Bernard Pyron
I want to show from Scripture that the American and International financial elite, as part of the Babylon of prophecy, are under the
influence of dark spiritual forces. The financial elite - the bankers
and others within that elite - are also the ruling elite to a great
extent. This is because money is very important for the construct in prophecy called Babylon, which is also the government beast of
Revelation 13: 1-2. Government and the huge corporations use vast
amounts of money
to stay in business as the Babylon of prophecy. Usury, or extracting
interest on money loaned into circulation, is a vital part of the
money system of the Beast of Babylon. By usury, the financial elite
create and keep their monetary power and usury helps to keep most of
the people relatively poor.
Since ancient historical Babylon, the lending of money to the common
people by the rich to be paid back with interest has been a method
used by the financial elite to rule over and sometimes destroy the
middle classes. Lending money at interest is called usury in the
Bible. Exodus 22: 25 says "If thou lend money to any of my people that
is poor by thee, thou shall not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt
thou say upon him usury."
Usury has been a way for the rich families in history to increase
their wealth and power. At the international level, usury has been
used to enslave people and nations, to bring them to pile up so much
debt to the Big Bankers that the common people or Third World nations
can never pay it off. The people and nations under such heavy debt
may lose their resources to the financial elite.
But God says in Exodus 22: 12-31 "...thou hast taken usury and
increase, and thou has greedily gained of thy neighbors by
extortion...Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them..."
Credit card banks have "greedily gained" money from naive card
holders, and lured millions of Americans into spending more than they
earn. The credit card holders put money into circulation, but many
are faced with debts to the Credit Card Banks they can't pay off. See
www.feedthepig.org
The accumulation of large amounts of money is necessary for capitalist
investment. But the world has allowed corporations to gather up so
much money and power that some the corporations themselves are more
powerful than smaller countries. The large international corporations
have massed large amounts of money to create and maintain their
international power. Even the Christian Churches require a lot of
money to operate as institutions devoted to this physical and earthy
realm, especially the ones with many hundreds or thousands of members.
Note also that the churches have now become essentially corporations
and are like the government and the corporations. Almost all
Christian Churches in the U. S. are incorporated as tax free 502C(3)
institutions under the federal Internal Revenue Service, which in the
past did not try to control what was taught in the churches, but have
shown instances of this control in the last few years.
Money can be used to gain power. The super rich, called the rich men
of the earth in Revelation 6: 15-16, make up the international ruling
elite who often try to avoid making their power evident to
the mass of people. Rich people rely on their money to solve most of
their problems. And very few really rich people become Christians,
though a few may pretend to be.
Christ says in Luke 16: 13 "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Mammon
is money personified as a false god. The god of money gives the rich
their assurance of being better than others. The doctrine called
"social Darwinism" teaches that the rich have the right to rule over
the people by virtue of their financial power and
ability to keep that power. "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the
borrower is servant to the lender (Proverbs 22: 7)." Proverbs 18: 11
says "The rich man's wealth is his strong city, and as a high wall in
his own conceit."
Large amounts of money can also be used to create mercenary armies,
which have been employed by totalitarian governments in history. The
United States won the Revolutionary War against
both English regular Redcoat soldiers and mercenaries hired by
England to fight the American patriots. So we are a nation that has
from our beginning been against using mercenary armies to fight our
wars and to operate on our soil.
Eric Prince is a multimillionaire as the son of Edgar D. Prince
(1931-1995) who owned Prince Automotive. The younger Prince is also a
former Navy Seal, grew up in a Dutch Calvinist family in western
Michigan, joined the Catholic Church and has ties to Protestant
dispensational evangelical organizations like Family Research Council
with Gary Bauer, which his billionaire father funded. Prince founded
the Blackwater mercenary army which has large contracts with the Bush
regime to operate in Iraq.
On http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? Jeremy Scahill who wrote
the book,Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary
Army writes that "it's the most powerful
mercenary firm in the world. It has 20,000 soldiers on the ready, the
world's largest private military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft
including helicopter gunships. It's become nothing short of the
Praetorian Guard for the Bush administration's so-called global war on
terror. And it's headed by a very rightwing Christian activist,
ex-Navy Seal named Erik Prince, whose family was one of the major
bankrollers of the Republican Revolution of the 1990s. He, himself,is
a significant funder of President Bush and his allies."
Perhaps a Christian dominionist which is a Christian supremacist, Eric
Prince is allied with the
current Neocon-Bush regime. Christian supremacists want to take over
the world for Christianity - but they do not understand that Christ's
kingdom is not of this physical world. They tend to operate in the
flesh and under the harsh Old Covenant, even while claiming to be
Christians. Some are concerned that Prince's
mercenary army will be used against Americans.
While Blackwater is supposedly only engaged in support roles in Iraq,
on www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060407J.shtml they say "Sunday 03 June
2007 Armed units from the private security firm Blackwater USA opened
fire in Baghdad streets twice in two days last week. It triggered a
standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi forces, a reminder
that the war in Iraq may be remembered mostly in our history books for
empowering and building America's first modern mercenary army."
Units of Blackwater mercenaries looking sinister dressed in black also
patrolled the streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of
hurricane Katrina.
In the Bible there is an historical government called Babylon -
and also a prophecy about a concept identified as Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar was the king of the historical Babylonian Empire during
the time of the captivity of the nation of Judah by that empire.
King Nebuchadnezzar's dream interpreted in Daniel 2 lays out the
succession of four ancient governments or empires. Daniel 2: 37-38
says "Thou, o king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath
given thee a kingdom, power, and strength and glory. Thou art this
head of gold." Daniel 2: 39-40 interprets the silver, brass and iron
parts of the statue in the dream as being three kingdoms or
governments that were to follow the Babylonian Empire. These three
following empires were those of Persia, Greece and Rome.
The Daniel 7 dream image of the lion, the bear and the leopard and a
fourth dreadful beast are also governments. Because the
lion, the bear and the leopard appear in Revelation 13: 2 and are said
to be like this First Beast that rises up out of the sea, the lion,
the bear and the leopard are governments of contemporary times. The
First Beast that rises up
out of the sea has a correlation with Leviathan in Job 41: 1, Psalm
74: 14 and Isaiah 27: 1 since Leviathan is a powerful sea monster,
which represents Lucifer or Satan. But the First Beast as a
government is not limited in meaning to Satan. Its just that Satan,
called the dragon in Revelation 13: 2, inspires this Beast.
In Job 40: 15 there is a similar land monster, called Behemoth, who
corresponds to the Second Beast that
rises up out of the earth in Revelation 13: 11-18. The Second Beast
is often called the False Prophet, and it is he or
what he represents that causes people to make an image to and
worship the government beast, and causes people to receive the mark of the beast.
Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of a huge tree in the midst of the earth that
reached into heaven. In Daniel 4: 12 "...the fowels of the heaven
dwelt in the boughs thereof..." In his interpretation of the king's
dream Daniel said "It is thou, o king, that art grown and become
strong: for thy greatness is grown and reached unto heaven, and thy
dominion to the end of the earth (Daniel 4: 22)."
The Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar was important in history. But
it did not reach to the end of the earth. Daniel must be referring to
the Babylon of prophecy found in Isaiah 47, Jeremiah 50 and 51 and in
Revelation 17 and 18.
The metaphor of the birds in the huge tree Nebuchadnezzar dream about
that is significant to understand. What do the birds
in the tree of Babylon represent?
Generally in the Bible a metaphor will have a consistent meaning in
different books. In Luke 8: 5, 12 "A sower went out to sow his seed:
and as he sowed, some fell on the way side; and it was
trodden down, and the fowels of the air devoured it." Jesus explains
this parable as follows: "Those by the way side are they
that hear: then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of
their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved." Here the fowels
of the air - birds - represent the devil and his fallen angels.
In Revelation 18: 2, about the Babylon of end time prophecy, an angel
"...cried mightily with a strong voice, Babylon the great is fallen,
and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul
spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."
Devils, or demon spirits, foul spirits, and hateful and unclean birds
are all the same thing. The Babylon of prophecy, which includes
the financial elite, the big bankers, is in Revelation 18: 2 said
to be a cage of every unclean and hateful bird, which represents
evil spirits. In Luke 5: 8, 12 birds represent Satan or his fallen
angels who take away the Gospel of Christ, or cause those who hear it
not to believe.
Zephaniah 2: 14 also uses birds as metaphors for evil or fallen
angels. This Scripture is part of God's judgment on backsliding
Israel. Zephaniah 2: 10-11 says "This shall they have for their
pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against
the people of the LORD of hosts. The LORD will be terrible unto them:
for he will famish all the gods of the earth; and men shall worship
him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the heathen."
So, in this context of judgment by the Lord on evil, Zephaniah 2: 14
says " And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts
of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the
upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation
shall be in the thresholds: for he shall uncover the cedar work."
Cormorant and Bittern are birds who here represent evil, and are
associated with desolation.
Isaiah 34: 11-15 also uses cormorant and bittern, as birds, plus owls
and wild beasts to stand for evil, dark spiritual forces as fallen
angels. This text is about God's judgment on evil. Verse 2 says "For
the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury upon all
their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them
to the slaughter."
Then, Isaiah 34: 11, 13,-15 says "But the cormorant and the bittern
shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and he
shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of
emptiness...And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and
brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of
dragons, and a court for owls.
The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of
the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl
also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. There
shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather
under her shadow: there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one
with her mate."
Cormorants, bitterns, ravens, nettles and brambles, dragons, owls,
wild beasts of the desert, satyrs and vultures all are metaphoric
in Isaiah 34 for evil and evil spirits. The vultures of verse 15
might be correlated with the vultures (translated as eagles in the
King James) of Matthew 24: 28 and Luke 17: 37, passages that deal with
those taken and killed during the Trumpet Judgments. If so, then the
"great owl" in Isaiah 34: 15 may refer to something more specific
than just evil or fallen angels. The Great Owl may be metaphoric for
the Judas Iscariot types of Revelation 9: 2-6 who torment the
Multitude of Christians who the Pharisee types will cause to be jailed
and killed.
Its interesting that some of the ruling elite meet every July at
Bohemian Grove north of San Francisco to take part in activities
which include a ceremony of perhaps mock sacrifice of "Care" by a
great stone owl. The owl represents dark spiritual forces.
In Zechariah 5: 5-11 there is a metaphoric teaching about
money, and by implication about those rich men who are the money masters.
"Then the angel that talked with me went forth, and said unto me, Lift
up now thine eyes, and see what is this that goeth forth. 6 And I
said, What [is] it? And he said, This [is] an ephah that goeth forth.
He said moreover, This [is] their resemblance through all the earth.
7 And, behold, there was lifted up a talent of lead: and this [is] a
woman that sitteth in the midst of the ephah. {talent: or, weighty
piece} 8 And he said, This [is] wickedness. And he cast it into the
midst of the ephah; and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth
thereof. 9 Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold,
there came out two women, and the wind [was] in their wings; for they
had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the ephah
between the earth and the heaven. 10 Then said I to the angel that
talked with me, Whither do these bear the ephah? 11 And he said unto
me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar: and it shall be
established, and set there upon her own base."
A talent, or money, is associated with Babylon. The land of Shinar
where the ephah with money is taken is Babylon. Verse 8
says that this is wickedness. Money is involved in wickedness.
Remember the merchants of Babylon in Revelation 18: 11, 18: 15 and 18:
23? They are the world traders of the concept of prophecy called
Babylon who buy and sell for money.
The money masters - the financial elite - are said
to be under the influence of evil in the Bible.
Monday, July 23, 2007
MORAL LAW AGAINST USURY IN THE BIBLE
THE USURIOUS SPIRIT:
Moral Law Against Usury In the Bible
Bernard Pyron
In the law given to Moses by God there are Scriptures that
protect people who do not have a great deal of wealth from being
cheated out of it by the more wealthy.
Proverbs 22: 7 states as a warning to those who fear the Lord that
"The rich ruleth over over the poor, and the borrower
is servant to the lender."
This could be read as a statement of fact,
that the rich do rule over the poor. Yet other verses in the Old
Testament make it a sin to take what little money and goods the poor
have by way
of interest on loans, or usury. So the Lord wants to protect
the poor from loss of their small amount of money, land, houses and
possessions by usury. Those with low incomes especially, but also
others who have a little more money, are not to have a portion of
their money and possessions robbed by the more wealthy through
interest on loans.
God gives the poor rights to keep their small amount of money and
earthly possessions.
Isaiah 10: 2 warns extortioners and others who would cheat the poor
that
it is wrong to "...turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take
away the right from the poor of my people..."
Psalm 140: 12 also says "I know that the Lord will maintain the cause
of the afflicted, and the right of the poor." The right of the poor
means that God wants to protect the poor from having what little they
have taken from them by extortion and loan-sharking through usury.
Deuteronomy 28: 43-44 warns that "The stranger that is within
thee shall get
up above thee very high: and thou shalt come down very low. He
shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the
head, and thou shalt be the tail."
The borrower becoming servant to the lender and the lender getting up
very high while the borrower comes down very low and is the trail in
Deuteronomy 28 is punishment for not obeying God. For in Deuteronomy
28: 15 God says "...if thou wilt not harken to the voice of they
God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I
commanded thee this day, that all these curses shall come upon thee,
and overtake thee." Falling victim to the lender, the taker of usury,
is listed in the remainder of the chapter among these curses.
It is the extortion of money or possessions from people by the more
wealthy that God's moral law forbids. Unjust gain by usury or by any
other scheme is condemned as sin by the Bible. Although usury is not
specifically identified in the New Testament as a sin, in Matthew 21:
12, Mark 11: 15 and John 2: 14-15 Christ reacts strongly to the
practices of the money changers in the Temple. The money changers who,
he said, made the temple into a den of thieves were extorting money
from people in some way. And so it is not only taking interest on
loans that is said to be wrong in the Bible, but any form of extortion
and unjust gain.
Exodus 22:25 begins God's statement of his law against usury,
especially to extort money from the poor. "If thou lend money to any
of my people that is poor by
thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay
upon him usury".
Matthew Henry says of Exodus 22: 25 that it is "A law against
extortion in lending. They must not receive use for money from any
that borrowed for necessity."
Then, John Gill in his commentary on Exodus 22: 25 tells us that
"...the Israelites were not to be usurers, but they were not to be
like them; they were not to acquire
anything for lending a poor man a little money...or oblige him to give
interest for money borrowed..."
In Nehemiah 5 the setting for this clear Scripture against usury is
Jerusalem after the Jews returned from 70 years of captivity in
Babylon - because they had not obeyed God's laws and had turned to
pagan religion. Ezekiel 22: 12-22 says one of the laws they did not
obey was that on usury.
On coming back to Jerusalem, the wealthy Jews began lending money to
poor Jews. Usury as we know it began in
ancient Babylon, and maybe the Babylonian system of usury reinforced
the
practice of usury among the wealthy Jews who had practiced it before
the captivity.
In Nehemiah 5 the poor people realized they were in economic slavery
to the usurers and complained to Nehemiah. He ended up telling the
wealthy people to stop their usury.
Nehemiah 5:1-10 says "And there was a great cry of the people and
of their
wives against their brethren the Jews. For there were that said, We,
our sons, and our
daughters, are many: therefore we take up corn for them, that we may
eat, and live Some also there were that said, We have mortgaged our
lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn, because of the
dearth.
("Dearth," food shortage, or famine)
There were also that said, We have borrowed money for
the king's tribute, and that upon our lands and vineyards. Yet now
our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our
children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons
and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are
brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem
them; for other men have our lands and vineyards. And I was very
angry when I heard their cry and these words. Then I consulted with
myself, and I rebuked the nobles,
and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of his
brother. And I set a great assembly against them. Also I said, It is
not good that ye do: ought ye not to
walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen our
enemies?
I likewise, and my brethren, and my servants, might
exact of them money and corn: I pray you, let us leave off this
usury."
Matthew Henry says of Nehemiah 5: 1-10 that "We have here the tears of
the oppressed...Let us consider them as here they are dropped before
Nehemiah, whose office it was, as governor, to deliver the poor and
needy and rid them out of the hand of the wicked oppressors." Henry
is quoting Psalm 82: 4, "Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of
the hand of the wicked."
Then Henry goes onto say "Hard times and hard hearts make the poor
miserable...money must be had, but it must be borrowed and those that
lent them money, taking advantage of their necessity, were very hard
upon them and made a prey of them...They forced them to mortgage to
them their lands and houses for the securing of the money (Nehemiah 5:
3), but took the profits of them for interest (Nehemiah 5: 5, 11),
that by degrees they might make themselves masters of all they had.
Yet this was not the worst. They took their children as bond-servants,
to be enslaved or sold at pleasure (Nehemiah 5: 5)."
Psalm 15:5 teaches "He that putteth not out his money to usury,
nor taketh
reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be
moved".
Proverbs 22:7 says "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower
is
servant to the lender."
Proverbs 28:8 notes that "He that by usury and unjust gain
increaseth his
substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor."
Jeremiah 15:10 says "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me
a man
of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither
lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them
doth curse me."
Ezekiel 18: 4-8 explains "Behold all souls are mine:...the soul that
sinneth, it shall die. But if a man be just, and do that which is
lawful and right...He that hath not given forth upon usury, neither
hath taken any increase, that hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity,
hath executed true judgment between man and man."
Matthew Henry focuses in his commentary on Ezekiel 18: 8 upon the
usurer stopping his practice of usury, repenting from doing it, and
restoring the money he extorted to the borrower in saying :
"If at any time he has been drawn in through inadvertency to that
which afterwards has appeared to him to be a wrong thing, he does not
persist in it because he has begun it, but withdraws his hand from
that which he now perceives to be iniquity; for he executes true
judgment between man and man, according as his opportunity is of doing
it (as a judge, as a witness, as a juryman, as a referee), and in all
commerce is concerned that justice be done, that no man be wronged,
that he who is wronged be righted, and that every man have his own,
and is ready to interpose himself, and do any good office, in order
hereunto."
Ezekiel 22:12-20 says "In thee have they taken gifts to shed
blood; thou hast
taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy
neighbours by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God.
Behold, therefore I have smitten mine hand at thy
dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been
in the midst of thee. Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be
strong,
in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the LORD have spoken it,
and will do it. And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and
disperse thee in the countries, and will consume thy filthiness out of
thee. Son of man, the house of Israel is to me become dross:
all they are brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the
furnace; they are even the dross of silver. Therefore thus saith the
Lord GOD; Because ye are all
become dross, behold, therefore I will gather you into the midst of
Jerusalem. As they gather silver, and brass, and iron, and lead,
and tin, into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it, to
melt it; so will I gather you in mine anger and in my fury, and I will
leave you there, and melt you."
John Gill says in his commentary on Ezekiel 22: 12-20 that
"Son of man, the house of Israel is to me become dross…
Vile, despicable, useless, and unprofitable; to which the wicked of
the earth are compared, (Psalms 119:119) and here the Lord's
professing people, they differing nothing from them, being sadly
degenerated; formerly they were as silver, and so they might be
reckoned among themselves; but to God, who is omniscient, the searcher
of the hearts and reins, who saw all their actions, and knew the
spring of them, in his sight they were as dross: all they are brass,
and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the
furnace:
or "crucible" where they are put together, in order to be set in the
furnace, and melted down. It is not usual to put so many different
metals together for melting, but separately; but here it seems to
intend a mixture of them all together; and so the Targum and
Septuagint render it,
``all they as brass… are mixed...
so will I gather you in mine anger and in my fury;
from the several parts of the land unto the city of Jerusalem: this
they thought was for their good and safety, but it was in wrath, and
in order to ruin: and I will leave you there, and melt you."
John Gill is telling us that dishonest gain in practicing usury was
one of the main sins of the people of Israel for which they were
punished.
Matthew 21: 12-13 says "And Jesus went into the temple of God, and
cast out
all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables
of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be
called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves."
Jer 7:11 Mark 11:17 Luke 19:46
I searched the Internet to find information on whether these
moneychangers in Christ's time were loaning money on interest. I
did
not find anything one way or another on that hypothesis. But if the
moneychangers were not loaning money out on usury, why did Christ
react as strongly to them and say they made the temple into a den of
thieves?
When a Jewish man came to the Temple at Jerusalem from another country
to pay the Temple tax which he was required to do, the Temple priests
would not accept his foreign money. The moneychangers in the Temple
would exchange the man's foreign coins for Jewish shekels. It may be
the reason Jesus literally threw the moneychangers and their tables
out of the Temple - the only act of violence recorded that he did -
was because they were cheating foreign Jews by charging them extra to
exchange their foreign money, and the temple priests may have been in
this scam. The requirement that the Jews all pay a Temple tax set
things up for the moneychangers to exploit foreign Jews. This idea is
from:
http://www.brackenhurstbaptist.org/Matthew/Matthew_21_12-17.htm
Some might say that the Old Testament moral law saying that usury is
wrong was not brought into the New Testament. And therefore Christians
are not called to avoid usury.
But the moral law established in the Old Testament on usury is still
the moral law, even if its not written into the Ten Commandments..
According to that moral discipline, we are not to lend on interest or
to borrow and have to pay interest, if we can get by economically
without borrowing money. If we are so poor we cannot pay interest on a
debt, then God looks upon the lender as the culprit.
Although Matthew 21: 12 - and Mark 11: 15, as well as John 2: 14-15 -
does not say that the changers of money in the Temple were loaning out
money at interest, Christ's anger and actions toward them indicate
that they were extorting money from people by some type of scam,
perhaps by charging them extra to change their foreign money into
shekels.
Early Church Fathers Against usury
The statement below is from Tertullian's (about 160 to 225 A.D.)
book Against Marcion, Book
Four, Chapter 17, Concerning Loans. Prohibition of Usury and the
Usurious Spirit.
"And now, on the subject of a loan, when He asks, "And if ye lend to
them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye?" compare
with this the following words of Ezekiel, in which He says of the
before-mentioned just man, "He hath not given his money upon usury,
nor will he take any increase" meaning the redundance of
interest, which is usury. The first step was to eradicate the
fruit of the money lent, the more easily to accustom a man to the
loss, should it happen, of the money itself, the interest of
which he had learned to lose. Now this, we affirm, was the function of
the law as preparatory to the gospel. It was engaged in forming the
faith of such as would learn, by gradual stages, for the perfect
light of the Christian discipline, through the best precepts of which
it was capable, inculcating a benevolence which as yet expressed
itself but falteringly. For in the passage of Ezekiel quoted
above He says, "And thou shalt restore the pledge of the loan"
to him, certainly, who is incapable of repayment, because, as a
matter of course, He would not anyhow prescribe the restoration of a
pledge to one who was solvent. Much more clearly is it enjoined in
Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt not sleep upon his pledge; thou shalt be sure
to return to him his garment about sunset, and he shall sleep in his
own garment." Clearer still is a former passage: "Thou shalt
remit every debt which thy neighbour oweth thee; and of thy brother
thou shalt not require it, because it is called the release of the
Lord thy God." Now, when He commands that a debt be remitted to a
man who shall be unable to pay it (for it is a still stronger argument
when He forbids its being asked for from a man who is even able to
repay it), what else does He teach than that we should lend to those
of whom we cannot receive again, inasmuch as He has imposed so great a
loss on lending? "And ye shall be the children of God."
This commentary on Ezekiel 18: 8 by Tertullian is found at:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030416.htm
Clement of Alexandria said "the law prohibits a brother from taking
usury; designating as
a brother not only him who is born of the same parents, but also one
of
the same race and sentiments... Do not regard this command as marked
by philanthropy" Even the Alexandrian Fathers opposed usury.
From: http://www.transaction.net/money/book/notes.html
And Clement of Alexandria (written in 195 A.D) writes that
"His money he will not give on usury and will not take interest.
These words contain a description of the conduct of a Christian."'
from: http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/genuine-christianity.htm#loans
Commodianus (written in 240 A.D.) says
"You have lent on interest, taking 24 percent! Yet, now you wish to
bestow charity that you may purge yourself ... with what is evil. The
Almighty absolutely rejects such works as these"
Cyprian (written in 250 A.D) notes
"We must not take usury...You will not lend to your brother with
usury of money" [Deuteronomy 23:19]."
Lactantius (written between 304-313 A.D) teaches that
"If a Christian has lent any money, he will not receive interest - so
that the benefit that relieved necessity may be unimpaired... For it
is his duty in other respects not to be sparing of his property, in
order that he may do good. But to receive more than he has given is
unjust.."
The Catholic Church continued the prohibition on taking usury, though
in the major trading city-states in Italy in late medieval and
renaissance times the merchants got around the Church's moral law by
various kinds of contracts and money lending where the taking of
interest was hidden.
In 1524 Martin Luther condemned usury as grossly contrary to God's
Word. About 20 years later, John Calvin claimed that taking
interest on loans was not the sin of usury if the interest rate was
not excessive. Usury was redefined by Calvinists as the taking of
excessive interest, not as the taking of any interest rate as the
Scriptures define it.
The statement from Luther is at:
http://www.beyond-the-pale.org.uk/wealth.htm
John Calvin's liberalizing of the moral law on usury may have
resulted in a more rapid growth of capitalist enterprise in
Protestant countries because removing the Catholic discipline
forbidding usury allowed bankers to loan more money into existence.
But the Calvinist tolerance of usury may also have contributed to the
rise of the Money Power in Germany, Holland, England and the U.S., as
well as in Canada and Australia, and perhaps South Africa..
Max Weber in his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
proposed that the predominantly Protestant nations showed more
economic growth than the Catholic countries. Weber also argued that
when organized Christian religion became a creature of the state it
tended to repress the people rather than free them. The process of
American organized Protestant Christianity becoming a creature of the
federal government through the 501C(3) corporate status has been
gradual over the last 50 years. But in part Weber may be right.
There are certainly signs that organized Protestant Christianity,
almost entirely under the 501C(3) corporate status and under the
Internal Revenue Service, has become more supportive of and obedient
to the big federal government.
Moral Law Against Usury In the Bible
Bernard Pyron
In the law given to Moses by God there are Scriptures that
protect people who do not have a great deal of wealth from being
cheated out of it by the more wealthy.
Proverbs 22: 7 states as a warning to those who fear the Lord that
"The rich ruleth over over the poor, and the borrower
is servant to the lender."
This could be read as a statement of fact,
that the rich do rule over the poor. Yet other verses in the Old
Testament make it a sin to take what little money and goods the poor
have by way
of interest on loans, or usury. So the Lord wants to protect
the poor from loss of their small amount of money, land, houses and
possessions by usury. Those with low incomes especially, but also
others who have a little more money, are not to have a portion of
their money and possessions robbed by the more wealthy through
interest on loans.
God gives the poor rights to keep their small amount of money and
earthly possessions.
Isaiah 10: 2 warns extortioners and others who would cheat the poor
that
it is wrong to "...turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take
away the right from the poor of my people..."
Psalm 140: 12 also says "I know that the Lord will maintain the cause
of the afflicted, and the right of the poor." The right of the poor
means that God wants to protect the poor from having what little they
have taken from them by extortion and loan-sharking through usury.
Deuteronomy 28: 43-44 warns that "The stranger that is within
thee shall get
up above thee very high: and thou shalt come down very low. He
shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the
head, and thou shalt be the tail."
The borrower becoming servant to the lender and the lender getting up
very high while the borrower comes down very low and is the trail in
Deuteronomy 28 is punishment for not obeying God. For in Deuteronomy
28: 15 God says "...if thou wilt not harken to the voice of they
God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I
commanded thee this day, that all these curses shall come upon thee,
and overtake thee." Falling victim to the lender, the taker of usury,
is listed in the remainder of the chapter among these curses.
It is the extortion of money or possessions from people by the more
wealthy that God's moral law forbids. Unjust gain by usury or by any
other scheme is condemned as sin by the Bible. Although usury is not
specifically identified in the New Testament as a sin, in Matthew 21:
12, Mark 11: 15 and John 2: 14-15 Christ reacts strongly to the
practices of the money changers in the Temple. The money changers who,
he said, made the temple into a den of thieves were extorting money
from people in some way. And so it is not only taking interest on
loans that is said to be wrong in the Bible, but any form of extortion
and unjust gain.
Exodus 22:25 begins God's statement of his law against usury,
especially to extort money from the poor. "If thou lend money to any
of my people that is poor by
thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay
upon him usury".
Matthew Henry says of Exodus 22: 25 that it is "A law against
extortion in lending. They must not receive use for money from any
that borrowed for necessity."
Then, John Gill in his commentary on Exodus 22: 25 tells us that
"...the Israelites were not to be usurers, but they were not to be
like them; they were not to acquire
anything for lending a poor man a little money...or oblige him to give
interest for money borrowed..."
In Nehemiah 5 the setting for this clear Scripture against usury is
Jerusalem after the Jews returned from 70 years of captivity in
Babylon - because they had not obeyed God's laws and had turned to
pagan religion. Ezekiel 22: 12-22 says one of the laws they did not
obey was that on usury.
On coming back to Jerusalem, the wealthy Jews began lending money to
poor Jews. Usury as we know it began in
ancient Babylon, and maybe the Babylonian system of usury reinforced
the
practice of usury among the wealthy Jews who had practiced it before
the captivity.
In Nehemiah 5 the poor people realized they were in economic slavery
to the usurers and complained to Nehemiah. He ended up telling the
wealthy people to stop their usury.
Nehemiah 5:1-10 says "And there was a great cry of the people and
of their
wives against their brethren the Jews. For there were that said, We,
our sons, and our
daughters, are many: therefore we take up corn for them, that we may
eat, and live Some also there were that said, We have mortgaged our
lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn, because of the
dearth.
("Dearth," food shortage, or famine)
There were also that said, We have borrowed money for
the king's tribute, and that upon our lands and vineyards. Yet now
our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our
children as their children: and, lo, we bring into bondage our sons
and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are
brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem
them; for other men have our lands and vineyards. And I was very
angry when I heard their cry and these words. Then I consulted with
myself, and I rebuked the nobles,
and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of his
brother. And I set a great assembly against them. Also I said, It is
not good that ye do: ought ye not to
walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen our
enemies?
I likewise, and my brethren, and my servants, might
exact of them money and corn: I pray you, let us leave off this
usury."
Matthew Henry says of Nehemiah 5: 1-10 that "We have here the tears of
the oppressed...Let us consider them as here they are dropped before
Nehemiah, whose office it was, as governor, to deliver the poor and
needy and rid them out of the hand of the wicked oppressors." Henry
is quoting Psalm 82: 4, "Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of
the hand of the wicked."
Then Henry goes onto say "Hard times and hard hearts make the poor
miserable...money must be had, but it must be borrowed and those that
lent them money, taking advantage of their necessity, were very hard
upon them and made a prey of them...They forced them to mortgage to
them their lands and houses for the securing of the money (Nehemiah 5:
3), but took the profits of them for interest (Nehemiah 5: 5, 11),
that by degrees they might make themselves masters of all they had.
Yet this was not the worst. They took their children as bond-servants,
to be enslaved or sold at pleasure (Nehemiah 5: 5)."
Psalm 15:5 teaches "He that putteth not out his money to usury,
nor taketh
reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be
moved".
Proverbs 22:7 says "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower
is
servant to the lender."
Proverbs 28:8 notes that "He that by usury and unjust gain
increaseth his
substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor."
Jeremiah 15:10 says "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me
a man
of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither
lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them
doth curse me."
Ezekiel 18: 4-8 explains "Behold all souls are mine:...the soul that
sinneth, it shall die. But if a man be just, and do that which is
lawful and right...He that hath not given forth upon usury, neither
hath taken any increase, that hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity,
hath executed true judgment between man and man."
Matthew Henry focuses in his commentary on Ezekiel 18: 8 upon the
usurer stopping his practice of usury, repenting from doing it, and
restoring the money he extorted to the borrower in saying :
"If at any time he has been drawn in through inadvertency to that
which afterwards has appeared to him to be a wrong thing, he does not
persist in it because he has begun it, but withdraws his hand from
that which he now perceives to be iniquity; for he executes true
judgment between man and man, according as his opportunity is of doing
it (as a judge, as a witness, as a juryman, as a referee), and in all
commerce is concerned that justice be done, that no man be wronged,
that he who is wronged be righted, and that every man have his own,
and is ready to interpose himself, and do any good office, in order
hereunto."
Ezekiel 22:12-20 says "In thee have they taken gifts to shed
blood; thou hast
taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy
neighbours by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God.
Behold, therefore I have smitten mine hand at thy
dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been
in the midst of thee. Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be
strong,
in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the LORD have spoken it,
and will do it. And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and
disperse thee in the countries, and will consume thy filthiness out of
thee. Son of man, the house of Israel is to me become dross:
all they are brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the
furnace; they are even the dross of silver. Therefore thus saith the
Lord GOD; Because ye are all
become dross, behold, therefore I will gather you into the midst of
Jerusalem. As they gather silver, and brass, and iron, and lead,
and tin, into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it, to
melt it; so will I gather you in mine anger and in my fury, and I will
leave you there, and melt you."
John Gill says in his commentary on Ezekiel 22: 12-20 that
"Son of man, the house of Israel is to me become dross…
Vile, despicable, useless, and unprofitable; to which the wicked of
the earth are compared, (Psalms 119:119) and here the Lord's
professing people, they differing nothing from them, being sadly
degenerated; formerly they were as silver, and so they might be
reckoned among themselves; but to God, who is omniscient, the searcher
of the hearts and reins, who saw all their actions, and knew the
spring of them, in his sight they were as dross: all they are brass,
and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the
furnace:
or "crucible" where they are put together, in order to be set in the
furnace, and melted down. It is not usual to put so many different
metals together for melting, but separately; but here it seems to
intend a mixture of them all together; and so the Targum and
Septuagint render it,
``all they as brass… are mixed...
so will I gather you in mine anger and in my fury;
from the several parts of the land unto the city of Jerusalem: this
they thought was for their good and safety, but it was in wrath, and
in order to ruin: and I will leave you there, and melt you."
John Gill is telling us that dishonest gain in practicing usury was
one of the main sins of the people of Israel for which they were
punished.
Matthew 21: 12-13 says "And Jesus went into the temple of God, and
cast out
all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables
of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be
called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves."
Jer 7:11 Mark 11:17 Luke 19:46
I searched the Internet to find information on whether these
moneychangers in Christ's time were loaning money on interest. I
did
not find anything one way or another on that hypothesis. But if the
moneychangers were not loaning money out on usury, why did Christ
react as strongly to them and say they made the temple into a den of
thieves?
When a Jewish man came to the Temple at Jerusalem from another country
to pay the Temple tax which he was required to do, the Temple priests
would not accept his foreign money. The moneychangers in the Temple
would exchange the man's foreign coins for Jewish shekels. It may be
the reason Jesus literally threw the moneychangers and their tables
out of the Temple - the only act of violence recorded that he did -
was because they were cheating foreign Jews by charging them extra to
exchange their foreign money, and the temple priests may have been in
this scam. The requirement that the Jews all pay a Temple tax set
things up for the moneychangers to exploit foreign Jews. This idea is
from:
http://www.brackenhurstbaptist.org/Matthew/Matthew_21_12-17.htm
Some might say that the Old Testament moral law saying that usury is
wrong was not brought into the New Testament. And therefore Christians
are not called to avoid usury.
But the moral law established in the Old Testament on usury is still
the moral law, even if its not written into the Ten Commandments..
According to that moral discipline, we are not to lend on interest or
to borrow and have to pay interest, if we can get by economically
without borrowing money. If we are so poor we cannot pay interest on a
debt, then God looks upon the lender as the culprit.
Although Matthew 21: 12 - and Mark 11: 15, as well as John 2: 14-15 -
does not say that the changers of money in the Temple were loaning out
money at interest, Christ's anger and actions toward them indicate
that they were extorting money from people by some type of scam,
perhaps by charging them extra to change their foreign money into
shekels.
Early Church Fathers Against usury
The statement below is from Tertullian's (about 160 to 225 A.D.)
book Against Marcion, Book
Four, Chapter 17, Concerning Loans. Prohibition of Usury and the
Usurious Spirit.
"And now, on the subject of a loan, when He asks, "And if ye lend to
them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye?" compare
with this the following words of Ezekiel, in which He says of the
before-mentioned just man, "He hath not given his money upon usury,
nor will he take any increase" meaning the redundance of
interest, which is usury. The first step was to eradicate the
fruit of the money lent, the more easily to accustom a man to the
loss, should it happen, of the money itself, the interest of
which he had learned to lose. Now this, we affirm, was the function of
the law as preparatory to the gospel. It was engaged in forming the
faith of such as would learn, by gradual stages, for the perfect
light of the Christian discipline, through the best precepts of which
it was capable, inculcating a benevolence which as yet expressed
itself but falteringly. For in the passage of Ezekiel quoted
above He says, "And thou shalt restore the pledge of the loan"
to him, certainly, who is incapable of repayment, because, as a
matter of course, He would not anyhow prescribe the restoration of a
pledge to one who was solvent. Much more clearly is it enjoined in
Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt not sleep upon his pledge; thou shalt be sure
to return to him his garment about sunset, and he shall sleep in his
own garment." Clearer still is a former passage: "Thou shalt
remit every debt which thy neighbour oweth thee; and of thy brother
thou shalt not require it, because it is called the release of the
Lord thy God." Now, when He commands that a debt be remitted to a
man who shall be unable to pay it (for it is a still stronger argument
when He forbids its being asked for from a man who is even able to
repay it), what else does He teach than that we should lend to those
of whom we cannot receive again, inasmuch as He has imposed so great a
loss on lending? "And ye shall be the children of God."
This commentary on Ezekiel 18: 8 by Tertullian is found at:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030416.htm
Clement of Alexandria said "the law prohibits a brother from taking
usury; designating as
a brother not only him who is born of the same parents, but also one
of
the same race and sentiments... Do not regard this command as marked
by philanthropy" Even the Alexandrian Fathers opposed usury.
From: http://www.transaction.net/money/book/notes.html
And Clement of Alexandria (written in 195 A.D) writes that
"His money he will not give on usury and will not take interest.
These words contain a description of the conduct of a Christian."'
from: http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/genuine-christianity.htm#loans
Commodianus (written in 240 A.D.) says
"You have lent on interest, taking 24 percent! Yet, now you wish to
bestow charity that you may purge yourself ... with what is evil. The
Almighty absolutely rejects such works as these"
Cyprian (written in 250 A.D) notes
"We must not take usury...You will not lend to your brother with
usury of money" [Deuteronomy 23:19]."
Lactantius (written between 304-313 A.D) teaches that
"If a Christian has lent any money, he will not receive interest - so
that the benefit that relieved necessity may be unimpaired... For it
is his duty in other respects not to be sparing of his property, in
order that he may do good. But to receive more than he has given is
unjust.."
The Catholic Church continued the prohibition on taking usury, though
in the major trading city-states in Italy in late medieval and
renaissance times the merchants got around the Church's moral law by
various kinds of contracts and money lending where the taking of
interest was hidden.
In 1524 Martin Luther condemned usury as grossly contrary to God's
Word. About 20 years later, John Calvin claimed that taking
interest on loans was not the sin of usury if the interest rate was
not excessive. Usury was redefined by Calvinists as the taking of
excessive interest, not as the taking of any interest rate as the
Scriptures define it.
The statement from Luther is at:
http://www.beyond-the-pale.org.uk/wealth.htm
John Calvin's liberalizing of the moral law on usury may have
resulted in a more rapid growth of capitalist enterprise in
Protestant countries because removing the Catholic discipline
forbidding usury allowed bankers to loan more money into existence.
But the Calvinist tolerance of usury may also have contributed to the
rise of the Money Power in Germany, Holland, England and the U.S., as
well as in Canada and Australia, and perhaps South Africa..
Max Weber in his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
proposed that the predominantly Protestant nations showed more
economic growth than the Catholic countries. Weber also argued that
when organized Christian religion became a creature of the state it
tended to repress the people rather than free them. The process of
American organized Protestant Christianity becoming a creature of the
federal government through the 501C(3) corporate status has been
gradual over the last 50 years. But in part Weber may be right.
There are certainly signs that organized Protestant Christianity,
almost entirely under the 501C(3) corporate status and under the
Internal Revenue Service, has become more supportive of and obedient
to the big federal government.
USURY IN OLD BABYLON AND IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Usury In Old Babylon and In the Roman Empire
Bernard Pyron
Matthew 6:24 says: " No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the
one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise
the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
Mammon is Strong's Exhaustive Concordance number 3126, which Strong's
says means confidence, i. e, wealth personified...avarice deified.
Mammon means having confidence or reliance upon money, and greed for
more money personified or deified,
At http://houlton.net/monk Strong's number 3126, or mammonas,
of Aramaic origin, is said to mean what is trusted in, riches, where
it is personified and opposed to God.
Exodus 22: 25 begins the Bible texts opposed to the practice of usury,
and Leviticus 25: 36-37, Deuteronomy 23: 19, Nehemiah 5: 1- 10, Psalm
15: 5, Isaiah 24: 2, and Ezekiel 18: 8 say usury is wrong. Then,
Ezekiel 22: 12-22 says
that usury was one of the sins of the nation of Judah for which God
punished the people. In addition, Matthew 21: 13 where Christ threw
out the tables of the money changers is a text that broadens the sin
of usury to some other forms of extortion of the money of the common
people.
In Daniel 9: 27 Christ "Shall make it desolate" because of "the
overspreading of abominations." Usury is one of these abominations
that the Lord hates.
Practicing usury especially on people of low incomes - who are below
or near the "poverty line" - is a violation of God's moral law.
Therefore those who practice loaning money for interest and the
governments that protect this practice are anti-God, or even have the
spirit of antichrist (I John 4: 3).
Ancient Babylon which includes the nearby cities is the model for the
Babylon of prophecy, the city of mammon.
"Behold the land of the Chaldeans: this people was not, till the
Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness: they set
up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof, and he
brought it to ruin (Isaiah 23: 13)."
Isaiah 30: 25 says "And there shall be upon every high mountain, and
upon every high hill, rivers and streams of waters in the day of the
great slaughter, when the towers fall."
Going to Zephaniah 1: 16 it says "A day of the trumpet and alarm
against the fenced cities , and against the high towers." Zephaniah
3: 6 adds that "I have cut off the nations; their towers are
desolate. I made their streets waste, that none passeth by: their
cities are destroyed, that there is no man, that there is non
inhabitant."
In describing the fall of Babylon Revelation 18: 9-10 says
"And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived
deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament her, when they
shall see the smoke of her burning. Standing afar off for the fear of
her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty
city! for in one hour is thy judgment come."
New York City is the capital of word trade, the United Nations and
usury banking - along with the City of London. Many credit card banks are
in Wilmington, Delaware, Citibank is in South Dakota and I think Bank of America
is in Charlotte, North Carolina. Three of New York
City's towers fell on September 11, 2001, and ships off some miles to
the east could have seen the smoke of their burning, as Revelation 18:
10 predicts. But the fall of the towers on September 11, 2001 was
not the complete fulfillment of these prophecies on the fall of the
towers and the destruction of cities. It was only a preliminary,
small fulfillment of that prophecy. The third tower that fell then
was Building Number Seven, which was not hit at all by an airplane
like the twin towers or something from the air. It was "pulled."
Usury banking and the love of money as the root of evil (I Timothy 6:
10) will be one of the abominations that will evoke the wrath of God
in the Indignation (Isaiah 26: 20). The capitals of mammon are likely
to be ruined in that day, including New York City.
Usury banking, especially the widespread use of credit cards and
credit card debt, is getting worse. Fifty years ago many or
most couples were able to pay off debt on their homes in ten years or
less - or they saved money and paid cash for their houses and lands.
And then only the husband and father worked at a job or had his own
business as my father did then. Usury banking is one reason it
now takes so long to pay off a home mortgage and why both spouses have
to work to make ends sort of meet. In the debt money system of the
Federal Reserve, the money supply needs to be increased continually to
provide that money which is taken out of the economy by usury (and
taxes). Otherwise, an economic recession or even a depression could
result. This constant increase in the money supply drives inflation
which reduces the buying power of the couple's dollars. And if they
are not able to increase their income to take care of the inflation,
then
they may find themselves short of funds, unless both work full time.
Lower income people need money to buy food, pay the rent or mortgage,
and electric and heating bills. But often their income is not
sufficient to pay all this with inflation lowering the buying power of
the dollar. So they resort to the use of credit cards which credit
card banks offer to low income people, often by the use of deceptive
means. But in paying back what they borrowed plus interest and often
penalties and unreasonable raises in the interest rates, they become
poorer than before.
Loaning money by credit card - unlike some local bank loans to
beginning businesses - does not usually increase the productivity of
the economy, or the Gross National Product. However, the massive use
of credit cards does fuel the consumer economy of America by enabling
people to buy more stuff - and perhaps pay later. Thus, credit cards
are an important part of the change in the last 20 to 30 years from a
productive economy to a consumer economy.
If Congress suddenly decided
the put a curb on interest rates extracted by the credit card banks
and clamped down on the crooked practices of these banks, and if the
limit on interest rates matched the current average level for home
mortgages, this might have some negative effect on the consumer
economy. Credit card banks in that situation would probably stop
giving cards to low income people and to others who do not have a
perfect credit record, in order to minimize their losses. If they did
that, people who use credit cards merely for convenience at the
checking counter or for sending off for stuff. would be more likely to
pay lower amounts in interest by paying off their balances much sooner
than poor people or high risk people.
As long as almost all American consumers continue to use credit cards
and have debts on them of $8,000 or so per household, then Congress
will probably not act to curb credit card interest rates and the banks
will not change their practices. In addition, the higher level elites
(called the Power Elite by Texas sociologist C. Wright Mills)
may not want consumers to begin going back to more use of cash since
the elite may want a cashless society at some point in time. So there
is not likely to be any relief from credit card debt and crooked
practices by the banks - except for those few who drop out of this
system.
And the Remnant of Israel should be among those who no longer
use credit cards. Christians who do not understand what the Remnant of Israel is
and who it is in Christ, will probably not see the point in obeying
the Old Testament moral law on usury. And they will miss the point of
Christ's throwing out the tables of the money changers from the
Temple in Matthew 21: 12.
The Remnant is distinguished from the Multitude of professing
Christians by having more understanding of the truths in the Bible, by
a greater love of that truth, and by a greater desire to obey the
Lord, including obedience to his
moral teachings.
It is true that the Bible focuses more on the moral transgression of
the lender in taking usury than on that of the borrower, especially if
the borrower must borrow to eat and have a place to live. But still,
using credit cards - if they are not necessary for basic needs - is
not in complete obedience to the Lord. Use of credit cards helps to
perpetuate that debt system, and use of them is a bad example to
others.
The local banker does not go out and invite people to borrow
money from him. Instead, people come to him asking if he will lend
them money to buy a car, home or something else. But in recent years
the credit card banks have been sending out millions of invitations
and offers, often deceptive, to induce people, in many cases those on
low incomes, to sign on to a credit card with interest rates that are
usually higher than that of the local banker, and for which there is
no contract preventing an increase in interest rates or minimum
monthly payment.
The debt-usury system is anti-God and should be seen as such. In
massive debt, most Americans are the servants of the bankers and of
mammon. "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servant to
obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey: whether of sin unto death,
or of obedience unto righteousness (Romans 6: 16)."
If you already have credit card debt you cannot pay off at once, you
can still drop out of the usury-debt system in a spiritual way.
Renounce all use of credit cards and never use them again, though you
should eventually pay them off.
USURY BEGAN IN ANCIENT BABYLON
The Babylon of Prophecy in Revelation 18 deals in merchandise
(Verses 11-14) -
and the souls of men. Babylon has her own merchants
and others come to trade with them.
Verse 23 says "...for thy merchants were the great men of the
earth..."
The Greek word translated as merchants is emporoi, and probably the
English word emporium comes from it. On page 508 of A Linguistic Key
to the Greek New Testament, Vol 2, by Fritz Rienecker, emporoi in
Revelation 18: 23 is defined as "merchants who deal in foreign
exports." They are world traders.
Verse 23 also says of Babylon that "...by thy sorceries were all
nations deceived." Sorceries is from the Greek word pharmakeia, from
which we get our pharmacies. Sorceries refer then to drugs, both
legal pharmaceutical drugs, and illegal ones. The large
pharmaceutical corporations in the U.S. and Europe play a large
role in the world of huge international corporations at the present
time, and some of them, like Bayer, go back to Nazi Germany. Herman
Schmitz, a big Swiss banker, owned a large empire in Nazi Germany
called I. G. Farben that included Bayer and some other large
pharmaceutical corporations. In addition, sorceries means
witchcraft, and the kind of witchcraft and mind-dulling effect
performed on people by Hollywood and other mass media. Deception is
part of that media witchcraft or mind-control.
Verse 23 tells us that in Babylon the light of a candle shall shine
no more, and the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall be heard
no more. Who is the bridegroom in the New Testament? It is Jesus
Christ, and his bride is made up of saved people, and might be
specifically the 144,000 of Revelation 7, though many, many more than
the 144,000 are saved Christians.
In Revelation 18: 4 God calls his people out of Babylon, so they will
not have to go through the plagues or partake of her sins.
Why are the voices of the bridegroom and his bride no longer heard in
Babylon? It is because they have left Babylon, in obedience to the
call of the Lord. Largely, they have departed out of the world
system that is Babylon. As much as possible they have left the
economic system of Babylon. Debt with usury is a part of that world
system which
Christians should depart out of. Remnant Christians have come out from
the apostate churches
which are Mystery Babylon. And Remnant Christians who were members of
secret societies like the Masons have left that part of Mystery
Babylon. They have left the culture of Babylon
which has the spirit of antichrist. It is antichristian, as
Revelation 18: 24 says, for in her was found the blood of the
prophets and the saints. Finally, if they were involved in political
or military Babylon, they have removed themselves spiritually from
that influence, that is, the
Lord has freed them of the influence of Babylon..
In a literal way, the call to leave Babylon can mean to leave the
urban areas like New York City, San Francisco, Dallas or Chicago. But
I don't think leaving Babylon means to leave the U.S. Where can we
go?
Bankers, usury, the power of money, and the rule of big money are
not mentioned in Revelation 18. But because so much emphasis is
placed on merchandising and on merchants or world traders, we know
that money drives Babylon. Money was necessary for the Roman Empire
and necessary for modern world empires like that the the U.S. now.
The power of the U.S. depends on its money power.
Banking and usury may have started in earnest in ancient historical
Babylon, in the city of Babylon or in nearby cities.
The quote below is from:
http://viking.som.yale.edu/will/finciv/chapter1.htm
"In the 1920's, Sir Leonard Woolley, excavating the Mesopotamian city
of Ur, the fabled birthplace of Abraham, found himself standing in the
remains of what must have been an upper middle class neighborhood near
the center of the ancient city. His Iraqi excavators uncovered the
narrow walls and small rooms that signified domestic architecture --
rather than the majestic palace architecture that typically attracted
the attention of Near Eastern excavators...
Professor Marc Van De Mieroop of Columbia University has used
Woolley's careful excavation notes to match the dozens of excavated
clay tablets to the homes where they were found. From these, he has
been able to identify what must have been a very early "Wall Street" -- a
financial district in the ancient city that was the home of Ur's
second millennium lenders and entrepreneurs. From their records, he
has been able to reconstruct a fascinating story about one of the
world's first financial centers.
Most of the cuneiform texts found in the financial district date from
the early years of the reign of the King Rim-Sin (1822-1763 B.C.), who
ruled from the capital city of Larsa, a few miles north of Ur shortly
before Hammurabi's time."
Many of the clay tablets found were records of loans for which the
lenders collected interest, or usury. The article on usury in ancient
historical Babylon goes on to say that:
"It is difficult to escape the conclusion that, while the first loan
contracts and the legal system that enforced them may have been good
for the Mesopotamian economy, they made life miserable for the working
man and woman."
Since historical Babylon is the model for the Babylon of
prophecy, we can ask if the economic system of the Roman Empire -
which Church Fathers said was a fulfillment of the prophecy on
Babylon - was based upon usury. Some historians think that usury
helped to corrupt the Roman Empire.
USURY IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
The information below is from this link:
http://www.1911ency.org/U/US/USURY.htm
At one point Rome had laws against the charging of excessive interest rates.
But regulation of usury failed and over two or three centuries the
small free farmers were put out of business by taxation and usury.
Taxation by the government and usury drove Romans below the upper
classes into debt and into debt slavery if not actual slavery. In the
Roman provinces the exploitation of common people by usury was even greater.
Julius Caesar in his reign as dictator (about 44 to 42 or so BC) tried
to lessen the
effects of usury on the people, but according to the web site given
above "...it was too late then to save the middle class."
This same site also says that "About this time the rate of interest on
first-class security in
the city of Rome was only about 4%, whilst in the provinces from 25 to
50% were rates often exacted."
"About this time" must refer to the reign of Julius Caesar, which was
in about 44 to 42 BC.
The next site on usury in Rome is:.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/ch05.htm
In addition to the robbery of the Roman provinces by officials, a
special class of
usury capitalists grew up in Rome and in the provinces. The site
above says that
"The moneyed men of Rome founded societies, corresponding to our
banking corporations, with directors, cashiers, agents, etc. At the
time of Sulla there was the company of the Asiani [the Asia Company]
with a large enough capital to lend the state 20,000 talents
[$25,000,000]. Twelve years later they had run this debt up to 120,000
talents."
Again the site says "It was primarily in order to gain money that
Caesar undertook the war
against Gaul, which hitherto had been free of Roman rule and so
unplundered
The army became more and more the master of the republic."
Next, the information on usury in Rome is from:
http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Marx/mrxCpC36.html
Often upper class Romans made money from the work of slaves and then
invested that money in loans with usury.
"...usury thus exerts an undermining and destructive
influence on ancient and feudal wealth and ancient and feudal
property. On the other hand it undermines and ruins small peasants'
and small burghers' production..."
Then, the site says "...the Roman patricians ruined the plebeians, by
compelling them to serve
as soldiers and thus preventing them from reproducing the requirements
of their productive activity and making paupers of them (and
pauperization, depletion or loss of the prerequisites of reproduction
is here the predominent form), filled the sheds and cellars of the
patricians with looted copper, the money of that time. Instead of
giving to the plebeians directly the necessary commodities, grain,
horses, cattle, they loaned to them this copper, for which they had no
use themselves, and availed themselves of this condition for the
purpose of enforcing enormous interest by usury, thereby turning the
plebeians into their debtor slaves."
Apparently the Roman patricians corresponded to our present day ruling class of
doctors, lawyers, some professors, government bureaucrats, heads of
corporations, and members of Congress.
Under usury enforced by the power of government, the producer's means
of producing, his shop, farm, retail business, and house can become
the property of the lender, so that the producer who borrowed on usury
becomes the creditor's slave.
Usury centralized money wealth in ancient Rome and the masses of the
people lost ownership of their lands, homes and places of businesses
to the creditors.
OLIGARCHICAL FAMILIES PRACTICE USURY
This is from: http://www.abjpress.com/tarpv5.html
Down through history there were oligarchical families with great
wealth that passed
that wealth down from generation to generation. There probably were oligarchical
families in ancient Babylon. There were such families in the Persian
Empire, in Phoenicia, Greece and Rome.
Oligarchical families increased their great wealth through usury.
In the once city-state of Venice there were from about 1200 to 1600
A.D. influential oligarchical families. Many of these families of Venice
moved to Holland in the 17th century where they were involved with the
Bank of Amsterdam, the forerunner of the Bank of England.
Oligarchical families from Venice also moved to England at about that
time.
Webster Tarpley in Against Oligarchy claims that between 1509 and 1715
the "Venetian Party" gained great influence in England. Tarpley says
the Venetian families brought into England the traditions of the
Babylonians, Romans, and Byzantines. The Venetians were always
involved in banking.
If Tarpley is right, the tradition of rule by oligarchical families
came into England (and Holland) from Venice. The practice of usury
came into Northern Europe and England with the Venetians.
In addition, the Rothschilds in Germany were and are a very important Jewish
oligarchical family who pretty much took over international banking.
See:
http://www.the7thfire.com/new_world_order/final_warning/illuminati_origin.htm
Lord Jacob Rothschild of England is now considered a top ranking member of the
ruling elite.
In Bloodlines of the Illuminati, Fritz Springmeir discusses many of
these international oligarchical families. From:
http://www.whale.to/b/sp/blood.html#
Springmeir covers the Rockefeller, Rothschild, Merovinian, Astor,
Russell, Cabot, Collins, Reynolds, Onassis, Kennedy, Freeman and
DuPont families.
On http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/bb980306.htm it says the most
powerful families of the ruling elite, there called "The Black
Nobility" are in Germany, Holland, England, Switzerland and Greece.
This site claims the Black Nobility families are descended from the
Venetian oligarchs who were of the Khazar blood line. According to
this site, Price Bernhard of Holland and Queen Elizabeth of England
head the Black Nobility.
Bernard Pyron
Matthew 6:24 says: " No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the
one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise
the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
Mammon is Strong's Exhaustive Concordance number 3126, which Strong's
says means confidence, i. e, wealth personified...avarice deified.
Mammon means having confidence or reliance upon money, and greed for
more money personified or deified,
At http://houlton.net/monk Strong's number 3126, or mammonas,
of Aramaic origin, is said to mean what is trusted in, riches, where
it is personified and opposed to God.
Exodus 22: 25 begins the Bible texts opposed to the practice of usury,
and Leviticus 25: 36-37, Deuteronomy 23: 19, Nehemiah 5: 1- 10, Psalm
15: 5, Isaiah 24: 2, and Ezekiel 18: 8 say usury is wrong. Then,
Ezekiel 22: 12-22 says
that usury was one of the sins of the nation of Judah for which God
punished the people. In addition, Matthew 21: 13 where Christ threw
out the tables of the money changers is a text that broadens the sin
of usury to some other forms of extortion of the money of the common
people.
In Daniel 9: 27 Christ "Shall make it desolate" because of "the
overspreading of abominations." Usury is one of these abominations
that the Lord hates.
Practicing usury especially on people of low incomes - who are below
or near the "poverty line" - is a violation of God's moral law.
Therefore those who practice loaning money for interest and the
governments that protect this practice are anti-God, or even have the
spirit of antichrist (I John 4: 3).
Ancient Babylon which includes the nearby cities is the model for the
Babylon of prophecy, the city of mammon.
"Behold the land of the Chaldeans: this people was not, till the
Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness: they set
up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof, and he
brought it to ruin (Isaiah 23: 13)."
Isaiah 30: 25 says "And there shall be upon every high mountain, and
upon every high hill, rivers and streams of waters in the day of the
great slaughter, when the towers fall."
Going to Zephaniah 1: 16 it says "A day of the trumpet and alarm
against the fenced cities , and against the high towers." Zephaniah
3: 6 adds that "I have cut off the nations; their towers are
desolate. I made their streets waste, that none passeth by: their
cities are destroyed, that there is no man, that there is non
inhabitant."
In describing the fall of Babylon Revelation 18: 9-10 says
"And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived
deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament her, when they
shall see the smoke of her burning. Standing afar off for the fear of
her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty
city! for in one hour is thy judgment come."
New York City is the capital of word trade, the United Nations and
usury banking - along with the City of London. Many credit card banks are
in Wilmington, Delaware, Citibank is in South Dakota and I think Bank of America
is in Charlotte, North Carolina. Three of New York
City's towers fell on September 11, 2001, and ships off some miles to
the east could have seen the smoke of their burning, as Revelation 18:
10 predicts. But the fall of the towers on September 11, 2001 was
not the complete fulfillment of these prophecies on the fall of the
towers and the destruction of cities. It was only a preliminary,
small fulfillment of that prophecy. The third tower that fell then
was Building Number Seven, which was not hit at all by an airplane
like the twin towers or something from the air. It was "pulled."
Usury banking and the love of money as the root of evil (I Timothy 6:
10) will be one of the abominations that will evoke the wrath of God
in the Indignation (Isaiah 26: 20). The capitals of mammon are likely
to be ruined in that day, including New York City.
Usury banking, especially the widespread use of credit cards and
credit card debt, is getting worse. Fifty years ago many or
most couples were able to pay off debt on their homes in ten years or
less - or they saved money and paid cash for their houses and lands.
And then only the husband and father worked at a job or had his own
business as my father did then. Usury banking is one reason it
now takes so long to pay off a home mortgage and why both spouses have
to work to make ends sort of meet. In the debt money system of the
Federal Reserve, the money supply needs to be increased continually to
provide that money which is taken out of the economy by usury (and
taxes). Otherwise, an economic recession or even a depression could
result. This constant increase in the money supply drives inflation
which reduces the buying power of the couple's dollars. And if they
are not able to increase their income to take care of the inflation,
then
they may find themselves short of funds, unless both work full time.
Lower income people need money to buy food, pay the rent or mortgage,
and electric and heating bills. But often their income is not
sufficient to pay all this with inflation lowering the buying power of
the dollar. So they resort to the use of credit cards which credit
card banks offer to low income people, often by the use of deceptive
means. But in paying back what they borrowed plus interest and often
penalties and unreasonable raises in the interest rates, they become
poorer than before.
Loaning money by credit card - unlike some local bank loans to
beginning businesses - does not usually increase the productivity of
the economy, or the Gross National Product. However, the massive use
of credit cards does fuel the consumer economy of America by enabling
people to buy more stuff - and perhaps pay later. Thus, credit cards
are an important part of the change in the last 20 to 30 years from a
productive economy to a consumer economy.
If Congress suddenly decided
the put a curb on interest rates extracted by the credit card banks
and clamped down on the crooked practices of these banks, and if the
limit on interest rates matched the current average level for home
mortgages, this might have some negative effect on the consumer
economy. Credit card banks in that situation would probably stop
giving cards to low income people and to others who do not have a
perfect credit record, in order to minimize their losses. If they did
that, people who use credit cards merely for convenience at the
checking counter or for sending off for stuff. would be more likely to
pay lower amounts in interest by paying off their balances much sooner
than poor people or high risk people.
As long as almost all American consumers continue to use credit cards
and have debts on them of $8,000 or so per household, then Congress
will probably not act to curb credit card interest rates and the banks
will not change their practices. In addition, the higher level elites
(called the Power Elite by Texas sociologist C. Wright Mills)
may not want consumers to begin going back to more use of cash since
the elite may want a cashless society at some point in time. So there
is not likely to be any relief from credit card debt and crooked
practices by the banks - except for those few who drop out of this
system.
And the Remnant of Israel should be among those who no longer
use credit cards. Christians who do not understand what the Remnant of Israel is
and who it is in Christ, will probably not see the point in obeying
the Old Testament moral law on usury. And they will miss the point of
Christ's throwing out the tables of the money changers from the
Temple in Matthew 21: 12.
The Remnant is distinguished from the Multitude of professing
Christians by having more understanding of the truths in the Bible, by
a greater love of that truth, and by a greater desire to obey the
Lord, including obedience to his
moral teachings.
It is true that the Bible focuses more on the moral transgression of
the lender in taking usury than on that of the borrower, especially if
the borrower must borrow to eat and have a place to live. But still,
using credit cards - if they are not necessary for basic needs - is
not in complete obedience to the Lord. Use of credit cards helps to
perpetuate that debt system, and use of them is a bad example to
others.
The local banker does not go out and invite people to borrow
money from him. Instead, people come to him asking if he will lend
them money to buy a car, home or something else. But in recent years
the credit card banks have been sending out millions of invitations
and offers, often deceptive, to induce people, in many cases those on
low incomes, to sign on to a credit card with interest rates that are
usually higher than that of the local banker, and for which there is
no contract preventing an increase in interest rates or minimum
monthly payment.
The debt-usury system is anti-God and should be seen as such. In
massive debt, most Americans are the servants of the bankers and of
mammon. "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servant to
obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey: whether of sin unto death,
or of obedience unto righteousness (Romans 6: 16)."
If you already have credit card debt you cannot pay off at once, you
can still drop out of the usury-debt system in a spiritual way.
Renounce all use of credit cards and never use them again, though you
should eventually pay them off.
USURY BEGAN IN ANCIENT BABYLON
The Babylon of Prophecy in Revelation 18 deals in merchandise
(Verses 11-14) -
and the souls of men. Babylon has her own merchants
and others come to trade with them.
Verse 23 says "...for thy merchants were the great men of the
earth..."
The Greek word translated as merchants is emporoi, and probably the
English word emporium comes from it. On page 508 of A Linguistic Key
to the Greek New Testament, Vol 2, by Fritz Rienecker, emporoi in
Revelation 18: 23 is defined as "merchants who deal in foreign
exports." They are world traders.
Verse 23 also says of Babylon that "...by thy sorceries were all
nations deceived." Sorceries is from the Greek word pharmakeia, from
which we get our pharmacies. Sorceries refer then to drugs, both
legal pharmaceutical drugs, and illegal ones. The large
pharmaceutical corporations in the U.S. and Europe play a large
role in the world of huge international corporations at the present
time, and some of them, like Bayer, go back to Nazi Germany. Herman
Schmitz, a big Swiss banker, owned a large empire in Nazi Germany
called I. G. Farben that included Bayer and some other large
pharmaceutical corporations. In addition, sorceries means
witchcraft, and the kind of witchcraft and mind-dulling effect
performed on people by Hollywood and other mass media. Deception is
part of that media witchcraft or mind-control.
Verse 23 tells us that in Babylon the light of a candle shall shine
no more, and the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall be heard
no more. Who is the bridegroom in the New Testament? It is Jesus
Christ, and his bride is made up of saved people, and might be
specifically the 144,000 of Revelation 7, though many, many more than
the 144,000 are saved Christians.
In Revelation 18: 4 God calls his people out of Babylon, so they will
not have to go through the plagues or partake of her sins.
Why are the voices of the bridegroom and his bride no longer heard in
Babylon? It is because they have left Babylon, in obedience to the
call of the Lord. Largely, they have departed out of the world
system that is Babylon. As much as possible they have left the
economic system of Babylon. Debt with usury is a part of that world
system which
Christians should depart out of. Remnant Christians have come out from
the apostate churches
which are Mystery Babylon. And Remnant Christians who were members of
secret societies like the Masons have left that part of Mystery
Babylon. They have left the culture of Babylon
which has the spirit of antichrist. It is antichristian, as
Revelation 18: 24 says, for in her was found the blood of the
prophets and the saints. Finally, if they were involved in political
or military Babylon, they have removed themselves spiritually from
that influence, that is, the
Lord has freed them of the influence of Babylon..
In a literal way, the call to leave Babylon can mean to leave the
urban areas like New York City, San Francisco, Dallas or Chicago. But
I don't think leaving Babylon means to leave the U.S. Where can we
go?
Bankers, usury, the power of money, and the rule of big money are
not mentioned in Revelation 18. But because so much emphasis is
placed on merchandising and on merchants or world traders, we know
that money drives Babylon. Money was necessary for the Roman Empire
and necessary for modern world empires like that the the U.S. now.
The power of the U.S. depends on its money power.
Banking and usury may have started in earnest in ancient historical
Babylon, in the city of Babylon or in nearby cities.
The quote below is from:
http://viking.som.yale.edu/will/finciv/chapter1.htm
"In the 1920's, Sir Leonard Woolley, excavating the Mesopotamian city
of Ur, the fabled birthplace of Abraham, found himself standing in the
remains of what must have been an upper middle class neighborhood near
the center of the ancient city. His Iraqi excavators uncovered the
narrow walls and small rooms that signified domestic architecture --
rather than the majestic palace architecture that typically attracted
the attention of Near Eastern excavators...
Professor Marc Van De Mieroop of Columbia University has used
Woolley's careful excavation notes to match the dozens of excavated
clay tablets to the homes where they were found. From these, he has
been able to identify what must have been a very early "Wall Street" -- a
financial district in the ancient city that was the home of Ur's
second millennium lenders and entrepreneurs. From their records, he
has been able to reconstruct a fascinating story about one of the
world's first financial centers.
Most of the cuneiform texts found in the financial district date from
the early years of the reign of the King Rim-Sin (1822-1763 B.C.), who
ruled from the capital city of Larsa, a few miles north of Ur shortly
before Hammurabi's time."
Many of the clay tablets found were records of loans for which the
lenders collected interest, or usury. The article on usury in ancient
historical Babylon goes on to say that:
"It is difficult to escape the conclusion that, while the first loan
contracts and the legal system that enforced them may have been good
for the Mesopotamian economy, they made life miserable for the working
man and woman."
Since historical Babylon is the model for the Babylon of
prophecy, we can ask if the economic system of the Roman Empire -
which Church Fathers said was a fulfillment of the prophecy on
Babylon - was based upon usury. Some historians think that usury
helped to corrupt the Roman Empire.
USURY IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
The information below is from this link:
http://www.1911ency.org/U/US/USURY.htm
At one point Rome had laws against the charging of excessive interest rates.
But regulation of usury failed and over two or three centuries the
small free farmers were put out of business by taxation and usury.
Taxation by the government and usury drove Romans below the upper
classes into debt and into debt slavery if not actual slavery. In the
Roman provinces the exploitation of common people by usury was even greater.
Julius Caesar in his reign as dictator (about 44 to 42 or so BC) tried
to lessen the
effects of usury on the people, but according to the web site given
above "...it was too late then to save the middle class."
This same site also says that "About this time the rate of interest on
first-class security in
the city of Rome was only about 4%, whilst in the provinces from 25 to
50% were rates often exacted."
"About this time" must refer to the reign of Julius Caesar, which was
in about 44 to 42 BC.
The next site on usury in Rome is:.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/ch05.htm
In addition to the robbery of the Roman provinces by officials, a
special class of
usury capitalists grew up in Rome and in the provinces. The site
above says that
"The moneyed men of Rome founded societies, corresponding to our
banking corporations, with directors, cashiers, agents, etc. At the
time of Sulla there was the company of the Asiani [the Asia Company]
with a large enough capital to lend the state 20,000 talents
[$25,000,000]. Twelve years later they had run this debt up to 120,000
talents."
Again the site says "It was primarily in order to gain money that
Caesar undertook the war
against Gaul, which hitherto had been free of Roman rule and so
unplundered
The army became more and more the master of the republic."
Next, the information on usury in Rome is from:
http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Marx/mrxCpC36.html
Often upper class Romans made money from the work of slaves and then
invested that money in loans with usury.
"...usury thus exerts an undermining and destructive
influence on ancient and feudal wealth and ancient and feudal
property. On the other hand it undermines and ruins small peasants'
and small burghers' production..."
Then, the site says "...the Roman patricians ruined the plebeians, by
compelling them to serve
as soldiers and thus preventing them from reproducing the requirements
of their productive activity and making paupers of them (and
pauperization, depletion or loss of the prerequisites of reproduction
is here the predominent form), filled the sheds and cellars of the
patricians with looted copper, the money of that time. Instead of
giving to the plebeians directly the necessary commodities, grain,
horses, cattle, they loaned to them this copper, for which they had no
use themselves, and availed themselves of this condition for the
purpose of enforcing enormous interest by usury, thereby turning the
plebeians into their debtor slaves."
Apparently the Roman patricians corresponded to our present day ruling class of
doctors, lawyers, some professors, government bureaucrats, heads of
corporations, and members of Congress.
Under usury enforced by the power of government, the producer's means
of producing, his shop, farm, retail business, and house can become
the property of the lender, so that the producer who borrowed on usury
becomes the creditor's slave.
Usury centralized money wealth in ancient Rome and the masses of the
people lost ownership of their lands, homes and places of businesses
to the creditors.
OLIGARCHICAL FAMILIES PRACTICE USURY
This is from: http://www.abjpress.com/tarpv5.html
Down through history there were oligarchical families with great
wealth that passed
that wealth down from generation to generation. There probably were oligarchical
families in ancient Babylon. There were such families in the Persian
Empire, in Phoenicia, Greece and Rome.
Oligarchical families increased their great wealth through usury.
In the once city-state of Venice there were from about 1200 to 1600
A.D. influential oligarchical families. Many of these families of Venice
moved to Holland in the 17th century where they were involved with the
Bank of Amsterdam, the forerunner of the Bank of England.
Oligarchical families from Venice also moved to England at about that
time.
Webster Tarpley in Against Oligarchy claims that between 1509 and 1715
the "Venetian Party" gained great influence in England. Tarpley says
the Venetian families brought into England the traditions of the
Babylonians, Romans, and Byzantines. The Venetians were always
involved in banking.
If Tarpley is right, the tradition of rule by oligarchical families
came into England (and Holland) from Venice. The practice of usury
came into Northern Europe and England with the Venetians.
In addition, the Rothschilds in Germany were and are a very important Jewish
oligarchical family who pretty much took over international banking.
See:
http://www.the7thfire.com/new_world_order/final_warning/illuminati_origin.htm
Lord Jacob Rothschild of England is now considered a top ranking member of the
ruling elite.
In Bloodlines of the Illuminati, Fritz Springmeir discusses many of
these international oligarchical families. From:
http://www.whale.to/b/sp/blood.html#
Springmeir covers the Rockefeller, Rothschild, Merovinian, Astor,
Russell, Cabot, Collins, Reynolds, Onassis, Kennedy, Freeman and
DuPont families.
On http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/bb980306.htm it says the most
powerful families of the ruling elite, there called "The Black
Nobility" are in Germany, Holland, England, Switzerland and Greece.
This site claims the Black Nobility families are descended from the
Venetian oligarchs who were of the Khazar blood line. According to
this site, Price Bernhard of Holland and Queen Elizabeth of England
head the Black Nobility.
THE USURY POWER IN ENGLAND AND COLONIAL AMERICA
The Usury Power In England and Colonial America
Bernard Pyron
"The lands of Italy, which had been originally divided among the
families of free and indigent proprietors, were purchased or usurped
by the avarice of the nobles; and in the age which proceeded the fall
of the republic, it was computed only two thousand citizens were
possessed of any independent substance."
Edward Gibbon,
Decline And Fall Of the Roman Empire
There were two main reasons why the common people lost their lands to
the elite during the Roman Empire. The reasons were usury and
taxation. American, British and European financial elites are still
at it stealing the people's money, lands and possessions through
usury and other scams. In Revelation 9: 20-21 the rest of the men who
were not killed by the plagues "Neither repented they of their
murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of
their thefts." From this statement, we might infer that murder,
sorcery, fornication and theft are to be important transgressions
during the Tribulation. It may be that theft of all kinds of more
valuable stuff will increase by common thieves - and it may also be
that theft of the money of the people by the financial elite will
increase by various means, including usury, especially though the use
of some type of credit cards. The usury power will not repent of
usury or of other types of extortion of money. And the government is
likely to change the laws to make it easier for the usury power to
steal money from the people. Remember, in 1978 the Supreme Court in
Marquette vs. First Omaha Service Corp ruled that only the usury laws
of the state where the credit card bank is located apply, and not the
usury laws of the state where the cardholder resides. Since a few
states have no usury laws, and the credit card banks moved here, the
Court decision wiped out restraints on how much interest can be
charged on credit card debt. At this point in time, many states still
have in place legal exceptions to the attachment of your home and some
limitations on the taking of your other possessions. The federal
government may override these restrictions to help the usury bankers
take possession of more of our assets.
The usury lenders in pre-Christian Rome had more
power over their debtors than is true in the United States in 2006.
During the days of the Roman Empire, a
creditor could force the entire estate of a debtor
to be sold to someone who would then pay part of the debt to the
creditors. But the debtor still owed a part of his original debt,
even though he and his family may have lost their home and other
possessions. This made it difficult to earn enough money to
completely pay off the debts. The victim of usury - plus Roman
taxation - was often reduced to starvation and forced to borrow again
on usury.
If the poor debtor did not pay his debts,
he could be exiled, imprisoned, enslaved or
executed. This information can be found at:
http://www.chapter7-11.com/downloads/bankruptcy%20and%20the%20bible.pdf
We will see that in Shay's Rebellion in Massachusetts and New
Hampshire during 1786 - after the Revolutionary War - the usury powers
were having constables seize farms and some debtors were thrown in
prison. Unlike the Roman situation though, the American victims of
usury were not exiled or executed. The Militia and Continental Army
veterans of Shay's Rebellion thought that the promise in Deuteronomy
15: 1-2
on the release from all debt every seven years should be carried out
for them. Of course, the usury power (the bankers), lawyers, judges
and government - and Masons - did not agree with Deuteronomy 15: 1-2,
or with Leviticus 25: 8-55.
To prevent a more long lasting or permanent state of debt to the usury
powers as happened in the Roman Empire and in the U.S. after the
Revolutionary War, God's law requires a sabbatical seven year release
of all debts. Deuteronomy 15: 1-2 promises a cancellation of all debt
every seven years. "At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a
release. And this is the manner of the release: every creditor that
lendeth (ought) to his neighbor shall release it: he shall not exact
it of his neighbor...because it is called the Lord's release."
"Ought" is in italics indicating it is not in the Hebrew.
The main issue for the farmers of Shay's Rebellion was that the local
government and courts were taking their farms. Leviticus 25: 8-55
also applies here. This text says that at every Jubilee or fiftieth
year, the land must be returned to the owner or family that owned it,
to prevent dispossession from their land. In many states of the U.S.
the usury banks can take a large part of a debtor's land, though they
must leave him his house and a few acres.
Ezekiel 46: 16-18 promises that even the Prince of Israel is not to
dispossess people from their inheritance. An owner can sell his land,
but if his land was taken to satisfy a debt, the land must be returned
at the Jubilee, and according to Deuteronomy 15: 1-2 the debt should
be forgiven in seven years.
In Proverbs 28: 8 it says "He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth
his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor."
Usury is in the category of unjust gain; it is taking gain from the
unjust loan or rent of money. Usury in Nehemiah 5: 4-10 causes hard
times for lower income people. And in Ezekiel 22: 12-20 usury is one
of the transgressions of the nation for which God judged and punished
Judea.
English Common Law Opposed Usury
The opposition of the Bible to usury was made a part of English common
law. But during the Middle Ages lands and various kinds of
possessions were seized in England by money lenders who charged high
rates of interest. In the tenth century King Alfred seized instead
the lands and possessions of those who loaned money with usury and
prevented lenders from being buried in consecrated ground. In the
eleventh century, King Edward the Confessor provided that usurers
forfeit their property, be declared outlaws and banished from
England. Then, in thirteenth and fourteenth England loaning money
was made punishable by death. On June 15, of 1215 the British
Nobility got King John at Runnymede to sign the Magna Charta. It gave
certain rights to the common man, one of which was the right to trial
by a jury of one's peers.. This information is at:
http://theseventhtrumpet.net/ebook/abusedem.html
Sir Edward Coke in Coke's Institutes, 152, says "It appears that, by
the ancient laws of the realm, usury was unlawful and punishable."
Bank of England Was Created In 1694
Centralized usury banking was created in England as early as 1694 when
the Bank of England was established. The bank was created by English
merchants and goldsmiths, with help from the Dutch-born King William
III, who had married Mary, the British Stuart descendant. The Bank
of England was born before Nathan Rothschild, the English Rothschild
was even born. And Nathan Rothschild had nothing to do with the Bank
of England during the period leading up to the American Revolution
because he was not born until later.
The Bank of England created paper money out of nothing and loaned it
to the English government at usury. But why would a government create
a private bank and authorize it to create money out of nothing and
charge the government interest for the use of that money? Because the
Bank of England was the model for the American Federal Reserve System
enacted in 1913 we will have to ask that same question for the
Congress and President of the United States.
The City of London
The City of London which includes the financial area is a privately
owned Corporation - and is a sovereign
state. The "City" makes up 677 acres in the heart of the 610 square mile
"Greater London" area. The population of the City is about five thousand but
Greater London has about 8 million people.
"The Crown" is a committee of 12-14 men who rule
"The City of London". "The City" is not a
part of England and is not subject to the King or Queen and not under
Parliament. It is an independent state, like the Vatican.
The City is ruled by a Lord Mayor elected for one year. When the Queen
visits the City of London she bows to him and asks permission to enter
his private sovereign State. He grants permission to enter by handing
her the sword of State. During such State visits, the Lord Mayor with
his robes and chain, his entourage in medieval costume leads the Queen
into the City of London where he is the king and she is his subject
The Rothschild-controlled Bank of England, Lloyd's underwriters, the
London Stock Exchange, leading international trading outfits, plus the
headquarters of the newspaper and publishing world are located here.
The small ruling elite of the City of London influence the British
Parliament, Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Some say the ruling
elite of the City of London also influence money policy and economics
in the U.S.
Usury Bank of England and the American Revolution
During the 1750's the American colonies were prosperous, with no
income tax, stable prices, little extortion by usury and very little
unemployment. During this time the colonies were creating their own
interest-free paper money, called "colonial script." Colonial script
reminds me of the "Taliesin Script" that the famous Wisconsin
architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, issued to his workers during the Great
Depression. Wright had little income from architectural clients
during most of the thirties, and so issued paper money to workers that
they could use to buy food from Wright's farm.
Beginning in 1764, however, the English government, under influence
from the Bank of England began to prohibit the creation of colonial
script.
The Currency Act of 1764 said "That from after the first day of
September 1764, no act, order, resolution, or vote of assembly in any
of his majesty's colonies or plantations shall be made for creating or
issuing any paper bills, or bills of credit of any denomination
whatsoever..."
It goes on to say that any act creating money by colonial governments
"shall be null and void." This is from:
http://ahp.gatech.edu/currency_act_1764.html
In part because there were not sufficient gold and silver coins in
the colonies at this time, the Currency Act prohibiting the creation
of paper money caused a severe economic recession in the thirteen
colonies that lasted through the war years.
The Government of George III - who, according to Thomas Jefferson in
the Declaration of Independence, had brought on the colonies a "long
train of abuses" - tried to force the Americans to become victims of
the usury Bank of England. For a period before the Revolution, the
Bank of England may have put money into existence in the colonies
through loans with usury. Without an adequate supply of gold and
silver coins and not being able to create paper money as before, and
on top of that perhaps having to pay the Bank of England usury, the
colonies went into a recession.
Interference with the money supply in the American colonies by the
central usury bank appears to be the larger cause of the American
Revolution. The intent of the Bank of England in having the English
government outlaw the creation of paper money by the colonies seems to
have been to force them to stop issuing their own mostly
interest-free money and instead to rely upon usury notes. But did
the Bank of England issue interest-bearing notes either to colonial
governments or to individuals in America from 1764 to 1776? And to
what extent did colonial governments or the people actually buy these
Bank of England notes that involved the paying of usury?
Here is one web site that claims to deal with this question at:
http://india.indymedia.org/en/2002/03/785.shtml
"By dictate of the plutocracy of England, in America, as everywhere
else in the world, debt would be perpetually and irreversibly
multiplied upon the unassenting subjects of the system, to their ever
greater detriment.
The colonists would pay some thirty-percent annual interest for the
imposed currency. Benjamin Franklin reported, "Within a year, the poor
houses were filled. The hungry and homeless walked the streets
everywhere.'"
This statement does not tell us very much, and I doubt if we could
find out more about the Bank of England issuing usury notes into the
colonies from about 1764 to 1776 from college history textbooks. No,
it would take a time-consuming search of more focused historical
papers in the history journals.
I did not find on the Internet more explicit information on the
mechanism used by the Bank of England to force the colonists to use
its usury notes, or whether these notes were issued to colonial
governments or the people. There were few if any banks in the
American colonies from 1764 to 1776. So how did the British introduce
their usury notes into the American economy?
Here is another web site that deals with a somewhat different aspect
of the issue of the interference with the money supply in America by
the Bank of England at:
http://www.nccs.net/monetary_reform1.html#1
"The bankers behind the privately owned Bank of England wanted to
force the colonies to borrow "bank notes" from them. Beginning around
1720, the Parliament was induced by the Bank of England to suppress
all colonial money. Many years of defiance on the part of the colonies
finally terminated in 1749, when Parliament passed the Resumption Act,
which required that taxes and contracts all had to be paid in gold or
silver. Gold and silver were so scarce in the colonies that the
results were disastrous. A deep depression ensued. Prices fell. Trade
stagnated. This was one of the major causes of the Revolutionary War."
In addition, the English government owed a huge debt to the Bank of
England for financing several wars. The English government then tried
to tax the American colonists to help pay the usury debt to the Bank.
In high school and college courses on history we learn about the Stamp
Act, the Sugar Act and other tax acts that the English government
imposed on the colonies. But the main problem was the recession
caused by the interference with the money supply by the Bank of
England.
Shay's Rebellion
In 1786 - after the end of the Revolutionary Way - Secretary of War
Henry Knox wrote to President George Washington saying that the
Shays
rebels "are determined to annihilate all debts public and private."
Thats exactly what Deuteronomy 15: 1-2 and Leviticus 25: 8-55 say.
In Massachusetts constables were seizing the farms of veterans of the
Militia and Continental Army because they had not been able to keep up
payments on their mortgages. Some farmers were also put in jail as
debtors. This is from:
http://www.loompanics.com/Articles/Shays.htm
In response to being victimized by usury lenders Daniel Shays led
about a thousand farmers and mechanics to the
Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas on August 29, 1786 and took it
over. In September 600 farmers closed the courts in Worcester.
Then in Concord, where the Revolution began, 800
laborers formed into into a militia and closed the debt
court at Great Barrington. Five hundred farmers marched on the court
in Bristol county and shut it down.
By September of 1786 Shay's Rebellion had spread to New Hampshire,
the "Live Free or Die" state where the farmers took over the capital
and held the governor and the
legislature captive.
In western Massachusetts, Daniel Shays led 1500 farmers and laborers
to Springfield where they occupied the courthouse for three days. By
December of 1786 Shays had nine thousand men following him. All this
was because of the usury practiced by lenders who were exploiting the
farmers in an economy still suffering from the interference with the
money supply by the Bank of England. Daniel Shays had been a Captain
in the Revolutionary War.
The Continental Army and Militia veterans in Shay's Rebellion wanted
Deuteronomy 15: 1-2
on the release from all debt every seven years to be carried out in
the now supposedly free American colonies. But Shay's men soon found
out that the colonies were not as free as they might have hoped,
because the judges, lawyers, Masons and courts were acting as
enforcers for the usury lenders.
The American Revolutionaries who were in Shay's Militia thought they
had risked their lives fighting for the overthrow of debt, usury and
dispossession from their
land. But supposedly free America had its own homegrown elite of
money lenders, merchants, lawyers and judges who thought they
deserved to rule over the common people. Many lawyers and judges were
Masons and so the Masonic lodge was a part of this elite.
Leviticus 25: 10, promising the return of one's inherited land every
fifty years, was inscribed on the Liberty Bell. See:
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/1/9/3123/67264
While Deuteronomy 15: 1-2 promises a cancellation of all debt every
seven years, Leviticus 25: 10, the Jubilee Year, promises a return of
one's inheritance (land).
The quote below is from: http://www.calliope.org/shays/shays2.html
"The critical battle of the rebellion was Shays' attack on the
government arsenal at Springfield in January 1787, the only means of
standing off troops who were advancing from Boston under General
Benjamin Lincoln. At the arsenal, the defending militia commanded by
General William Shepard unexpectedly fired their cannons into the
ranks of the advancing rebels, killing four and wounding others.
Crying "murder" -- for the insurgent farmer-veterans never supposed
their neighbors and fellow veterans would fire on them -- the Shays
men retreated in disarray, pursued by Lincoln's government soldiers."
Shays and some of his followers went to Vermont. But about 200 of
Shay's men were captured and tried in Massachusetts.
" General Lincoln himself, the subduer of Shays' Rebellion, came out
in favor of mercy. On the other hand Samuel Adams, the influential
Revolutionary patriot and head of the governor's advisory council,
called for the execution of convicted traitors to the republic." So
much for the Yankee "patriot" Samuel Adams. The followers of Shays
were eventually pardoned.
Shay's Rebellion was a major reason why the federal Constitution was
created. "For George Washington, who gave the insurrection as a
reason for his own attendance at the Philadelphia convention, 'there
could be no stronger evidence of the want of energy in our governments
than these disorders.'" This statement is quoted on:
http://www.calliope.org/shays/shays2.html
Bernard Pyron
"The lands of Italy, which had been originally divided among the
families of free and indigent proprietors, were purchased or usurped
by the avarice of the nobles; and in the age which proceeded the fall
of the republic, it was computed only two thousand citizens were
possessed of any independent substance."
Edward Gibbon,
Decline And Fall Of the Roman Empire
There were two main reasons why the common people lost their lands to
the elite during the Roman Empire. The reasons were usury and
taxation. American, British and European financial elites are still
at it stealing the people's money, lands and possessions through
usury and other scams. In Revelation 9: 20-21 the rest of the men who
were not killed by the plagues "Neither repented they of their
murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of
their thefts." From this statement, we might infer that murder,
sorcery, fornication and theft are to be important transgressions
during the Tribulation. It may be that theft of all kinds of more
valuable stuff will increase by common thieves - and it may also be
that theft of the money of the people by the financial elite will
increase by various means, including usury, especially though the use
of some type of credit cards. The usury power will not repent of
usury or of other types of extortion of money. And the government is
likely to change the laws to make it easier for the usury power to
steal money from the people. Remember, in 1978 the Supreme Court in
Marquette vs. First Omaha Service Corp ruled that only the usury laws
of the state where the credit card bank is located apply, and not the
usury laws of the state where the cardholder resides. Since a few
states have no usury laws, and the credit card banks moved here, the
Court decision wiped out restraints on how much interest can be
charged on credit card debt. At this point in time, many states still
have in place legal exceptions to the attachment of your home and some
limitations on the taking of your other possessions. The federal
government may override these restrictions to help the usury bankers
take possession of more of our assets.
The usury lenders in pre-Christian Rome had more
power over their debtors than is true in the United States in 2006.
During the days of the Roman Empire, a
creditor could force the entire estate of a debtor
to be sold to someone who would then pay part of the debt to the
creditors. But the debtor still owed a part of his original debt,
even though he and his family may have lost their home and other
possessions. This made it difficult to earn enough money to
completely pay off the debts. The victim of usury - plus Roman
taxation - was often reduced to starvation and forced to borrow again
on usury.
If the poor debtor did not pay his debts,
he could be exiled, imprisoned, enslaved or
executed. This information can be found at:
http://www.chapter7-11.com/downloads/bankruptcy%20and%20the%20bible.pdf
We will see that in Shay's Rebellion in Massachusetts and New
Hampshire during 1786 - after the Revolutionary War - the usury powers
were having constables seize farms and some debtors were thrown in
prison. Unlike the Roman situation though, the American victims of
usury were not exiled or executed. The Militia and Continental Army
veterans of Shay's Rebellion thought that the promise in Deuteronomy
15: 1-2
on the release from all debt every seven years should be carried out
for them. Of course, the usury power (the bankers), lawyers, judges
and government - and Masons - did not agree with Deuteronomy 15: 1-2,
or with Leviticus 25: 8-55.
To prevent a more long lasting or permanent state of debt to the usury
powers as happened in the Roman Empire and in the U.S. after the
Revolutionary War, God's law requires a sabbatical seven year release
of all debts. Deuteronomy 15: 1-2 promises a cancellation of all debt
every seven years. "At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a
release. And this is the manner of the release: every creditor that
lendeth (ought) to his neighbor shall release it: he shall not exact
it of his neighbor...because it is called the Lord's release."
"Ought" is in italics indicating it is not in the Hebrew.
The main issue for the farmers of Shay's Rebellion was that the local
government and courts were taking their farms. Leviticus 25: 8-55
also applies here. This text says that at every Jubilee or fiftieth
year, the land must be returned to the owner or family that owned it,
to prevent dispossession from their land. In many states of the U.S.
the usury banks can take a large part of a debtor's land, though they
must leave him his house and a few acres.
Ezekiel 46: 16-18 promises that even the Prince of Israel is not to
dispossess people from their inheritance. An owner can sell his land,
but if his land was taken to satisfy a debt, the land must be returned
at the Jubilee, and according to Deuteronomy 15: 1-2 the debt should
be forgiven in seven years.
In Proverbs 28: 8 it says "He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth
his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor."
Usury is in the category of unjust gain; it is taking gain from the
unjust loan or rent of money. Usury in Nehemiah 5: 4-10 causes hard
times for lower income people. And in Ezekiel 22: 12-20 usury is one
of the transgressions of the nation for which God judged and punished
Judea.
English Common Law Opposed Usury
The opposition of the Bible to usury was made a part of English common
law. But during the Middle Ages lands and various kinds of
possessions were seized in England by money lenders who charged high
rates of interest. In the tenth century King Alfred seized instead
the lands and possessions of those who loaned money with usury and
prevented lenders from being buried in consecrated ground. In the
eleventh century, King Edward the Confessor provided that usurers
forfeit their property, be declared outlaws and banished from
England. Then, in thirteenth and fourteenth England loaning money
was made punishable by death. On June 15, of 1215 the British
Nobility got King John at Runnymede to sign the Magna Charta. It gave
certain rights to the common man, one of which was the right to trial
by a jury of one's peers.. This information is at:
http://theseventhtrumpet.net/ebook/abusedem.html
Sir Edward Coke in Coke's Institutes, 152, says "It appears that, by
the ancient laws of the realm, usury was unlawful and punishable."
Bank of England Was Created In 1694
Centralized usury banking was created in England as early as 1694 when
the Bank of England was established. The bank was created by English
merchants and goldsmiths, with help from the Dutch-born King William
III, who had married Mary, the British Stuart descendant. The Bank
of England was born before Nathan Rothschild, the English Rothschild
was even born. And Nathan Rothschild had nothing to do with the Bank
of England during the period leading up to the American Revolution
because he was not born until later.
The Bank of England created paper money out of nothing and loaned it
to the English government at usury. But why would a government create
a private bank and authorize it to create money out of nothing and
charge the government interest for the use of that money? Because the
Bank of England was the model for the American Federal Reserve System
enacted in 1913 we will have to ask that same question for the
Congress and President of the United States.
The City of London
The City of London which includes the financial area is a privately
owned Corporation - and is a sovereign
state. The "City" makes up 677 acres in the heart of the 610 square mile
"Greater London" area. The population of the City is about five thousand but
Greater London has about 8 million people.
"The Crown" is a committee of 12-14 men who rule
"The City of London". "The City" is not a
part of England and is not subject to the King or Queen and not under
Parliament. It is an independent state, like the Vatican.
The City is ruled by a Lord Mayor elected for one year. When the Queen
visits the City of London she bows to him and asks permission to enter
his private sovereign State. He grants permission to enter by handing
her the sword of State. During such State visits, the Lord Mayor with
his robes and chain, his entourage in medieval costume leads the Queen
into the City of London where he is the king and she is his subject
The Rothschild-controlled Bank of England, Lloyd's underwriters, the
London Stock Exchange, leading international trading outfits, plus the
headquarters of the newspaper and publishing world are located here.
The small ruling elite of the City of London influence the British
Parliament, Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Some say the ruling
elite of the City of London also influence money policy and economics
in the U.S.
Usury Bank of England and the American Revolution
During the 1750's the American colonies were prosperous, with no
income tax, stable prices, little extortion by usury and very little
unemployment. During this time the colonies were creating their own
interest-free paper money, called "colonial script." Colonial script
reminds me of the "Taliesin Script" that the famous Wisconsin
architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, issued to his workers during the Great
Depression. Wright had little income from architectural clients
during most of the thirties, and so issued paper money to workers that
they could use to buy food from Wright's farm.
Beginning in 1764, however, the English government, under influence
from the Bank of England began to prohibit the creation of colonial
script.
The Currency Act of 1764 said "That from after the first day of
September 1764, no act, order, resolution, or vote of assembly in any
of his majesty's colonies or plantations shall be made for creating or
issuing any paper bills, or bills of credit of any denomination
whatsoever..."
It goes on to say that any act creating money by colonial governments
"shall be null and void." This is from:
http://ahp.gatech.edu/currency_act_1764.html
In part because there were not sufficient gold and silver coins in
the colonies at this time, the Currency Act prohibiting the creation
of paper money caused a severe economic recession in the thirteen
colonies that lasted through the war years.
The Government of George III - who, according to Thomas Jefferson in
the Declaration of Independence, had brought on the colonies a "long
train of abuses" - tried to force the Americans to become victims of
the usury Bank of England. For a period before the Revolution, the
Bank of England may have put money into existence in the colonies
through loans with usury. Without an adequate supply of gold and
silver coins and not being able to create paper money as before, and
on top of that perhaps having to pay the Bank of England usury, the
colonies went into a recession.
Interference with the money supply in the American colonies by the
central usury bank appears to be the larger cause of the American
Revolution. The intent of the Bank of England in having the English
government outlaw the creation of paper money by the colonies seems to
have been to force them to stop issuing their own mostly
interest-free money and instead to rely upon usury notes. But did
the Bank of England issue interest-bearing notes either to colonial
governments or to individuals in America from 1764 to 1776? And to
what extent did colonial governments or the people actually buy these
Bank of England notes that involved the paying of usury?
Here is one web site that claims to deal with this question at:
http://india.indymedia.org/en/2002/03/785.shtml
"By dictate of the plutocracy of England, in America, as everywhere
else in the world, debt would be perpetually and irreversibly
multiplied upon the unassenting subjects of the system, to their ever
greater detriment.
The colonists would pay some thirty-percent annual interest for the
imposed currency. Benjamin Franklin reported, "Within a year, the poor
houses were filled. The hungry and homeless walked the streets
everywhere.'"
This statement does not tell us very much, and I doubt if we could
find out more about the Bank of England issuing usury notes into the
colonies from about 1764 to 1776 from college history textbooks. No,
it would take a time-consuming search of more focused historical
papers in the history journals.
I did not find on the Internet more explicit information on the
mechanism used by the Bank of England to force the colonists to use
its usury notes, or whether these notes were issued to colonial
governments or the people. There were few if any banks in the
American colonies from 1764 to 1776. So how did the British introduce
their usury notes into the American economy?
Here is another web site that deals with a somewhat different aspect
of the issue of the interference with the money supply in America by
the Bank of England at:
http://www.nccs.net/monetary_reform1.html#1
"The bankers behind the privately owned Bank of England wanted to
force the colonies to borrow "bank notes" from them. Beginning around
1720, the Parliament was induced by the Bank of England to suppress
all colonial money. Many years of defiance on the part of the colonies
finally terminated in 1749, when Parliament passed the Resumption Act,
which required that taxes and contracts all had to be paid in gold or
silver. Gold and silver were so scarce in the colonies that the
results were disastrous. A deep depression ensued. Prices fell. Trade
stagnated. This was one of the major causes of the Revolutionary War."
In addition, the English government owed a huge debt to the Bank of
England for financing several wars. The English government then tried
to tax the American colonists to help pay the usury debt to the Bank.
In high school and college courses on history we learn about the Stamp
Act, the Sugar Act and other tax acts that the English government
imposed on the colonies. But the main problem was the recession
caused by the interference with the money supply by the Bank of
England.
Shay's Rebellion
In 1786 - after the end of the Revolutionary Way - Secretary of War
Henry Knox wrote to President George Washington saying that the
Shays
rebels "are determined to annihilate all debts public and private."
Thats exactly what Deuteronomy 15: 1-2 and Leviticus 25: 8-55 say.
In Massachusetts constables were seizing the farms of veterans of the
Militia and Continental Army because they had not been able to keep up
payments on their mortgages. Some farmers were also put in jail as
debtors. This is from:
http://www.loompanics.com/Articles/Shays.htm
In response to being victimized by usury lenders Daniel Shays led
about a thousand farmers and mechanics to the
Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas on August 29, 1786 and took it
over. In September 600 farmers closed the courts in Worcester.
Then in Concord, where the Revolution began, 800
laborers formed into into a militia and closed the debt
court at Great Barrington. Five hundred farmers marched on the court
in Bristol county and shut it down.
By September of 1786 Shay's Rebellion had spread to New Hampshire,
the "Live Free or Die" state where the farmers took over the capital
and held the governor and the
legislature captive.
In western Massachusetts, Daniel Shays led 1500 farmers and laborers
to Springfield where they occupied the courthouse for three days. By
December of 1786 Shays had nine thousand men following him. All this
was because of the usury practiced by lenders who were exploiting the
farmers in an economy still suffering from the interference with the
money supply by the Bank of England. Daniel Shays had been a Captain
in the Revolutionary War.
The Continental Army and Militia veterans in Shay's Rebellion wanted
Deuteronomy 15: 1-2
on the release from all debt every seven years to be carried out in
the now supposedly free American colonies. But Shay's men soon found
out that the colonies were not as free as they might have hoped,
because the judges, lawyers, Masons and courts were acting as
enforcers for the usury lenders.
The American Revolutionaries who were in Shay's Militia thought they
had risked their lives fighting for the overthrow of debt, usury and
dispossession from their
land. But supposedly free America had its own homegrown elite of
money lenders, merchants, lawyers and judges who thought they
deserved to rule over the common people. Many lawyers and judges were
Masons and so the Masonic lodge was a part of this elite.
Leviticus 25: 10, promising the return of one's inherited land every
fifty years, was inscribed on the Liberty Bell. See:
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/1/9/3123/67264
While Deuteronomy 15: 1-2 promises a cancellation of all debt every
seven years, Leviticus 25: 10, the Jubilee Year, promises a return of
one's inheritance (land).
The quote below is from: http://www.calliope.org/shays/shays2.html
"The critical battle of the rebellion was Shays' attack on the
government arsenal at Springfield in January 1787, the only means of
standing off troops who were advancing from Boston under General
Benjamin Lincoln. At the arsenal, the defending militia commanded by
General William Shepard unexpectedly fired their cannons into the
ranks of the advancing rebels, killing four and wounding others.
Crying "murder" -- for the insurgent farmer-veterans never supposed
their neighbors and fellow veterans would fire on them -- the Shays
men retreated in disarray, pursued by Lincoln's government soldiers."
Shays and some of his followers went to Vermont. But about 200 of
Shay's men were captured and tried in Massachusetts.
" General Lincoln himself, the subduer of Shays' Rebellion, came out
in favor of mercy. On the other hand Samuel Adams, the influential
Revolutionary patriot and head of the governor's advisory council,
called for the execution of convicted traitors to the republic." So
much for the Yankee "patriot" Samuel Adams. The followers of Shays
were eventually pardoned.
Shay's Rebellion was a major reason why the federal Constitution was
created. "For George Washington, who gave the insurrection as a
reason for his own attendance at the Philadelphia convention, 'there
could be no stronger evidence of the want of energy in our governments
than these disorders.'" This statement is quoted on:
http://www.calliope.org/shays/shays2.html
THE CREATURE FROM JEKYL ISLAND: USURY POWER IN THE U.S.
The Creature From Jekyl Island: Usury Power In the U.S.
Bernard Pyron
American Presidents Who Opposed the Usury Power
Exodus 22: 25, Leviticus 25: 36-37, Deuteronomy 23: 19, Isaiah 24: 2,
Ezekiel 22: 12 and Nehemiah 5: 1-10 all teach that usury, or charging
interest on a loan, is wrong by God's law.
"I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and
public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence,
we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."
-Thomas Jefferson
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue
of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks
and corporations that will grow up around
them will deprive the people of all property until their children
wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
- Thomas Jefferson, The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill, 1809
"History records that the money changers have used every form of
abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their
control over governments by controlling money and its issuance."
- James Madison
President Andrew Jackson to the bankers who approached him in the
drawing room of the White House:
"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am
convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the
breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits
amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell
me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I
shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but
that is your sin! Should I let you go on you will ruin fifty thousand
families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and
thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I
will rout you out!"
Andrew Jackson ( 1767–1845) was the seventh President of the United
States (1829-1837).
Jackson took away the federal charter of the
Second Bank of the United States. In Jackson's veto
message he said the bank needed to be abolished
because:
It was unconstitutional
It concentrated an excessive amount of the nation's financial strength
into one single institution
It exposed the government to control by "foreign interests"
It exercised too much control over members of the Congress
It favored Northeastern states over Southern and Western states
Jackson followed Jefferson as a supporter of the ideal of an
agricultural republic and said the bank improved the fortunes of an
elite circle of commercial and industrial entrepreneurs at the
expense of farmers and laborers. After a fight with the bankers and
their supporters, Jackson
defeated the central usury bank by vetoing its 1832 re-charter by
Congress and by withdrawing U.S. funds in 1833. The bank's
money-lending functions were taken over by many local and
state banks.
"The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency
and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and
the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing
money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the
Government's greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these
principles...the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest [by
not having to borrow from privately-owned corporate banks]...Money
will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy
will rise superior to the money power."
- Abraham Lincoln, Senate Document 23, Page 91, 1865
"I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the
financial institutions in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is
the greatest enemy. The money power preys upon the nation in times of
peace, and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more
despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish
than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question
its methods or throw light upon its crimes."
- Abraham Lincoln
When the big bankers offered to loan the Lincoln government money at a
high interest rate, Lincoln turned them down and issued interest-free
United States notes. For that the bankers had him killed.
Lincoln printed over 400 million interest-free "Greenbacks." The
international bankers had wanted Lincoln to borrow the money from
them so that the American people would have owed a great deal of usury
to the bankers.
Soon after Lincoln's death, the government revoked the Greenback law
which ended Lincoln's debt-free, interest-free money. A new national
banking act was passed by Congress and all money became interest
bearing again. Some also call the interest-free U.S. notes issued by
John F. Kennedy "greenbacks." That got Kennedy killed too.
"Whomsoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute
master of all industry and commerce and when you realize that the
entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few
powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of
inflation and depression originate."
- James Garfield, assassinated within weeks of release of this
statement during the first year of his presidency in 1881
Charles J. Guiteau shot President
James Garfield on July 2, 1881.
The wound in President Garfield's back would not have been fatal had
he received better medical care. "James Garfield was shot by a
would-be assassin but
killed by his doctors. His ending is a case of monumental
malpractice...The first doctor stuck an unwashed finger, then a
nonsterile metal
instrument, deep into the wound.
At the autopsy, the bickering doctors discovered they had blundered
gravely: Guiteau's bullet had settled about four inches to the right
of the spinal cord, resting harmlessly in a bed of tissue. The first
doctor to examine the president, Willard Bliss, had first stuck an
unwashed finger, then a nonsterile metal instrument, deep into the
wound probing for the bullet.
Not only had he likely infected the president, but he dug a false
passage in tissue that later confused other physicians of the bullet's
actual trajectory. Having mistakenly concluded that the bullet
penetrated the liver, Bliss projected the president would die
quickly.' This is found at:
http://www.aarrgghh.com/no_way/garfield.htm
President Garfield, an opponent of usury banking, lived 80 days after
he was shot.
President William McKinley did not focus so much on usury banking as
did Jackson, Lincoln or Garfield. Rather, McKinley got into trouble
apparently for beginning to carry out parts of the platform of the
populist movement. President William McKinley began the trust-busting
era, and created
the groundwork for President Theodore Roosevelt's later
attacks on the monopoly corporations and big money interests.
Leon Czolgosz shot
President William McKinley on September 6, 1901 at the Pan-American
Exposition in Buffalo.
William Jennings Bryan believed that government should protect individuals and
the democratic process against monopolies. Bryan lost to the
Republican candidate William McKinley in the 1896 presidential
election. In part Bryan represented the 19th century American populist
movement that had started during the 1870s in Lampasas county, Texas
as the Farmer's Alliance. See
http://www.mit.edu/~mharding/harding-populism.pdf
The Farmer's Alliance started to challenge the
market system through cooperative buying and selling. This is from:
http://www3.niu.edu/~td0raf1/history498/130read.htm
As the Farmer's Alliance got going in the early 1880s, it spread
throughout the South and across the Great Plains. In Minnesota, for
example, the Alliance grew to 15,000 members by 1889. There was also
a strong Wisconsin populist movement that lingered on well into the
20th century.
In the South and in Texas - where populism began - there was in the
19th century the crop-lien system in which local merchants would give
credit to farmers to buy farm machinery, seed, food and other
household stuff in exchange for a mortgage on the farmer's crop. The
merchants charged the farmers more for what they bought under this
system than they charged others who paid cash, and so in effect it was
a local usury system.
Because most Texas and Southern farmers in the 19th century had little
cash, they were forced into the crop-lien-mortgage system. The
farmers in the Midwest suffered from low prices given to them for
their crops, like the Texas and Southern farmers, and many of the
Midwest farmers had problems with not having enough cash. In
addition, the farmers in all regions complained that futures
manipulation of their crop prices by the financial elite brought
prices down and helped cause poverty among farmers.
It was against this populist movement background that William Jennings
Bryan and William McKinley opposed one another in the 1896
Presidential election. A larger percentage of the people in 1896 were
farmers and many of them supported the populist movement. To satisfy
them, in part, McKinley apparently began a campaign against monopoly
capitalism, which may have got him assassinated.
Leon Czolgosz shot
President William McKinley on September 6, 1901 at the Pan-American
Exposition in Buffalo. Again, McKinley might have been saved by
competent medical care.
"The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to
destroy the American's freedom, and before I leave office I must
inform the citizen of his plight."
- John F. Kennedy, speaking at Columbia University, 10 days before his
assassination
President Kennedy created interest-free United States notes, backed up
by the silver reserve, contrary to the Federal Reserve money, which is
not backed up by anything. He had
decided to follow the Constitution, even though his Kennedy line is
one of the oligarchical families.
Kennedy signed Executive Order, number
11110(2) in June of 1963, four months before his assassination This
Order returned to the Government
the power to issue currency, without going through the Federal Reserve
Bank. Kennedy gave the Treasury the power to issue silver certificates
against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the
Treasury. For every ounce of silver
in the US Treasury vault, the government could introduce new money
into circulation. Kennedy brought nearly $4.3 billion U.S. notes into
circulation. So by signing this Executive Order, he was stepping on
the toes of the powerful Federal Reserve usury Bank.
I don't have to consult an Internet site to say that John F. Kennedy
was shot and assassinated by killers whose identities are still not
certain on November 22, 1963 - because I remember vividly where I was
that day when I heard the news.
Very soon after Lyndon Johnson became President, that Executive order
by Kennedy of June, 1963 authorizing the creating of interest-free
U.S. notes was rescinded and since then only Federal Reserve interest
bearing notes have been released.
The Creature From Jekyl Island
Jekyl Island if off the coast of Georgia. There, in 1910 the Federal
Reserve System was planned in a secret meeting. According to G.
Edward Griffin in The Creature from Jekyl Island, Chapter One, the
following men were at this secret meeting:
Senator Nelson W. Aldrich
Frank A. Vanderlip, representing William Rockefeller and Kuhn, Loeb and Co.
Henry P. Davidson of J. P. Morgan Co.
Paul M. Warburg, representing the Rothschilds in England.
Abraham Piatt, Assistant Secretary of U.S. Treasury
Benjamin Strong of J. P. Morgan First National Bank of New York
This group created a cartel that went into partnership in 1913 with
the United States federal government. Such a mafia usury cartel
needed the muscle of the federal government to set it up as the U.S.
central bank, to authorize it to create money out of nothing, loan
it to the government and lesser banks at usury, and to prevent other
banks or individuals from creating money.
In December of 1913, Congress,
with many members away for the Christmas holidays, passed what has
since been known as the Federal Reserve Act.
Of course, the bill to authorize a central U.S. bank with the powers
it was to have to create money was unconstitutional. Article One and
Section 8 of the Constitution gave Congress the power "To coin money,
regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin and Fix the Standard
of Weights and Measures." Part of the partnership arrangement between
the Federal Reserve and the government is that the government has
given away its Constitutional power to create money to this Monster
from Jekyl Island.
Article 1, Section 10, of the Constitution for the United States of
America states, in part:
"No State shall.. make any thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in
payment of Debts."
The United States Code, Title 12, Section 152, states: "Lawful money
shall be construed to mean gold or silver coin of the United States."
In turn, the federal government benefited from its partnership with
the Usury Cartel because the Federal Reserve provides the government
with whatever money it wants. With this partnership arrangement, the
government can spend money like crazy without having to obtain all of
it from the taxpayers. However, the taxpayers are still stuck with
the government's debt and interest to the Federal Reserve. The
super psychopaths and government officials who created the Federal
Reserve System have put one enormous scam over on the American people.
When the Federal Reserve lends a billion dollars to the federal
government, it creates this money out of nothing.
Marriner Eccles, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal
Reserve System, in testimony before the Banking and Currency Committee
of the House of Representatives on the Banking Act of 1935. Mr. Eccles
testified: "In purchasing offerings of Government bonds, the banking
system as a whole creates new money, or bank deposits. When the banks
buy a billion dollars of Government bonds as they are offered -- and
you have to consider the banking system as a whole, as a unit -- the
banks credit the deposit account of the Treasury with a billion
dollars. And they debit their Government bond account a billion
dollars, or actually create, by a bookkeeping entry, a billion
dollars."
President Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury Anderson in an
interview with U.S. News and World Report on August 31, 1959 was
asked: "Do you mean that banks, in buying Government securities, do
not lend out their customers' deposits? That they create the money
they use to buy the securities?"
Answer (by Secretary Anderson): "That is correct. Banks are different
from other lending institutions. When a savings and loan association,
an insurance company, or a credit union makes a loan, it lends the
very dollar that its customers have previously paid in. But when a
bank makes a loan, it simply adds to the borrower's deposit account in
the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone
else's deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone.
It's new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower."
These quotes are found at: http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/monie.htm
If an individual tried to create money in this way, the federal
government would put him in prison for fraud.
In fact, in several ways the Federal Reserve System is a fraud. It is
not really an agency of the federal government. Congress in 1913 gave
it the powers it has, but still it is a fraud because Congress did not
have the Constitutional power to authorize the Fed to create the
country's money.
"On May 23, 1933, Congressman McFadden brought impeachment charges
against many of the Federal Reserve board members on the House Floor,
Federal Reserve agents of many States, comptroller of the currency,
and several secretaries of the United States Treasury for high crimes
and misdemeanors, including the theft of eighty billion dollars from
the United States Government and with committing the same thefts in
1929, 1930, 1931, 1932 and 1933 and in the years previous to 1928,
amounting to billions of dollars. These charges were remanded to the
Judiciary committee for investigation, where these charges were
effectively buried and until this day have never been answered. [See
Congressional Record pp. 4055-4058 May 23, 1933]"
This is at: http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/monie.htm
The Federal Reserve also loans out its money to lesser banks, who
then loan money to individuals and businesses in return for usury and
a pledge that if they default on the loans the bank gets their house,
lands, car or other assets.
The big bankers who own the federal reserve obtain perpetual usury
without real risks of losing money because the money they loan was not
theirs to begin with; it was created out of nothing.
Ken Matto at http://www.worldnewsstand.net/money/fraud.htm says
that "The idea of a central bank is to so enslave the people of the
country
to a debt money system that you continue to collect taxes continuously
which just covers the interest. The duped people of the United States
are paying about $300 billion dollars per year to the IRS which is the
collection agency for the Federal Reserve." The IRS is part of that
enormous scam the Federal Reserve bankers and the federal government,
or members of Congress and some agencies, have put over on the
people.
Another part of the scam put over on us is that we have to pay
interest to the bankers on loans to buy houses or cars. Paying
interest cheats many families out of having better homes. They
could afford better houses if they could save up the money to buy
them. But not many families in the present economy can pay rent and
other expenses and save a good deal of money on top of that. And so
they have settle for cheaper, lesser quality homes and borrow money
from local bankers whose usury forces them to pay for three or four
homes to get one!
Anthony Sutton, former Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution for
War, Revolution and Peace of Stanford University, writes:
"The Federal Reserve System is a legal private monopoly of the money
supply operated for the benefit of the few under the guise of
protecting and promoting the public interest." From: This is from:
http://www.wealth4freedom.com/creature.htm
Who owns the federal Reserve? According to www.conspiracy-net.com
the following are owners of the Federal Reserve:
Rothschild Bank of London
Warburg Bank of Hamburg
Rothschild Bank of Berlin
Lehman Brothers of New York
Lazard Brothers of Paris
Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York
Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy
Goldman, Sachs of New York
Warburg Bank of Amsterdam
Chase Manhattan Bank of New York.
The Debt-Money System Causes Inflation and Recessions
Almost all of the money in the United States came into existence
because millions of people went into debt and are paying interest to
the usury banks in order for that that money to be in circulation.
If people borrow too little for a certain period of time, then the
economy will move into a recession because the money supply has been
reduced. But since the Great Depression of the thirties - caused by
the banks - some corrective mechanisms have been put into the system.
Unemployment pay and the social welfare system help lessen economic
recessions. In addition, the Federal Reserve may add money to the
money supply at times to help prevent recessions from getting worse.
But this causes inflation.
When recessions go on for a while, a part of the population is
reduced to poverty and face starvation unless they borrow from the
banks to survive. Increased credit card use by low income people has
been in more recent years a way of borrowing money. Borrowing by a
large number of lower income people thus puts some amount of
additional money into circulation, and helps some in fighting
recession. The problem for the lower income people is that their
increased debt can drive them so far into poverty that they cannot
fully recover from it.
A basic problem with the debt-interest method of creating money is
that, because interest has to be paid on almost all of it, the economy
must constantly grow if it is not to lapse into a recession or depression.
With the current debt-interest way of putting money into circulation,
the money supply in the country has to increase year after year to at
least equal the amount removed from the money supply by interest paid
to the bankers. And in fact the money supply has to inflate
continually for the economic system to function without going into a
depression.
The money the Federal reserve puts into circulation each year causes
a loss of the buying power of the dollar, and food, energy, housing
and other prices are constantly rising. The rate of inflation for
food, gasoline, heating, rent and medical care may be higher than for
other expenses - which causes severe hardships for low income people.
For more and more Americans, these prices are, in fact, rising at a
higher rate than their rate of increase in earnings. This the one of
the fruits of the debt-money-usury system. Some fifty years ago, only
one spouse, usually the husband and father, had to work to
provide money for the entire family. Now both spouses have to work in
many families to make ends meet. The percentage of families who own
their homes may be dropping as is the median or average age at which
couples first come to own a home.
The fact that the amount of money in circulation usually has to
increase each year to enable interest to be paid means that the total
value of sales in the economy has to go up too if the ratio of the
money supply to the volume of trading is to stay constant. The
required increase in sales value can come about in either, or both, of
two ways: inflation and expansion. If there is no increase in output
during the year, the increased amount of money in circulation could
simply push up prices.
Due to the way money is put into
circulation, we have an economic system that needs to grow or inflate
constantly. If the economy does not grow or inflate, then with the
debt-money scam, it will go into a recession.
The Super Psychopaths of the Financial Elite
The international bankers who created the federal reserve, those who
own it now and run it and various other members of the high financial
elite might be called super psychopaths. Lets find out what a common
psychopath is like and see to what extent that description fits the
members of the highest financial elite.
In the 1978 book, The Psychopath: A Comprehensive Study of Antisocial
Disorders and Behavior, by William. H. Reid, he reports that a study
of psychopathic children found they had a lack of guilt, or lack of
conscience, which is common to psychopaths. They also engaged in
"pathological lying," and they tended to steal things. The members of
the highest level of the financial elite probably do not steal things;
instead, they steal billions of dollars from the people.
Reid reports that adult psychopaths are manipulators who want to
control others. Does this trait sound like members of the highest
level of the ruling elite, or financial elite? Psychopaths get
satisfaction from having put something over on other people - by
deception. This is exactly what the financial elite has done with the
Federal Reserve scam involving creating money out of nothing, loaning
it at interest, using the IRS as a collection agency to collect money
from the people to pay the FED, and having lesser banks charge the
people so much usury that the majority of them suffer economic
hardships of some kind from it. And the members of the financial
elite have no guilt for doing all this to us. We let them do it to
us, didn't we?
At least three American presidents were assassinated after they
severely criticized the usury bankers or tried to go back to lawful,
Constitutional money-creation by having the government issue U.S.
notes. Lincoln and Kennedy were murdered soon after they had the
government issue U.S. notes, which suggests that the big bankers have
a criminal nature. Criminality is often a part of the makeup of the
psychopathic personality.
I went to a 1978 book on the psychopath in part because by 1994 and
the Fourth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders they no longer call this personality disorder a psychopathic
disorder. It is called Antisocial Personality Disorder. The Manual
says those with this disorder are characterized by "failure to conform
to social norms with respect to lawful behavior." Antisocial
Personality Disorder also involved "deceitfulness, as indicated by
repeated lying...or conning of others...and a lack of remorse by being
indifferent to...having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another."
The traits of the common psychopath appear to fit to some extent what
we know of the elite international usury bankers. They may try to
manipulate people, deceive them, tell lies, engage in massive theft,
and appear to have no conscience over their crimes against humanity.
But in the book edited by William H. Reid, Frank A. Elliott says
psychopaths have some cognitive deficiencies. They may have an
inability to distinguish between fact and fantasy, and may fail to
learn by experience. Elliott says psychopaths may be unable to
remember what they should have learned from past experience and have
an "incapacity for direct association and abstract thought (page
157)."
The common psychopath has some cognitive problems, that is, he is not
usually the sharpest knife in the drawer, though he may have a
certain amount of conning in dealing with others. In contrast, the
super psychopath of the oligarchical families of the ruling elite have
greater intelligence, and can plan ahead much better. They can carry
out their plans in some detail and have a knowledge of human nature
that they use successfully in many instances. They can apply to
specific situations in the real world abstract ideas such as the
Hegelian Dialectic in which they create a problem, and behind the
scenes offer a solution that moves the people they are manipulating
toward the goals of the
ruling elite. Without the creation of that problem, the manipulated
people would not have moved in the direction wanted by the elite.
What do we call the super psychopath of the ruling elite?
In the nineteenth century the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso
coined the term mattoid. He created mattoid from the Italian matto,
or insane, plus the ending "oid," from the Greek eidos, or
resemblance. A mattoid was first of all a person who in some ways
resembled the insane. From:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-mat1.htm
The Online free Dictionary says a mattoid is a person of congenitally
abnormal mind bordering on insanity or degeneracy.
Liberty Lobby and the Spotlight Newspaper before it became the
American Free Press used the word mattoid to describe members of the
ruling elite. I think it was Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby and the
Spotlight who started using mattoid to describe those of the ruling
elite in the New World Order. Some in the patriot movement have also
used mattoid for the leaders of the New World order.
In saying that the mattoid is a super psychopath of greater
intelligence and ability to plan and carry out plans, can apply
abstract principles to specific situations, and can use knowledge of
human nature effectively, I think gives a more specific definition to
the word that that which Cesare Lambroso originally intended. There is
another dimension to the psychological makeup of many members of the
ruling elite which is often the same as the highest financial elite.
This is their tendency to work within secret societies and to be
involved in the occult and even in the Satanic. Many in the ruling
elite are high level Masons, or members of similar secret societies
like the Skull and Bones Society of which President Bush is a member.
The Bohemian Grove north of San Francisco is another secret club for
the ruling elite where occult-type activities have taken place. The ruling elite meet at Bohemian Grove each year in July. One of their ceremonies
is perhaps a mock sacrifice of "Care" where someone bound up is carried screaming in front of a great stone owl.
Bernard Pyron
American Presidents Who Opposed the Usury Power
Exodus 22: 25, Leviticus 25: 36-37, Deuteronomy 23: 19, Isaiah 24: 2,
Ezekiel 22: 12 and Nehemiah 5: 1-10 all teach that usury, or charging
interest on a loan, is wrong by God's law.
"I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and
public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence,
we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."
-Thomas Jefferson
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue
of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks
and corporations that will grow up around
them will deprive the people of all property until their children
wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
- Thomas Jefferson, The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill, 1809
"History records that the money changers have used every form of
abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their
control over governments by controlling money and its issuance."
- James Madison
President Andrew Jackson to the bankers who approached him in the
drawing room of the White House:
"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am
convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the
breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits
amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell
me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I
shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but
that is your sin! Should I let you go on you will ruin fifty thousand
families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and
thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I
will rout you out!"
Andrew Jackson ( 1767–1845) was the seventh President of the United
States (1829-1837).
Jackson took away the federal charter of the
Second Bank of the United States. In Jackson's veto
message he said the bank needed to be abolished
because:
It was unconstitutional
It concentrated an excessive amount of the nation's financial strength
into one single institution
It exposed the government to control by "foreign interests"
It exercised too much control over members of the Congress
It favored Northeastern states over Southern and Western states
Jackson followed Jefferson as a supporter of the ideal of an
agricultural republic and said the bank improved the fortunes of an
elite circle of commercial and industrial entrepreneurs at the
expense of farmers and laborers. After a fight with the bankers and
their supporters, Jackson
defeated the central usury bank by vetoing its 1832 re-charter by
Congress and by withdrawing U.S. funds in 1833. The bank's
money-lending functions were taken over by many local and
state banks.
"The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency
and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and
the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing
money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the
Government's greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these
principles...the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest [by
not having to borrow from privately-owned corporate banks]...Money
will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy
will rise superior to the money power."
- Abraham Lincoln, Senate Document 23, Page 91, 1865
"I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the
financial institutions in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is
the greatest enemy. The money power preys upon the nation in times of
peace, and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more
despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish
than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question
its methods or throw light upon its crimes."
- Abraham Lincoln
When the big bankers offered to loan the Lincoln government money at a
high interest rate, Lincoln turned them down and issued interest-free
United States notes. For that the bankers had him killed.
Lincoln printed over 400 million interest-free "Greenbacks." The
international bankers had wanted Lincoln to borrow the money from
them so that the American people would have owed a great deal of usury
to the bankers.
Soon after Lincoln's death, the government revoked the Greenback law
which ended Lincoln's debt-free, interest-free money. A new national
banking act was passed by Congress and all money became interest
bearing again. Some also call the interest-free U.S. notes issued by
John F. Kennedy "greenbacks." That got Kennedy killed too.
"Whomsoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute
master of all industry and commerce and when you realize that the
entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few
powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of
inflation and depression originate."
- James Garfield, assassinated within weeks of release of this
statement during the first year of his presidency in 1881
Charles J. Guiteau shot President
James Garfield on July 2, 1881.
The wound in President Garfield's back would not have been fatal had
he received better medical care. "James Garfield was shot by a
would-be assassin but
killed by his doctors. His ending is a case of monumental
malpractice...The first doctor stuck an unwashed finger, then a
nonsterile metal
instrument, deep into the wound.
At the autopsy, the bickering doctors discovered they had blundered
gravely: Guiteau's bullet had settled about four inches to the right
of the spinal cord, resting harmlessly in a bed of tissue. The first
doctor to examine the president, Willard Bliss, had first stuck an
unwashed finger, then a nonsterile metal instrument, deep into the
wound probing for the bullet.
Not only had he likely infected the president, but he dug a false
passage in tissue that later confused other physicians of the bullet's
actual trajectory. Having mistakenly concluded that the bullet
penetrated the liver, Bliss projected the president would die
quickly.' This is found at:
http://www.aarrgghh.com/no_way/garfield.htm
President Garfield, an opponent of usury banking, lived 80 days after
he was shot.
President William McKinley did not focus so much on usury banking as
did Jackson, Lincoln or Garfield. Rather, McKinley got into trouble
apparently for beginning to carry out parts of the platform of the
populist movement. President William McKinley began the trust-busting
era, and created
the groundwork for President Theodore Roosevelt's later
attacks on the monopoly corporations and big money interests.
Leon Czolgosz shot
President William McKinley on September 6, 1901 at the Pan-American
Exposition in Buffalo.
William Jennings Bryan believed that government should protect individuals and
the democratic process against monopolies. Bryan lost to the
Republican candidate William McKinley in the 1896 presidential
election. In part Bryan represented the 19th century American populist
movement that had started during the 1870s in Lampasas county, Texas
as the Farmer's Alliance. See
http://www.mit.edu/~mharding/harding-populism.pdf
The Farmer's Alliance started to challenge the
market system through cooperative buying and selling. This is from:
http://www3.niu.edu/~td0raf1/history498/130read.htm
As the Farmer's Alliance got going in the early 1880s, it spread
throughout the South and across the Great Plains. In Minnesota, for
example, the Alliance grew to 15,000 members by 1889. There was also
a strong Wisconsin populist movement that lingered on well into the
20th century.
In the South and in Texas - where populism began - there was in the
19th century the crop-lien system in which local merchants would give
credit to farmers to buy farm machinery, seed, food and other
household stuff in exchange for a mortgage on the farmer's crop. The
merchants charged the farmers more for what they bought under this
system than they charged others who paid cash, and so in effect it was
a local usury system.
Because most Texas and Southern farmers in the 19th century had little
cash, they were forced into the crop-lien-mortgage system. The
farmers in the Midwest suffered from low prices given to them for
their crops, like the Texas and Southern farmers, and many of the
Midwest farmers had problems with not having enough cash. In
addition, the farmers in all regions complained that futures
manipulation of their crop prices by the financial elite brought
prices down and helped cause poverty among farmers.
It was against this populist movement background that William Jennings
Bryan and William McKinley opposed one another in the 1896
Presidential election. A larger percentage of the people in 1896 were
farmers and many of them supported the populist movement. To satisfy
them, in part, McKinley apparently began a campaign against monopoly
capitalism, which may have got him assassinated.
Leon Czolgosz shot
President William McKinley on September 6, 1901 at the Pan-American
Exposition in Buffalo. Again, McKinley might have been saved by
competent medical care.
"The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to
destroy the American's freedom, and before I leave office I must
inform the citizen of his plight."
- John F. Kennedy, speaking at Columbia University, 10 days before his
assassination
President Kennedy created interest-free United States notes, backed up
by the silver reserve, contrary to the Federal Reserve money, which is
not backed up by anything. He had
decided to follow the Constitution, even though his Kennedy line is
one of the oligarchical families.
Kennedy signed Executive Order, number
11110(2) in June of 1963, four months before his assassination This
Order returned to the Government
the power to issue currency, without going through the Federal Reserve
Bank. Kennedy gave the Treasury the power to issue silver certificates
against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the
Treasury. For every ounce of silver
in the US Treasury vault, the government could introduce new money
into circulation. Kennedy brought nearly $4.3 billion U.S. notes into
circulation. So by signing this Executive Order, he was stepping on
the toes of the powerful Federal Reserve usury Bank.
I don't have to consult an Internet site to say that John F. Kennedy
was shot and assassinated by killers whose identities are still not
certain on November 22, 1963 - because I remember vividly where I was
that day when I heard the news.
Very soon after Lyndon Johnson became President, that Executive order
by Kennedy of June, 1963 authorizing the creating of interest-free
U.S. notes was rescinded and since then only Federal Reserve interest
bearing notes have been released.
The Creature From Jekyl Island
Jekyl Island if off the coast of Georgia. There, in 1910 the Federal
Reserve System was planned in a secret meeting. According to G.
Edward Griffin in The Creature from Jekyl Island, Chapter One, the
following men were at this secret meeting:
Senator Nelson W. Aldrich
Frank A. Vanderlip, representing William Rockefeller and Kuhn, Loeb and Co.
Henry P. Davidson of J. P. Morgan Co.
Paul M. Warburg, representing the Rothschilds in England.
Abraham Piatt, Assistant Secretary of U.S. Treasury
Benjamin Strong of J. P. Morgan First National Bank of New York
This group created a cartel that went into partnership in 1913 with
the United States federal government. Such a mafia usury cartel
needed the muscle of the federal government to set it up as the U.S.
central bank, to authorize it to create money out of nothing, loan
it to the government and lesser banks at usury, and to prevent other
banks or individuals from creating money.
In December of 1913, Congress,
with many members away for the Christmas holidays, passed what has
since been known as the Federal Reserve Act.
Of course, the bill to authorize a central U.S. bank with the powers
it was to have to create money was unconstitutional. Article One and
Section 8 of the Constitution gave Congress the power "To coin money,
regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin and Fix the Standard
of Weights and Measures." Part of the partnership arrangement between
the Federal Reserve and the government is that the government has
given away its Constitutional power to create money to this Monster
from Jekyl Island.
Article 1, Section 10, of the Constitution for the United States of
America states, in part:
"No State shall.. make any thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in
payment of Debts."
The United States Code, Title 12, Section 152, states: "Lawful money
shall be construed to mean gold or silver coin of the United States."
In turn, the federal government benefited from its partnership with
the Usury Cartel because the Federal Reserve provides the government
with whatever money it wants. With this partnership arrangement, the
government can spend money like crazy without having to obtain all of
it from the taxpayers. However, the taxpayers are still stuck with
the government's debt and interest to the Federal Reserve. The
super psychopaths and government officials who created the Federal
Reserve System have put one enormous scam over on the American people.
When the Federal Reserve lends a billion dollars to the federal
government, it creates this money out of nothing.
Marriner Eccles, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal
Reserve System, in testimony before the Banking and Currency Committee
of the House of Representatives on the Banking Act of 1935. Mr. Eccles
testified: "In purchasing offerings of Government bonds, the banking
system as a whole creates new money, or bank deposits. When the banks
buy a billion dollars of Government bonds as they are offered -- and
you have to consider the banking system as a whole, as a unit -- the
banks credit the deposit account of the Treasury with a billion
dollars. And they debit their Government bond account a billion
dollars, or actually create, by a bookkeeping entry, a billion
dollars."
President Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury Anderson in an
interview with U.S. News and World Report on August 31, 1959 was
asked: "Do you mean that banks, in buying Government securities, do
not lend out their customers' deposits? That they create the money
they use to buy the securities?"
Answer (by Secretary Anderson): "That is correct. Banks are different
from other lending institutions. When a savings and loan association,
an insurance company, or a credit union makes a loan, it lends the
very dollar that its customers have previously paid in. But when a
bank makes a loan, it simply adds to the borrower's deposit account in
the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone
else's deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone.
It's new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower."
These quotes are found at: http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/monie.htm
If an individual tried to create money in this way, the federal
government would put him in prison for fraud.
In fact, in several ways the Federal Reserve System is a fraud. It is
not really an agency of the federal government. Congress in 1913 gave
it the powers it has, but still it is a fraud because Congress did not
have the Constitutional power to authorize the Fed to create the
country's money.
"On May 23, 1933, Congressman McFadden brought impeachment charges
against many of the Federal Reserve board members on the House Floor,
Federal Reserve agents of many States, comptroller of the currency,
and several secretaries of the United States Treasury for high crimes
and misdemeanors, including the theft of eighty billion dollars from
the United States Government and with committing the same thefts in
1929, 1930, 1931, 1932 and 1933 and in the years previous to 1928,
amounting to billions of dollars. These charges were remanded to the
Judiciary committee for investigation, where these charges were
effectively buried and until this day have never been answered. [See
Congressional Record pp. 4055-4058 May 23, 1933]"
This is at: http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/monie.htm
The Federal Reserve also loans out its money to lesser banks, who
then loan money to individuals and businesses in return for usury and
a pledge that if they default on the loans the bank gets their house,
lands, car or other assets.
The big bankers who own the federal reserve obtain perpetual usury
without real risks of losing money because the money they loan was not
theirs to begin with; it was created out of nothing.
Ken Matto at http://www.worldnewsstand.net/money/fraud.htm says
that "The idea of a central bank is to so enslave the people of the
country
to a debt money system that you continue to collect taxes continuously
which just covers the interest. The duped people of the United States
are paying about $300 billion dollars per year to the IRS which is the
collection agency for the Federal Reserve." The IRS is part of that
enormous scam the Federal Reserve bankers and the federal government,
or members of Congress and some agencies, have put over on the
people.
Another part of the scam put over on us is that we have to pay
interest to the bankers on loans to buy houses or cars. Paying
interest cheats many families out of having better homes. They
could afford better houses if they could save up the money to buy
them. But not many families in the present economy can pay rent and
other expenses and save a good deal of money on top of that. And so
they have settle for cheaper, lesser quality homes and borrow money
from local bankers whose usury forces them to pay for three or four
homes to get one!
Anthony Sutton, former Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution for
War, Revolution and Peace of Stanford University, writes:
"The Federal Reserve System is a legal private monopoly of the money
supply operated for the benefit of the few under the guise of
protecting and promoting the public interest." From: This is from:
http://www.wealth4freedom.com/creature.htm
Who owns the federal Reserve? According to www.conspiracy-net.com
the following are owners of the Federal Reserve:
Rothschild Bank of London
Warburg Bank of Hamburg
Rothschild Bank of Berlin
Lehman Brothers of New York
Lazard Brothers of Paris
Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York
Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy
Goldman, Sachs of New York
Warburg Bank of Amsterdam
Chase Manhattan Bank of New York.
The Debt-Money System Causes Inflation and Recessions
Almost all of the money in the United States came into existence
because millions of people went into debt and are paying interest to
the usury banks in order for that that money to be in circulation.
If people borrow too little for a certain period of time, then the
economy will move into a recession because the money supply has been
reduced. But since the Great Depression of the thirties - caused by
the banks - some corrective mechanisms have been put into the system.
Unemployment pay and the social welfare system help lessen economic
recessions. In addition, the Federal Reserve may add money to the
money supply at times to help prevent recessions from getting worse.
But this causes inflation.
When recessions go on for a while, a part of the population is
reduced to poverty and face starvation unless they borrow from the
banks to survive. Increased credit card use by low income people has
been in more recent years a way of borrowing money. Borrowing by a
large number of lower income people thus puts some amount of
additional money into circulation, and helps some in fighting
recession. The problem for the lower income people is that their
increased debt can drive them so far into poverty that they cannot
fully recover from it.
A basic problem with the debt-interest method of creating money is
that, because interest has to be paid on almost all of it, the economy
must constantly grow if it is not to lapse into a recession or depression.
With the current debt-interest way of putting money into circulation,
the money supply in the country has to increase year after year to at
least equal the amount removed from the money supply by interest paid
to the bankers. And in fact the money supply has to inflate
continually for the economic system to function without going into a
depression.
The money the Federal reserve puts into circulation each year causes
a loss of the buying power of the dollar, and food, energy, housing
and other prices are constantly rising. The rate of inflation for
food, gasoline, heating, rent and medical care may be higher than for
other expenses - which causes severe hardships for low income people.
For more and more Americans, these prices are, in fact, rising at a
higher rate than their rate of increase in earnings. This the one of
the fruits of the debt-money-usury system. Some fifty years ago, only
one spouse, usually the husband and father, had to work to
provide money for the entire family. Now both spouses have to work in
many families to make ends meet. The percentage of families who own
their homes may be dropping as is the median or average age at which
couples first come to own a home.
The fact that the amount of money in circulation usually has to
increase each year to enable interest to be paid means that the total
value of sales in the economy has to go up too if the ratio of the
money supply to the volume of trading is to stay constant. The
required increase in sales value can come about in either, or both, of
two ways: inflation and expansion. If there is no increase in output
during the year, the increased amount of money in circulation could
simply push up prices.
Due to the way money is put into
circulation, we have an economic system that needs to grow or inflate
constantly. If the economy does not grow or inflate, then with the
debt-money scam, it will go into a recession.
The Super Psychopaths of the Financial Elite
The international bankers who created the federal reserve, those who
own it now and run it and various other members of the high financial
elite might be called super psychopaths. Lets find out what a common
psychopath is like and see to what extent that description fits the
members of the highest financial elite.
In the 1978 book, The Psychopath: A Comprehensive Study of Antisocial
Disorders and Behavior, by William. H. Reid, he reports that a study
of psychopathic children found they had a lack of guilt, or lack of
conscience, which is common to psychopaths. They also engaged in
"pathological lying," and they tended to steal things. The members of
the highest level of the financial elite probably do not steal things;
instead, they steal billions of dollars from the people.
Reid reports that adult psychopaths are manipulators who want to
control others. Does this trait sound like members of the highest
level of the ruling elite, or financial elite? Psychopaths get
satisfaction from having put something over on other people - by
deception. This is exactly what the financial elite has done with the
Federal Reserve scam involving creating money out of nothing, loaning
it at interest, using the IRS as a collection agency to collect money
from the people to pay the FED, and having lesser banks charge the
people so much usury that the majority of them suffer economic
hardships of some kind from it. And the members of the financial
elite have no guilt for doing all this to us. We let them do it to
us, didn't we?
At least three American presidents were assassinated after they
severely criticized the usury bankers or tried to go back to lawful,
Constitutional money-creation by having the government issue U.S.
notes. Lincoln and Kennedy were murdered soon after they had the
government issue U.S. notes, which suggests that the big bankers have
a criminal nature. Criminality is often a part of the makeup of the
psychopathic personality.
I went to a 1978 book on the psychopath in part because by 1994 and
the Fourth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders they no longer call this personality disorder a psychopathic
disorder. It is called Antisocial Personality Disorder. The Manual
says those with this disorder are characterized by "failure to conform
to social norms with respect to lawful behavior." Antisocial
Personality Disorder also involved "deceitfulness, as indicated by
repeated lying...or conning of others...and a lack of remorse by being
indifferent to...having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another."
The traits of the common psychopath appear to fit to some extent what
we know of the elite international usury bankers. They may try to
manipulate people, deceive them, tell lies, engage in massive theft,
and appear to have no conscience over their crimes against humanity.
But in the book edited by William H. Reid, Frank A. Elliott says
psychopaths have some cognitive deficiencies. They may have an
inability to distinguish between fact and fantasy, and may fail to
learn by experience. Elliott says psychopaths may be unable to
remember what they should have learned from past experience and have
an "incapacity for direct association and abstract thought (page
157)."
The common psychopath has some cognitive problems, that is, he is not
usually the sharpest knife in the drawer, though he may have a
certain amount of conning in dealing with others. In contrast, the
super psychopath of the oligarchical families of the ruling elite have
greater intelligence, and can plan ahead much better. They can carry
out their plans in some detail and have a knowledge of human nature
that they use successfully in many instances. They can apply to
specific situations in the real world abstract ideas such as the
Hegelian Dialectic in which they create a problem, and behind the
scenes offer a solution that moves the people they are manipulating
toward the goals of the
ruling elite. Without the creation of that problem, the manipulated
people would not have moved in the direction wanted by the elite.
What do we call the super psychopath of the ruling elite?
In the nineteenth century the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso
coined the term mattoid. He created mattoid from the Italian matto,
or insane, plus the ending "oid," from the Greek eidos, or
resemblance. A mattoid was first of all a person who in some ways
resembled the insane. From:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-mat1.htm
The Online free Dictionary says a mattoid is a person of congenitally
abnormal mind bordering on insanity or degeneracy.
Liberty Lobby and the Spotlight Newspaper before it became the
American Free Press used the word mattoid to describe members of the
ruling elite. I think it was Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby and the
Spotlight who started using mattoid to describe those of the ruling
elite in the New World Order. Some in the patriot movement have also
used mattoid for the leaders of the New World order.
In saying that the mattoid is a super psychopath of greater
intelligence and ability to plan and carry out plans, can apply
abstract principles to specific situations, and can use knowledge of
human nature effectively, I think gives a more specific definition to
the word that that which Cesare Lambroso originally intended. There is
another dimension to the psychological makeup of many members of the
ruling elite which is often the same as the highest financial elite.
This is their tendency to work within secret societies and to be
involved in the occult and even in the Satanic. Many in the ruling
elite are high level Masons, or members of similar secret societies
like the Skull and Bones Society of which President Bush is a member.
The Bohemian Grove north of San Francisco is another secret club for
the ruling elite where occult-type activities have taken place. The ruling elite meet at Bohemian Grove each year in July. One of their ceremonies
is perhaps a mock sacrifice of "Care" where someone bound up is carried screaming in front of a great stone owl.
The Usurious Spirit: Credit Card Bank Loansharking
Bernard Pyron
The financial elite at the very top is made up largely of the same oligarchs as are in the ruling elite. What the patriots, populists and some Christians have been calling the New World Order is the ruling elite of the several American and European oligarchical families.
The executives who run the credit card banks might not be at the highest level of the ruling elite, perhaps not as high in the hierarchy as Lord Jacob Rothschild, or David Rockefeller who may be close to the top.
But the credit card bank executives are certainly at a high level of the ruling class and some may be at a lower level of the ruling elite - and they are part of the financial elite. The may use their money to support policies of the federal government that work against the interests of the people. The big credit card bank, MBNA, is said to have made large contributions to the reelection of President George W. Bush.
Even if somehow you do not think his wars against Third World nations are morally wrong, his policy on illegal immigration is certainly not in the interests of the people. Joining Mexico with the U.S. in some fashion is also not in the best interests of Americans. The credit card banks and executives make their money from usury and penalty fees that they put over on the American people. Therefore, we should not contribute money to them by our use of their credit cards.
While it is very difficult in the current economic situation to save enough money to pay cash for a $100,000 house, and pay rent at the same time, it is not necessary to use credit cards. I know, though, that often the poor have no choice but to use credit cards or starve. The use of credit cards makes one a victim of the ruling elite and helps finance their operations - often opposed to the interests of the people. Usury and penalty fees collected from cardholders have been making the credit card banks and executives rich and more powerful than ever.
Reviewing the huge number of complaints on the Internet against MBNA/Bank of America credit cards, Bank of America credit cards and those issued by Citibank shows these banks to be financial predators who engage in unethical business practices, deceive their consumers, run rip off scams on cardholders to cheat them out of money, make promises they don't fulfill, and they are rude to their customers. These practices in early 2005 caused the MBNA credit card bank to lose so many cardholders that its stock dropped by a huge 94%, down to $31.7 million from their initial projection of $519 million. See: http://consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/bofa_mbna2.html
Yet MBNA, now owned by Bank of America, and Bank of America still engage in these rip off scams, deceptions and unethical businesses practices - probably because if they lose some customers there are more people waiting to sign up for their credit cards.
Cheating those with low income out of their money is a transgression of the moral law, for in Exodus 22: 25 it says "If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay usury upon him."
Matthew Henry in commenting on Nehemiah 5: 1-10 says "Hard times and hard hearts make the poor miserable...money must be had, but it must be borrowed..."
But American credit card banks have been targeting people of low income, offering them credit cards. There is information on http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14098.html
about American credit card banks targeting low income people, with deceptive offers. On this site they report that the Attorney General of Delaware in 2003 brought charges against Cross Country Bank and Applied Car Systems for fraud, false advertising, deceptive business practices, abusive debt collection and for targeting low income people with deceptive pitches.
The Supreme Court in Marquette National Bank vs. First of Omaha Service Corporation (1978) ruled that credit card banks are not subject to the usury law limitations in the state in which the borrower lives. Rather, the credit card banks only have to obey the restrictions on interest rates of the laws of the states where they are located. Citibank then moved to South Dakota which has no restrictions on interest rates and many credit card banks are in Delaware which also has no usury laws. Congress could over-ride the Marquette decision is they had the guts to do so.
So, there are no legal restraints on the interest rates credit card banks can charge, and few, if any, on their practices in dealing with cardholders. In addition, Congress recently changed the federal bankruptcy law to make it harder to go into bankruptcy, a change the credit card banks desired.
Lower income people often use credit cards to buy food, pay the rent and pay for heating and gasoline because they run out of money before they run out of days in a month. Then, their credit card debt piles up and they cannot make the minimum monthly payments. The predatory credit card banks make the situation worse by charging the poor people added fines which in time more than double the amount originally owed.
Credit card banks charge fines if a payment is late a few days. They are not under a contract to stick to the original interest rate charged and they can increase the amount of monthly payment, although the Comptroller of the Currency is supposed to have authorized a doubling of the minimum credit card payment in 2005. This suggests that federal office may have control over the minimum monthly payments. Finally, a credit card bank can declare a borrower to be in default and then the bank demands the entire debt be paid in full all at once. Last, collection agencies, acting for the banks, come after the small amount of money and the few possessions the poor people have. These practices are exactly the kind of thing that Exodus 22: 25 forbids.
Inflation, especially in food and energy costs, hits low income people hard. One of the reasons for inflation and the lowering of the buying power of the dollar is the constant increase by the Federal Reserve in the money supply. According to the last published data from 16 March, 2005, M3 has been growing at an annual rate of over 8.22%. As of 16th March 2006 M3 was $10,336.3 billion. A year earlier, on 14th March 2005, the M3 was $9,550.5 billion. M3 is a kind of total money supply measure. This data is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply
Lower income people spend a very large percentage of their income on food, rent, gasoline and heating costs, and when these costs go up due to inflation at a rate a lot higher than the "official" 3.55 percent, the people have to resort to the use of credit cards or go hungry and cold. The percent of families at the lowest income level holding credit card debt doubled from 15 to 30 percent between 1989 and 2001. See http://chervokas.typepad.com/trickster/2005/03/id_gladly_pay_y.html
With the lack of increase in wages and job growth nonexistent for the lower income level families, it is so hard for them to get out of debt that many will not be able to pay off their credit cards. Usury and penalty fees take a percentage of the income of the poor that they cannot afford to lose to the credit card banks. In addition, the lower income people have stopped saving, like many other Americans.
Not only have lower income Americans increased their credit card debt in the last decade, but so have the elderly, and many of them are poor. See: http://www.smartmoney.com/consumer/index.cfm?story=20040311 March 11, 2004
"According to the study, nearly one-third of senior citizens in the U.S. carry card balances. Within that group, the average debt is $4,041 — an 89% increase over the past decade"
"People aged 65 to 69 saw their credit-card balances grow by 217%, to $5,844, during the decade... The rate at which retirees are filing for bankruptcy has more than doubled over the past 10 years...Retirees are now the fastest-growing segment of bankrupted Americans, according to research by the Consumer Bankruptcy Project at Harvard University"
"Seniors who are having trouble making ends meet are increasingly using credit cards to pay for basic necessities, says Steve Rhode, founder and former president of credit-counseling agency MyVesta." And the credit card banks are probably targeting elderly people.
Because Christian leaders and ministries are role models for Christians who follow them, these ministries should not accept credit cards, and should be criticized if they do. For example, I found that Family Radio, under Harold Camping, and Texe Marrs, accept credit cards as payment to their ministries.
Ezekiel 22: 12-21 notes that usury practiced in Israel, or Judah, was one of the sins of the "princes of Israel" which brought down the severe judgment of God. In Ezekiel 22: 12 there are two specific sins mentioned, taking gifts to shed blood and usury. Verses 13 through 22 describe the Lord's anger at these sins and his punishment upon the nation of Judah.
Could rampant governmental and individual debt, including massive credit card debt, be a judgment of God on America for turning away from his truth as Deuteronomy 28: warns? In Deuteronomy 28: 15 it says that if a nation does not obey God, then "all these curses shall come upon thee..." One of the curses listed is in verses 43-44, is that the stranger who lends money to "thee" will get up above 'thee" and "thou" shalt come down very low."
The overall credit card debt in the U. S. was $273 billion in 1992. It's more than $800 billion today. This is from: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/30/eveningnews/main1088425.shtm
According to the Washington Post, January 25, 2004 "The average household now carries about $9,000 in credit card debt. From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2004/01/25/AR2005033106715.html
The following web site also says the average household credit card debt in 2004 was $9,000. http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2004/mft04060703.htm?ref=foolwatch June 7, 2004 . "Americans owe three-quarters of a trillion dollars in credit card debt. The average American household with credit cards owes about $9,000, according to CardWeb.com. Worse, the average U.S. household with cards pays about $1,100 in credit card interest alone per year."
Again, at http://www.click2houston.com/money/4170962/detail.html they tell us that "In 2004, the average credit card debt per household was a startling $9,000. If you subtract out those who pay off their credit cards every month, the number rises to a jaw dropping $17,000 per household."
A Study On Credit Card Debt
The Center for Responsible Lending did a study with 1,150 interviews of low and middle income people. It is called The Plastic Safety Net: The Realities Behind Debt In America, 2005. The study was done in 2004 or 2005.
It is reported at: http://www.demos-usa.org/page38.cfm They report that credit card debt has almost tripled since 1989. They found that the average credit card debt of low and middle-income households in America was $8,650; One-third of households had credit card debt over $10,000.
Their survey asked respondents whether they had used credit cards in the past year to pay for basic living expenses, such as rent, mortgage payments, groceries, utilities or insurance, because they did not have money in their checking or savings account. One out of three households reported using credit cards in this way, saying that they had used credit cards to cover basic living expenses on the average four out of the last 12 months. Households that reported losing a job sometime in the last three years and being unemployed for at least two months were almost twice as likely to use credit cards to pay for basic living expenses. Households who used credit cards for their basic living expenses had lower levels of savings and higher credit card balances than households who did not use credit cards to pay for their basic expenses.
They report - contrary to the idea that people often use credit cards for unnecessary items - that "Our ?ndings illustrate that most debt-stressed low- and middle-income consumers are trying to cover unavoidable expenses, not discretionary purchases."
The report says that forty-seven percent of households had been called by a bill collector. A little under half had missed or were late with a credit card payment in the last year, with nearly a quarter of households reporting paying a late fee at least one or two times in the past year. Having to pay a lot of late fees makes it much more difficult for low income people to pay off a credit card debt. Late fees at that time ran from about $30 per month to $39. Often credit card banks will drastically raise their interest rates in addition to charging late penalties, and the higher interest rates make it very hard to pay off the debt. Credit card banks will penalize cardholders for late payments by increasing the interest rate on the account two- or three-fold, often after only one late payment. A household with the average credit card debt of $8,650 would have had to pay an additional $1,100 in interest if their rate was raised from about 12 to 25 percent.
In addition, there is also the default practice of credit card banks, such that when the cardholder defaults on another credit card or on any loan, the bank will raise his interest from perhaps 12 to 25 or 30 percent.
Again, the authors of the report state that "Despite the common perception that families use credit cards to acquire luxury items and "live beyond their means," our research has demonstrated that a sizeable majority (71 percent) of low- and middle income families depend on credit cards to pay for basic living expenses or to deal with unexpected ?nancial emergencies."
They tell us that "The exponential growth of credit card debt has taken place in an economic context that breeds uncertainty for households. "Income volatility"—fluctuation in family incomes—almost doubled in the last two decades of the twentieth century. At the same time, wages have been stagnant."
"Rather than being a constructive financial tool, credit card debt can result in a downward financial spiral. Consequently, our nation cannot be complacent about the costs and risks associated with credit card debt. Credit cards are no substitute for adequate wages..."
And, they get to the heart of the credit card problem in saying "Deregulation of the credit card industry has created an environment where credit card companies can construct the terms, rules, and practices of the credit card agreement without meaningful regulation. These new and complicated revenue-generating practices often fall harshly on the backs of those consumers who can least affordthem...Too often, the pricing strategies of credit card companies make it more likely that a family will endure persistent and burdensome debt, with little chance of paying or keeping down their debt. While regulating credit was once the province of the states, deregulation and federal pre-emption have left states with little authority to regulate credit card practices - making federal policymakers bear the responsibility for reforming credit card practices." But the federal policy makers are under the influence of the financial elite and the credit card banks.
One of the credit card bank problems that has developed in the current climate of deregulation is the over-use of late payment fees. This report finds that nearly a quarter of households reported paying a charge for a late payment at least one or two times in the past year. They say that credit card banks expected to collect $16 billion in penalty fees in 2005.
Then they inform us that "Families are using credit cards to cope with rising costs, stagnant incomes and the lack of alternative safety nets. The findings of this survey indicate that for many low and middle-income households, credit cards are the primary safety net available to weather job losses and deal with unexpected expenses. In borrowing to make ends meet, these households are further draining their resources as they struggle to pay down their credit card debt, often inundated with high interest rates, excessive penalty fees and capricious contracts terms."
They introduce the concept of the income/debt ratio, apparently dividing the credit card debt by the household income to get a ratio. The higher the ratio, I would think, the higher the debt-stress. If the household income was $20,000 a year, and the household had a credit card debt of $5,000, the debt-stress would be .25. If the household income was only $10,000 and the credit card debt $5,000, the debt-stress would be higher, or .50 In their study the mean debt-stress ratio they say was 0.21, which is fairly high.
The report goes on to say that "It is consumers who taken on credit card debt to cover basic living expenses, medical expenses,or home repairs, or to cover expenses after a layoff in their family, who are most likely to have higher levels of "debt stress."
Tricks Used By Credit Card Banks To Steal Our Money
The following can be seen at: http://www.bcsalliance.com/x_creditcardtricks1a1.html
1. Late and over the limit penalty fees charged to cardholders now account for more than half of the income of credit card banks according to the site listed above.
A few years ago the penalty fee for a late payment was only $10. Now it is $39 for most credit cards.
2. To trick people into paying late some credit card banks have changed the due date so that more checks will come in late and the bank can hit the cardholder with a late fee of $39.
3. If a payment is late two or more times, the interest rate on a card is often raised to as much as 31 percent. In addition, some credit card banks have raised interest rates from around ten percent o 25 percent or higher - without giving the cardholder any excuse at all for doing so.
4. First USA credit card bank used the tactic of not mailing out statements at all to trick cardholders into sending in late payments.
6. Another dirty trick is to raise the interest rate to a very high level because the consumer is said to be carrying too large a balance. Citibank has done this.
6. The universal default scam is also used by many or most credit card banks. If a borrower is late just once with a payment on some other credit card, home mortgage or auto loan, the credit card banks use this as an excuse to drastically increase the interest rate.
7 Deceptive advertisement is also used by credit card banks. A bank may advertise a low interest rate but only a few people can qualify for this low rate.
Or, a "fixed rate for the life of the balance" may be promised to lure people into transferring balances from other credit card banks. After the balance is transferred, the interest rate is raised considerably above that promised as a "fixed" rate.
Lawsuits Against Credit Card Banks
This information is also at: http://www.bcsalliance.com/x_creditcardtricks1a1.html
Because First USA changed the date due for payment to trick cardholders into paying late a class action lawsuit was brought against the bank.
A class action lawsuit was brought against Chase credit card bank for not posting payments on time as required by federal law.
Providian credit card bank was sued for overbilling its customers. The court hit Providian with a $300 million judgment.
A class action lawsuit was brought against Advanta credit card bank for guaranteeing a low interest rate and then charging customers a higher rate.
Capital One was sued for charging late fees when credit card payments were mailed in two weeks before the due date.
MBNA, now part of Bank of America, was sued for cheating customers in improperly charging late fees.
However, these lawsuits were all civil actions and did not result in any change in the federal laws regulating business practices by credit card banks. A credit card bank that lost a class action lawsuit in federal court could have continued to carry out the same dirty tricks for which it was sued. In addition, the class action lawsuits did not usually bring in any substantial money to cardholders because the attorneys got must of the money from the judgments.
The Huge Number of Complaints Against Credit Card Banks On the Internet
Consumer Action testified before the Senate Banking Committee May 17, 2005 using complaints it received from credit card consumers. This is at: http://banking.senate.gov/_files/sherry.pdf
A Bastrop, Texas woman complained to Consumer Action that AT&T credit card bank had raised her interest rate from 12.9 percent to 28.7 percent because of a late payment to another credit card bank.
In this article Consumer Action says that thirty-nine complaints about the universal default trick were attached to their testimony to the Committee.
Consumer Action reported that in 2004 the average late payment fee was $27.45 with some major credit card banks charging $39 even then. Now most banks charge $39. Consumer Action says "With average monthly minimum payments of 2 percent of the balance, the late fee on a $2,000 balance would be double the minimum payment. This is outrageously excessive."
Then they say that "Even people who try to make timely payments will be hit with a late fee if their payment was delayed in the mail. We hear from many consumers who allowed seven days to post a payment, yet the bank still assessed a late fee. Banks should consider post marks when posting payments."
Consumer Action received a number of complaints about credit card banks raising their interest rates to excessive levels without any excuse.
The following complaints against MBNA/Bank of America are from: http://banking.senate.gov/_files/sherry.pdf
Some MBNA/Bank of America cardholders complained that they accepted offers of fixed rate of interest for the life of a balance at low interest rates (3.99 percent in one case), but the interest rates were changed to a rate of 25 percent or more without any excuses. Other consumers say that MBNA/Bank of America raised their interest rates from around ten percent o 25 percent even though they paid on time.
Consumer Action at http://consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/mbna_interest.html
lists many additional complaints against MBNA/Bank of America.
MBNA/Bank of America raised the interest rates of many of its customers from about 8 percent or higher to 27 percent in many cases.
Consumer Affairs in this article reports that high credit card debt, increasing interest rates, dirty tricks and extra penalty fees led many consumers to file for bankruptcy.
They say credit card banks have demanded payment from dead family members who usually have no legal obligation to pay the deceased's debts.
Robert on Feburary 2, 2004 complained that MBNA/Bank of America raised his interest rate from around five percent to 22 percent. He says "My monthly payment is $317. the finance charge is $234.86 which means only $82.14 goes to the principal."
Here is a report on complaints against Bank of America credit cards by Consumer Affairs at: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/mbnbofa.html
They say that Bank of America credit card division, like MBNA, which it acquired in June of 2005, is drastically and irrationally increasing interest rates, and charging many late fees, often without justification.
Bank of America has offered its Visa Platinum card, Consumer Affairs says, at a low interest rate to transfer balances from other credit cards, and then raised the interest rate to 17.99 or even as high as 31.99 percent.
The Wilmington, Delaware-based MBNA credit card bank had been charging high interest rates, not living up to promises of "fixed" rates for the life of a balance, charging late fees upon fees and interest on fees. So many of its cardholders were closing their accounts with MBNA that its quarterly profits in April of 2005 had dropped 94 percent (according to this Consumer Affairs article). See www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/bofa_mbna2.html
Bank of America then acquired MBNA in June of 2005. But now Bank of America has taken over the dirty tricks of MBNA, substantially raising interest rates, charging late fees too often, using bait and switch sales tactics, and not living up to promises of "fixed" rates for the life of a balance.
Consumer Affairs says Bank of America changed due dates to six days earlier to lure cardholders into sending in late payments. They then charged them $39 late fees each month and sometimes drastically raised the interest rates.
Tim on February 1, 2006 complains that Bank of America lowered is credit card limit and then raised his interest rate to 31 percent. Tim writes that "It seems it is not morally right or ethical for a bank to change its interest rate and/or to lower a limit below your current limit and then fine you for being over that limit. Also, their collection agencies have called even though I am paying more than the minimum."
Veronica complained to Consumer Affairs on January 20, 2006 that she had heard that credit card banks were going to double the minimum payment without informing their customers. In October of 2005 she called the Bank of America Customer Service and was told Bank of America was not going to double minimum payments and if they did they would send out a letter to notify customers. But in December of 2005 Bank of America did raise the monthly minimum payment to 4 percent of the balance, up from the previous 2 percent. Veronica says of Bank of America that "They lie and they do not stand by what they say."
Jason on October 26, 2005 says Bank of America charged him late fees of $39 and raised his interest rate. he says " I've had it with these corporate thugs who view their jobs like its some kind of religion and the Bank is always right."
On September 11, 2005 Kelly complains that Bank of America got him to use a convenience check at what they claimed was to be 1.9 percent and then raised his rate to 31 percent. He says "I'll never make this mistake again and shame on Bank of America treating their customers like that."
Vivian on September 11, 2005 tells Consumer Affairs that Bank of America charged her several over the limit fees, though she was not over the credit card limit. But the higher interest rate they slapped on her did bring her over the limit. She says "This certainly isn't ethical, so how can it be legal? Its not illegal because the federal government has taken over the control of credit card banks from the states. And the federal government ether has no laws regulating credit card banks or it does not enforce them. It seems that older contract law is no longer enforced by federal or state courts.
Marta, a senior citizen, on August 27, 2005 says she paid off her card each month and did not carry a balance. Nevertheless Bank of America charged her a $39 fee and put her into a "penalty phase' with a much higher interest rate. She says "This is the most blatant case of unethical business practices I've ever encountered...Don't fall for these zero percent scams as they will get you. At least they can't continue to steal my money since I've closed the account..."
On The Rip Off Report at http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff186921.htm
there are other complaints about dishonest practices of Bank of America, many about excessively high interest rates (31 percent in some cases), and late fees.
The same type of complaints are found on the Internet against Citibank, another large credit card outfit. Some of these complaints are on http://www.badcreditcards.org/CITIcomplaints.htm
Citibank lowered the credit limit below his balance for one cardholder and then charged penalty fees.
After paying on his credit card account at Citibank for years and paying it off each month, they then raised one cardholder's interest rate to 28.99 percent. He says "I've paid the late fees, but they continue to charge more penalties...I can't believe they can legally get away with this type of business practice." They can get away with it because the federal government has, in effect, taken away the right of the states to regulate credit card business practices and the federal government then allows credit card banks to do pretty much what they please.
Citibank has been caught with the old scam of offering a fixed APR for transfer of balances (of perhaps 3.99 percent) and then raising the interest substantially (to 17.99 percent for one customer). This customer of Citibank says "These people are like dealing with street level con men. They manipulated my account without notifying me - up'ed all the rates, fees and charges for over six months and they suddenly notified me that they were going to send my account to a collection agency...And after I paid their fees to keep my record clear - they billed me again." It goes on and on.
GC SERVICES COLLECTION AGENCY
Credit Card Banks Turn Accounts Over To Collection Agencies
Bernard Pyron
Finally, a credit card bank can declare a borrower to be indefault and then the bank demands the entire debt be paid in full all at once. Last, collection agencies, acting for the banks, come after the small amount of money and the few possessions the poor people have. These practices are exactly the kind of thing that Exodus 22:25 forbids.
In addition, GC Services headquartered in Houston, Texas but with offices all over the nation, one of the larger collection agencies credit card banks used to go after the assets of card holders who have been declared to be in default is unscrupulous in its practices toward those who it targets. The federal Fair Debt CollectionPractices Act forbids collection agencies from calling people before 8 AM or after 9 PM, says they must not call employers, relatives or others to harass them, and must not make false statements to threaten people. Yet on the Internet there are numerous complaints that GC Services violate all these rules. http://ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff88845.htm
The federal Fair Debt CollectionPractices Act authorizes courts to force collection agencies to pay attorney fees, though the total judgment allowed to the person harrassed is only $1,000. Civil cases under this law can be brought in eitherstate or federal courts. See http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpa/fdcpact.htm813. Civil liability [15 USC 1692k]
The financial elite at the very top is made up largely of the same oligarchs as are in the ruling elite. What the patriots, populists and some Christians have been calling the New World Order is the ruling elite of the several American and European oligarchical families.
The executives who run the credit card banks might not be at the highest level of the ruling elite, perhaps not as high in the hierarchy as Lord Jacob Rothschild, or David Rockefeller who may be close to the top.
But the credit card bank executives are certainly at a high level of the ruling class and some may be at a lower level of the ruling elite - and they are part of the financial elite. The may use their money to support policies of the federal government that work against the interests of the people. The big credit card bank, MBNA, is said to have made large contributions to the reelection of President George W. Bush.
Even if somehow you do not think his wars against Third World nations are morally wrong, his policy on illegal immigration is certainly not in the interests of the people. Joining Mexico with the U.S. in some fashion is also not in the best interests of Americans. The credit card banks and executives make their money from usury and penalty fees that they put over on the American people. Therefore, we should not contribute money to them by our use of their credit cards.
While it is very difficult in the current economic situation to save enough money to pay cash for a $100,000 house, and pay rent at the same time, it is not necessary to use credit cards. I know, though, that often the poor have no choice but to use credit cards or starve. The use of credit cards makes one a victim of the ruling elite and helps finance their operations - often opposed to the interests of the people. Usury and penalty fees collected from cardholders have been making the credit card banks and executives rich and more powerful than ever.
Reviewing the huge number of complaints on the Internet against MBNA/Bank of America credit cards, Bank of America credit cards and those issued by Citibank shows these banks to be financial predators who engage in unethical business practices, deceive their consumers, run rip off scams on cardholders to cheat them out of money, make promises they don't fulfill, and they are rude to their customers. These practices in early 2005 caused the MBNA credit card bank to lose so many cardholders that its stock dropped by a huge 94%, down to $31.7 million from their initial projection of $519 million. See: http://consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/bofa_mbna2.html
Yet MBNA, now owned by Bank of America, and Bank of America still engage in these rip off scams, deceptions and unethical businesses practices - probably because if they lose some customers there are more people waiting to sign up for their credit cards.
Cheating those with low income out of their money is a transgression of the moral law, for in Exodus 22: 25 it says "If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay usury upon him."
Matthew Henry in commenting on Nehemiah 5: 1-10 says "Hard times and hard hearts make the poor miserable...money must be had, but it must be borrowed..."
But American credit card banks have been targeting people of low income, offering them credit cards. There is information on http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14098.html
about American credit card banks targeting low income people, with deceptive offers. On this site they report that the Attorney General of Delaware in 2003 brought charges against Cross Country Bank and Applied Car Systems for fraud, false advertising, deceptive business practices, abusive debt collection and for targeting low income people with deceptive pitches.
The Supreme Court in Marquette National Bank vs. First of Omaha Service Corporation (1978) ruled that credit card banks are not subject to the usury law limitations in the state in which the borrower lives. Rather, the credit card banks only have to obey the restrictions on interest rates of the laws of the states where they are located. Citibank then moved to South Dakota which has no restrictions on interest rates and many credit card banks are in Delaware which also has no usury laws. Congress could over-ride the Marquette decision is they had the guts to do so.
So, there are no legal restraints on the interest rates credit card banks can charge, and few, if any, on their practices in dealing with cardholders. In addition, Congress recently changed the federal bankruptcy law to make it harder to go into bankruptcy, a change the credit card banks desired.
Lower income people often use credit cards to buy food, pay the rent and pay for heating and gasoline because they run out of money before they run out of days in a month. Then, their credit card debt piles up and they cannot make the minimum monthly payments. The predatory credit card banks make the situation worse by charging the poor people added fines which in time more than double the amount originally owed.
Credit card banks charge fines if a payment is late a few days. They are not under a contract to stick to the original interest rate charged and they can increase the amount of monthly payment, although the Comptroller of the Currency is supposed to have authorized a doubling of the minimum credit card payment in 2005. This suggests that federal office may have control over the minimum monthly payments. Finally, a credit card bank can declare a borrower to be in default and then the bank demands the entire debt be paid in full all at once. Last, collection agencies, acting for the banks, come after the small amount of money and the few possessions the poor people have. These practices are exactly the kind of thing that Exodus 22: 25 forbids.
Inflation, especially in food and energy costs, hits low income people hard. One of the reasons for inflation and the lowering of the buying power of the dollar is the constant increase by the Federal Reserve in the money supply. According to the last published data from 16 March, 2005, M3 has been growing at an annual rate of over 8.22%. As of 16th March 2006 M3 was $10,336.3 billion. A year earlier, on 14th March 2005, the M3 was $9,550.5 billion. M3 is a kind of total money supply measure. This data is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply
Lower income people spend a very large percentage of their income on food, rent, gasoline and heating costs, and when these costs go up due to inflation at a rate a lot higher than the "official" 3.55 percent, the people have to resort to the use of credit cards or go hungry and cold. The percent of families at the lowest income level holding credit card debt doubled from 15 to 30 percent between 1989 and 2001. See http://chervokas.typepad.com/trickster/2005/03/id_gladly_pay_y.html
With the lack of increase in wages and job growth nonexistent for the lower income level families, it is so hard for them to get out of debt that many will not be able to pay off their credit cards. Usury and penalty fees take a percentage of the income of the poor that they cannot afford to lose to the credit card banks. In addition, the lower income people have stopped saving, like many other Americans.
Not only have lower income Americans increased their credit card debt in the last decade, but so have the elderly, and many of them are poor. See: http://www.smartmoney.com/consumer/index.cfm?story=20040311 March 11, 2004
"According to the study, nearly one-third of senior citizens in the U.S. carry card balances. Within that group, the average debt is $4,041 — an 89% increase over the past decade"
"People aged 65 to 69 saw their credit-card balances grow by 217%, to $5,844, during the decade... The rate at which retirees are filing for bankruptcy has more than doubled over the past 10 years...Retirees are now the fastest-growing segment of bankrupted Americans, according to research by the Consumer Bankruptcy Project at Harvard University"
"Seniors who are having trouble making ends meet are increasingly using credit cards to pay for basic necessities, says Steve Rhode, founder and former president of credit-counseling agency MyVesta." And the credit card banks are probably targeting elderly people.
Because Christian leaders and ministries are role models for Christians who follow them, these ministries should not accept credit cards, and should be criticized if they do. For example, I found that Family Radio, under Harold Camping, and Texe Marrs, accept credit cards as payment to their ministries.
Ezekiel 22: 12-21 notes that usury practiced in Israel, or Judah, was one of the sins of the "princes of Israel" which brought down the severe judgment of God. In Ezekiel 22: 12 there are two specific sins mentioned, taking gifts to shed blood and usury. Verses 13 through 22 describe the Lord's anger at these sins and his punishment upon the nation of Judah.
Could rampant governmental and individual debt, including massive credit card debt, be a judgment of God on America for turning away from his truth as Deuteronomy 28: warns? In Deuteronomy 28: 15 it says that if a nation does not obey God, then "all these curses shall come upon thee..." One of the curses listed is in verses 43-44, is that the stranger who lends money to "thee" will get up above 'thee" and "thou" shalt come down very low."
The overall credit card debt in the U. S. was $273 billion in 1992. It's more than $800 billion today. This is from: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/30/eveningnews/main1088425.shtm
According to the Washington Post, January 25, 2004 "The average household now carries about $9,000 in credit card debt. From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2004/01/25/AR2005033106715.html
The following web site also says the average household credit card debt in 2004 was $9,000. http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2004/mft04060703.htm?ref=foolwatch June 7, 2004 . "Americans owe three-quarters of a trillion dollars in credit card debt. The average American household with credit cards owes about $9,000, according to CardWeb.com. Worse, the average U.S. household with cards pays about $1,100 in credit card interest alone per year."
Again, at http://www.click2houston.com/money/4170962/detail.html they tell us that "In 2004, the average credit card debt per household was a startling $9,000. If you subtract out those who pay off their credit cards every month, the number rises to a jaw dropping $17,000 per household."
A Study On Credit Card Debt
The Center for Responsible Lending did a study with 1,150 interviews of low and middle income people. It is called The Plastic Safety Net: The Realities Behind Debt In America, 2005. The study was done in 2004 or 2005.
It is reported at: http://www.demos-usa.org/page38.cfm They report that credit card debt has almost tripled since 1989. They found that the average credit card debt of low and middle-income households in America was $8,650; One-third of households had credit card debt over $10,000.
Their survey asked respondents whether they had used credit cards in the past year to pay for basic living expenses, such as rent, mortgage payments, groceries, utilities or insurance, because they did not have money in their checking or savings account. One out of three households reported using credit cards in this way, saying that they had used credit cards to cover basic living expenses on the average four out of the last 12 months. Households that reported losing a job sometime in the last three years and being unemployed for at least two months were almost twice as likely to use credit cards to pay for basic living expenses. Households who used credit cards for their basic living expenses had lower levels of savings and higher credit card balances than households who did not use credit cards to pay for their basic expenses.
They report - contrary to the idea that people often use credit cards for unnecessary items - that "Our ?ndings illustrate that most debt-stressed low- and middle-income consumers are trying to cover unavoidable expenses, not discretionary purchases."
The report says that forty-seven percent of households had been called by a bill collector. A little under half had missed or were late with a credit card payment in the last year, with nearly a quarter of households reporting paying a late fee at least one or two times in the past year. Having to pay a lot of late fees makes it much more difficult for low income people to pay off a credit card debt. Late fees at that time ran from about $30 per month to $39. Often credit card banks will drastically raise their interest rates in addition to charging late penalties, and the higher interest rates make it very hard to pay off the debt. Credit card banks will penalize cardholders for late payments by increasing the interest rate on the account two- or three-fold, often after only one late payment. A household with the average credit card debt of $8,650 would have had to pay an additional $1,100 in interest if their rate was raised from about 12 to 25 percent.
In addition, there is also the default practice of credit card banks, such that when the cardholder defaults on another credit card or on any loan, the bank will raise his interest from perhaps 12 to 25 or 30 percent.
Again, the authors of the report state that "Despite the common perception that families use credit cards to acquire luxury items and "live beyond their means," our research has demonstrated that a sizeable majority (71 percent) of low- and middle income families depend on credit cards to pay for basic living expenses or to deal with unexpected ?nancial emergencies."
They tell us that "The exponential growth of credit card debt has taken place in an economic context that breeds uncertainty for households. "Income volatility"—fluctuation in family incomes—almost doubled in the last two decades of the twentieth century. At the same time, wages have been stagnant."
"Rather than being a constructive financial tool, credit card debt can result in a downward financial spiral. Consequently, our nation cannot be complacent about the costs and risks associated with credit card debt. Credit cards are no substitute for adequate wages..."
And, they get to the heart of the credit card problem in saying "Deregulation of the credit card industry has created an environment where credit card companies can construct the terms, rules, and practices of the credit card agreement without meaningful regulation. These new and complicated revenue-generating practices often fall harshly on the backs of those consumers who can least affordthem...Too often, the pricing strategies of credit card companies make it more likely that a family will endure persistent and burdensome debt, with little chance of paying or keeping down their debt. While regulating credit was once the province of the states, deregulation and federal pre-emption have left states with little authority to regulate credit card practices - making federal policymakers bear the responsibility for reforming credit card practices." But the federal policy makers are under the influence of the financial elite and the credit card banks.
One of the credit card bank problems that has developed in the current climate of deregulation is the over-use of late payment fees. This report finds that nearly a quarter of households reported paying a charge for a late payment at least one or two times in the past year. They say that credit card banks expected to collect $16 billion in penalty fees in 2005.
Then they inform us that "Families are using credit cards to cope with rising costs, stagnant incomes and the lack of alternative safety nets. The findings of this survey indicate that for many low and middle-income households, credit cards are the primary safety net available to weather job losses and deal with unexpected expenses. In borrowing to make ends meet, these households are further draining their resources as they struggle to pay down their credit card debt, often inundated with high interest rates, excessive penalty fees and capricious contracts terms."
They introduce the concept of the income/debt ratio, apparently dividing the credit card debt by the household income to get a ratio. The higher the ratio, I would think, the higher the debt-stress. If the household income was $20,000 a year, and the household had a credit card debt of $5,000, the debt-stress would be .25. If the household income was only $10,000 and the credit card debt $5,000, the debt-stress would be higher, or .50 In their study the mean debt-stress ratio they say was 0.21, which is fairly high.
The report goes on to say that "It is consumers who taken on credit card debt to cover basic living expenses, medical expenses,or home repairs, or to cover expenses after a layoff in their family, who are most likely to have higher levels of "debt stress."
Tricks Used By Credit Card Banks To Steal Our Money
The following can be seen at: http://www.bcsalliance.com/x_creditcardtricks1a1.html
1. Late and over the limit penalty fees charged to cardholders now account for more than half of the income of credit card banks according to the site listed above.
A few years ago the penalty fee for a late payment was only $10. Now it is $39 for most credit cards.
2. To trick people into paying late some credit card banks have changed the due date so that more checks will come in late and the bank can hit the cardholder with a late fee of $39.
3. If a payment is late two or more times, the interest rate on a card is often raised to as much as 31 percent. In addition, some credit card banks have raised interest rates from around ten percent o 25 percent or higher - without giving the cardholder any excuse at all for doing so.
4. First USA credit card bank used the tactic of not mailing out statements at all to trick cardholders into sending in late payments.
6. Another dirty trick is to raise the interest rate to a very high level because the consumer is said to be carrying too large a balance. Citibank has done this.
6. The universal default scam is also used by many or most credit card banks. If a borrower is late just once with a payment on some other credit card, home mortgage or auto loan, the credit card banks use this as an excuse to drastically increase the interest rate.
7 Deceptive advertisement is also used by credit card banks. A bank may advertise a low interest rate but only a few people can qualify for this low rate.
Or, a "fixed rate for the life of the balance" may be promised to lure people into transferring balances from other credit card banks. After the balance is transferred, the interest rate is raised considerably above that promised as a "fixed" rate.
Lawsuits Against Credit Card Banks
This information is also at: http://www.bcsalliance.com/x_creditcardtricks1a1.html
Because First USA changed the date due for payment to trick cardholders into paying late a class action lawsuit was brought against the bank.
A class action lawsuit was brought against Chase credit card bank for not posting payments on time as required by federal law.
Providian credit card bank was sued for overbilling its customers. The court hit Providian with a $300 million judgment.
A class action lawsuit was brought against Advanta credit card bank for guaranteeing a low interest rate and then charging customers a higher rate.
Capital One was sued for charging late fees when credit card payments were mailed in two weeks before the due date.
MBNA, now part of Bank of America, was sued for cheating customers in improperly charging late fees.
However, these lawsuits were all civil actions and did not result in any change in the federal laws regulating business practices by credit card banks. A credit card bank that lost a class action lawsuit in federal court could have continued to carry out the same dirty tricks for which it was sued. In addition, the class action lawsuits did not usually bring in any substantial money to cardholders because the attorneys got must of the money from the judgments.
The Huge Number of Complaints Against Credit Card Banks On the Internet
Consumer Action testified before the Senate Banking Committee May 17, 2005 using complaints it received from credit card consumers. This is at: http://banking.senate.gov/_files/sherry.pdf
A Bastrop, Texas woman complained to Consumer Action that AT&T credit card bank had raised her interest rate from 12.9 percent to 28.7 percent because of a late payment to another credit card bank.
In this article Consumer Action says that thirty-nine complaints about the universal default trick were attached to their testimony to the Committee.
Consumer Action reported that in 2004 the average late payment fee was $27.45 with some major credit card banks charging $39 even then. Now most banks charge $39. Consumer Action says "With average monthly minimum payments of 2 percent of the balance, the late fee on a $2,000 balance would be double the minimum payment. This is outrageously excessive."
Then they say that "Even people who try to make timely payments will be hit with a late fee if their payment was delayed in the mail. We hear from many consumers who allowed seven days to post a payment, yet the bank still assessed a late fee. Banks should consider post marks when posting payments."
Consumer Action received a number of complaints about credit card banks raising their interest rates to excessive levels without any excuse.
The following complaints against MBNA/Bank of America are from: http://banking.senate.gov/_files/sherry.pdf
Some MBNA/Bank of America cardholders complained that they accepted offers of fixed rate of interest for the life of a balance at low interest rates (3.99 percent in one case), but the interest rates were changed to a rate of 25 percent or more without any excuses. Other consumers say that MBNA/Bank of America raised their interest rates from around ten percent o 25 percent even though they paid on time.
Consumer Action at http://consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/mbna_interest.html
lists many additional complaints against MBNA/Bank of America.
MBNA/Bank of America raised the interest rates of many of its customers from about 8 percent or higher to 27 percent in many cases.
Consumer Affairs in this article reports that high credit card debt, increasing interest rates, dirty tricks and extra penalty fees led many consumers to file for bankruptcy.
They say credit card banks have demanded payment from dead family members who usually have no legal obligation to pay the deceased's debts.
Robert on Feburary 2, 2004 complained that MBNA/Bank of America raised his interest rate from around five percent to 22 percent. He says "My monthly payment is $317. the finance charge is $234.86 which means only $82.14 goes to the principal."
Here is a report on complaints against Bank of America credit cards by Consumer Affairs at: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/mbnbofa.html
They say that Bank of America credit card division, like MBNA, which it acquired in June of 2005, is drastically and irrationally increasing interest rates, and charging many late fees, often without justification.
Bank of America has offered its Visa Platinum card, Consumer Affairs says, at a low interest rate to transfer balances from other credit cards, and then raised the interest rate to 17.99 or even as high as 31.99 percent.
The Wilmington, Delaware-based MBNA credit card bank had been charging high interest rates, not living up to promises of "fixed" rates for the life of a balance, charging late fees upon fees and interest on fees. So many of its cardholders were closing their accounts with MBNA that its quarterly profits in April of 2005 had dropped 94 percent (according to this Consumer Affairs article). See www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/bofa_mbna2.html
Bank of America then acquired MBNA in June of 2005. But now Bank of America has taken over the dirty tricks of MBNA, substantially raising interest rates, charging late fees too often, using bait and switch sales tactics, and not living up to promises of "fixed" rates for the life of a balance.
Consumer Affairs says Bank of America changed due dates to six days earlier to lure cardholders into sending in late payments. They then charged them $39 late fees each month and sometimes drastically raised the interest rates.
Tim on February 1, 2006 complains that Bank of America lowered is credit card limit and then raised his interest rate to 31 percent. Tim writes that "It seems it is not morally right or ethical for a bank to change its interest rate and/or to lower a limit below your current limit and then fine you for being over that limit. Also, their collection agencies have called even though I am paying more than the minimum."
Veronica complained to Consumer Affairs on January 20, 2006 that she had heard that credit card banks were going to double the minimum payment without informing their customers. In October of 2005 she called the Bank of America Customer Service and was told Bank of America was not going to double minimum payments and if they did they would send out a letter to notify customers. But in December of 2005 Bank of America did raise the monthly minimum payment to 4 percent of the balance, up from the previous 2 percent. Veronica says of Bank of America that "They lie and they do not stand by what they say."
Jason on October 26, 2005 says Bank of America charged him late fees of $39 and raised his interest rate. he says " I've had it with these corporate thugs who view their jobs like its some kind of religion and the Bank is always right."
On September 11, 2005 Kelly complains that Bank of America got him to use a convenience check at what they claimed was to be 1.9 percent and then raised his rate to 31 percent. He says "I'll never make this mistake again and shame on Bank of America treating their customers like that."
Vivian on September 11, 2005 tells Consumer Affairs that Bank of America charged her several over the limit fees, though she was not over the credit card limit. But the higher interest rate they slapped on her did bring her over the limit. She says "This certainly isn't ethical, so how can it be legal? Its not illegal because the federal government has taken over the control of credit card banks from the states. And the federal government ether has no laws regulating credit card banks or it does not enforce them. It seems that older contract law is no longer enforced by federal or state courts.
Marta, a senior citizen, on August 27, 2005 says she paid off her card each month and did not carry a balance. Nevertheless Bank of America charged her a $39 fee and put her into a "penalty phase' with a much higher interest rate. She says "This is the most blatant case of unethical business practices I've ever encountered...Don't fall for these zero percent scams as they will get you. At least they can't continue to steal my money since I've closed the account..."
On The Rip Off Report at http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff186921.htm
there are other complaints about dishonest practices of Bank of America, many about excessively high interest rates (31 percent in some cases), and late fees.
The same type of complaints are found on the Internet against Citibank, another large credit card outfit. Some of these complaints are on http://www.badcreditcards.org/CITIcomplaints.htm
Citibank lowered the credit limit below his balance for one cardholder and then charged penalty fees.
After paying on his credit card account at Citibank for years and paying it off each month, they then raised one cardholder's interest rate to 28.99 percent. He says "I've paid the late fees, but they continue to charge more penalties...I can't believe they can legally get away with this type of business practice." They can get away with it because the federal government has, in effect, taken away the right of the states to regulate credit card business practices and the federal government then allows credit card banks to do pretty much what they please.
Citibank has been caught with the old scam of offering a fixed APR for transfer of balances (of perhaps 3.99 percent) and then raising the interest substantially (to 17.99 percent for one customer). This customer of Citibank says "These people are like dealing with street level con men. They manipulated my account without notifying me - up'ed all the rates, fees and charges for over six months and they suddenly notified me that they were going to send my account to a collection agency...And after I paid their fees to keep my record clear - they billed me again." It goes on and on.
GC SERVICES COLLECTION AGENCY
Credit Card Banks Turn Accounts Over To Collection Agencies
Bernard Pyron
Finally, a credit card bank can declare a borrower to be indefault and then the bank demands the entire debt be paid in full all at once. Last, collection agencies, acting for the banks, come after the small amount of money and the few possessions the poor people have. These practices are exactly the kind of thing that Exodus 22:25 forbids.
In addition, GC Services headquartered in Houston, Texas but with offices all over the nation, one of the larger collection agencies credit card banks used to go after the assets of card holders who have been declared to be in default is unscrupulous in its practices toward those who it targets. The federal Fair Debt CollectionPractices Act forbids collection agencies from calling people before 8 AM or after 9 PM, says they must not call employers, relatives or others to harass them, and must not make false statements to threaten people. Yet on the Internet there are numerous complaints that GC Services violate all these rules. http://ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff88845.htm
The federal Fair Debt CollectionPractices Act authorizes courts to force collection agencies to pay attorney fees, though the total judgment allowed to the person harrassed is only $1,000. Civil cases under this law can be brought in eitherstate or federal courts. See http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpa/fdcpact.htm813. Civil liability [15 USC 1692k]
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