, are considered as acceptable in payment for daily wanted- consumer goods and services. Both, the goods and service cover- and the short term debt foundation, do establish a strong demand -or "reflux" for the money involved, that keeps it at par with its- nominal value expressed in some or the other value standard. For -money issued upon long-term assets there exists no strong enough demand or -reflux right away and continuously. It will occur only once that debt is soon due. -In the meantime, no supplier of daily wanted goods and services- is obliged to accept it, if he has not issued it. - J. Z.,-5.12.90, 16.4.97.
BECKERATH, ULRICH von, 1882 -1969. See: ACADEMIC WRITINGS ON- MONETARY FREEDOM IN RECENT YEARS. See also his numerous writings, listed in my main website: www.acenet.com.au/~jzube
BECKERATH, ULRICH VON, 1882-1969, See: GERMAN SCHOOL ON MONEY. See the main literature list of LMP.
BECKERATH, ULRICH von, 1882-1969. From ca. 1913 onwards, possibly -already from 1908, he has, more thoroughly than anyone else that I- ever heard of, knew or read about, explored and described the -monetary freedom options. Alas, most of his correspondence before- 1943 has been lost with his library in an air raid on Berlin. -Recipients of his letters and papers from before that time, who- preserved them, should make themselves known to me. I would like -to microfiche his whole correspondence, to the extent that it- is or becomes available to me. - J. Z., 9.4.97.
BECKERATH, ULRICH von, Monetary Freedom teachings. See e.g.: -Aphorisms on the money problem, 1932, in BANKWISSENSCHAFT. Also -in PP 587/588.
BECKERATH, ULRICH von, See: ECONOMIC & HUMAN RIGHTS ASPECTS -IGNORED BY MOST MODERN AUTHORS.
BELIEF SYSTEMS ON MONEY: There are thousands of different- articles of faith and prejudice and unfounded assumptions and -assertions, fallacies and false arguments on money. Most are as -false or misleading as the religious ones. Only a systematic and- an alphabetical register of all of them, together with their best -refutations so far out, could show us the ways out of this -labyrinth or avalanche. So far it has not yet been compiled and- all too few people have shown any interest in such a project. - -J. Z., 18.7.96, 20.3.97.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MONETARY FREEDOM WRITINGS. Draft in PP 1022. Ask- for further contributions and translations. Ask for permissions -to reproduce still copyrighted material at least on microfiche, floppy disks and CD-ROMs & websites.
BILL DISCOUNT, SOUND COMMERCIAL BILLS VS. UNSOUND "FINANCIAL" BILLS, REAL BILLS DOCTRINE, BANKING PRINCIPLE, CIRCULATION CIRCLES, LEGAL & JURIDICAL "RIGHT" OF CREDITORS TO DEMAND PAYMENT IN RARE METALS OR OTHER CASH: For a long time the payment of sound commercial bills, was ultimately enforceable in gold or silver coins, although, in most cases they were rather settled by clearing or payment in bank notes for which they had become the common basis for issues. Banknotes, under the real bills doctrine or banking principle are nothing but cut-up sound commercial bills, in standardized, easily recognizable and convenient denominations, that can circulate easier than the commercial bills themselves (which are largely acceptable only among merchants and bankers) and these small and even bills are finally used to redeem them. For all too long it was ignored that the right of creditors to have commercial bills redeemed in gold is quite unnecessary to preserve their value and that of the bank notes issued upon them. Their redeemability in banknotes and the short term debts that are involved, are quite sufficient to assure a corresponding reflux of banknotes from the short term debtors of the commercial bills. The bills were usually issued by wholesalers to employers, their suppliers, in payment for goods already produced and sold to them and on the road to the retailers. The employers, paid by the wholesalers with commercial bills, got these bills discounted into banknotes at a bank of issue. With these notes they paid their workers, suppliers and profits and then the notes streamed to the shops for goods and services and from them to their suppliers, largely the wholesalers, who redeemed their bills with the notes thus received. The whole is easier to describe and comprehend graphically, than in words. I have done that in PEACE PLANS 41. Still better charts of this payment circle would be welcomed by me. The right of creditors to demand payment in rare metals or rare legal tender paper money has done much more harm than good and has only secured recurrent payment crises. That right should be confined to quite optional contracts and even then, seeing that dealings in futures and their risks are involved, withdrawal premiums for the withdrawal from such obligations should also be agreed upon. Only then will the risk of such claims be reduced to acceptable proportions. It this risk remains quite unrestricted by withdrawal premiums and competition from suppliers of alternative exchange media and value standards, then it can lead to the rapid and prolonged collapse of the non-cash transactions, all dependent upon a minimum but quite regular and always available supply of cash. If cash supply sinks below this minimum, then numerous non-cash transactions are no longer possible and lead thus to a much larger demand for cash and this precisely when cash is already in short supply. Then some cash can only be attained by postponing the payment of bills and by dismissing workers and by ruthlessly collecting debts, payable in cash, even if that leads to the bankruptcy of the debtors and to emergency sales prices. Only the quite competitive supply of cash, in all its possible and desired forms, can prevent and end such money shortages, which, by the way, also lead to a collapse of the prices of capital securities because fewer shares etc. are bought and enterprises that can no longer easily sell their goods and services are reduced in their market values and cannot pay dividends or interest or only much less. Thus the right to demand rare metals or other exclusive currency from a debtor must be replaced, in the general economy (apart from some payment communities which religiously adhere