isn’t. While the Federal Reserve Board is an independent federal government agency, the Federal Reserve System is a privately operated corporation owned since 1913 by 12 select top banks across the country that print out money—our money, to be exact—and lend it back to us with interest. How much money is printed out, and under what circumstances, is not entirely clear, but the effect is that some of us tend to get the short end of the stick. Often, the result is that we then have to borrow money to get by, having to pay interest on money that was our own to start with.
Naturally, in order not to be among those left out, those who are in the know take more than others. This cannot help but create a mindset of scarcity in many people. Remember the game of Musical Chairs, in which one chair—and one player—were removed after each round, causing everyone to try and grab one of the remaining seats when the music stopped? Remember being nervous as you circled past those chairs?
It seems that bankers make their millions by taking away one chair after another, leaving us in their debt. The way it works is that we owe the banks, with interest, more than they have lent us. It goes by many names and schemes that nobody (except perhaps the bankers themselves) seem to understand. We hear about derivatives, credit default swaps, subprime mortgage-based securities, stimulus cash, gamed accounting, carry trades, TBTF bailouts, TARPS, TALFS, shell-game BLS reports . .
This scares the wits out of most of us, as well it should, because we don’t have a
omtimes.com
clue what’s going on. But the secret bottom-line that nobody is copping to is this fact: If we were all to pay up our debts tomorrow, the whole economic system would collapse in a day leaving you and me in the dark of an invisible marketplace we had no idea how to get out of.
So what is happiness, and what is real wealth, and what has real worth? It is children cherished and fed; it is old people warm in the winter. It is a healthy natural world around us, and enough to eat and the pleasures of eating it together. It is water we can drink and swim in, and work that is meaningful, and love, and getting along with each other even when we don’t love each other so much. It is dreaming up new things and creating beauty and having bright ideas and laughing a lot.
Wealth and worth and value is, more than anything, this precious opportunity we have each been given to be alive in the world right this minute. We’re here NOW. Our life won’t last forever. There's not a moment to waste.
Value comes from living well; wealth derives from the opportunity to do so, and from spending the treasure of time with generosity and deep joy.
Money? What’s that? Carolyn North is the author of SERIOUS FUN:
Ingenious Improvisations on Money, Food, Waste, Water and Home.
Carolyn teaches movement and sound improvisations
for healing. She brings the improvisatory model to social activism, and founded The Daily Bread Project, an innovative approach to hunger in the community.
Read more at: Serious Fun by Carolyn North
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