When it comes to the Pope, there are two things that are pretty clear: he doesn’t understand economics and he believes the answer to all of the world’s problems is more socialism. This can be found again in a message sent to the World Economic Forum on Tuesday.
In a message sent to Davos, Switzerland for the annual meeting of economists, public officials and pundits, Pope Francis argued the case for additional socialist central economic planning through a heightened distribution of wealth to promote the poor.
Here is his entire statement:
“What is needed, then, is a renewed, profound and broadened sense of responsibility on the part of all. ‘Business is – in fact – a vocation, and a noble vocation, provided that those engaged in it see themselves challenged by a greater meaning in life’ (Evangelii Gaudium, 203). Such men and women are able to serve more effectively the common good and to make the goods of this world more accessible to all. Nevertheless, the growth of equality demands something more than economic growth, even though it presupposes it. It demands first of all ‘a transcendent vision of the person’ (Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 11), because ‘without the perspective of eternal life, human progress in this world is denied breathing-space’ (ibid.). It also calls for decisions, mechanisms and processes directed to a better distribution of wealth, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality. I am convinced that from such an openness to the transcendent a new political and business mentality can take shape, one capable of guiding all economic and financial activity within the horizon of an ethical approach which is truly humane.”
Akin to what Economic Collapse News did when the Pope criticized capitalism in November, let’s dissect his comments.
Such men and women are able to serve more effectively the common good and to make the goods of this world more accessible to all.
By using the power of capitalism and free markets, businesses serve the common good and make the lives of everyone much easier and simpler. With free trade and unimpeded markets, individuals have access to various goods and services (think smartphones and the Internet). Look at how countries without markets still lead antiquated, primitive and impoverished lifestyles.
Heck, even Bono acknowledged that capitalism takes more people out of poverty than all of the government aid ever could!
Nevertheless, the growth of equality demands something more than economic growth, even though it presupposes it.
In the United States, the poorest in society lead a far richer life and standard of living than most in the world. Furthermore, free markets have given the poor access to an array of leading edge technology. Think about this: the richest people from 100 years ago would be amazed by how people have access to the world in their pockets – the affluent wouldn’t much care about how other rich people have big houses.
With capitalism and free markets, the poor are lifted out of poverty and enter into the middle class. Of course, governments and their policies that lead to unintended consequences hinder any kind of personal growth.
It also calls for decisions, mechanisms and processes directed to a better distribution of wealth, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the nation’s top 40 percent pay 106 percent of all the nation’s taxes. Furthermore, according to the Heritage Foundation, 100 million Americans receive some sort of check from the federal government every single month. If this isn’t wealth redistribution then what is?
Let’s face it: wealth redistribution is enormous in a strong majority of developed nations. Although governments and politicians, such as President Obama, like to encourage increases in wealth redistribution, the question that has to be asked is: how much has been achieved thus far?
The answer is very simple: very little. President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s war on poverty was and still is a failure to this date.
I am convinced that from such an openness to the transcendent a new political and business mentality can take shape, one capable of guiding all economic and financial activity within the horizon of an ethical approach which is truly humane.”
What the Pope is advocating, whether directly or indirectly, is already happening: it’s called corporatism, a system whereby corporations and the governments collude and create a revolving door environment. Instead, the Pope should support a political system that has less government and can’t produce buffet-style politics where industry, business and lobbyists can pick and choose which legislation to impose to benefit them.
Pope Francis may know something about religion, and he certainly has a worldwide army of economic advisors at his fingertips. He has spent most of his life a leader of the most brilliant group of men ever assembled – the Jesuits. It is perhaps arrogant for Mr. Moran to suggest that Pope Francis, “doesn’t understand economics”. President Obama believes he does and will meet on March 27 to discuss economics further. Of course Mr. Moran may also think he knows more about economics that the President.
Pope Francis knows the difference between the do-nothings who give lip service to “inequality” and those who understand “exclusion” and expect governments to eliminate it. Families are the primary economic unit and they require a share of work and wealth to sustain marriage, procreation, child rearing, care for the elderly and life in general.
Consider tax reform that has the same rate for rich and poor – 8% on income, no payroll taxes and 2% on net wealth (excluding $15,000 cash and $500,000 in retirement savings). Over time it would help to restore the net wealth lost by the poorer half of the U.S. population. Even C corporations could be taxed at a flat 8% with a 4% VAT.
To be fair to the 1% who may think they cannot afford a net wealth tax even with the option of keeping 92% of their earnings, there would be nothing wrong with letting them (or anyone else) pay a flat 26% income tax rate (and estate taxes later).
Now who doesn’t understand economics?
You are the answer to your own question
Jorge Mario Bergolio (Pope Francis) is not advocating Socialism what he is advocating is a more just distribution of economic rewards than the banking system and taxing system of the world which steals from the poorest and through inflation which is theft through a hidden tax. has transferred 53% of the ownership of the planet to the planet to 7% of the population.
The 1944 meeting in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, at which the world’s most prominent socialists established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as mechanisms for eliminating gold from world finance; the hidden agenda behind the IMF/World Bank revealed as the building of world socialism; the role of the Federal Reserve in bringing that about. As we have seen, the game called Bailout has been played over and over again in the rescue of large corporations, domestic banks, and savings-and-loan institutions. The pretense has been that these measures were necessary to protect the public. The result, however, has been just the opposite. The public has been exploited as billions of dollars have been expropriated through taxes and inflation. The money has been used to make up losses that should have been paid by the failing banks and corporations as the penalty for mismanagement and fraud.
While this was happening in our home-town stadium, the same game was being played in the international arena. There are two primary differences. One is that the amount of money at stake in the international game is much larger. Through a complex tangle of bank loans, subsidies, and grants, the Federal Reserve is becoming the “lender of last
for virtually the entire planet. The other difference is that, instead of claiming to be Protectors of the Public, the players have emblazoned across the backs of their uniforms: Saviors of the World.
BRETTON WOODS: AN ATTACK ON GOLD
The game began at an international meeting of financiers, politicians, and theoreticians held in July of 1944 at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Officially, it
was called the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, but is generally referred to today as simply the Bretton Woods Conference. Two international agencies were created at that meeting: the International Monetary Fund and its sister organization, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development— commonly called the World Bank.
The announced purposes of these organizations were admirable. The World Bank was to make loans to war-tom and underdeveloped nations so they could build stronger economies. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was to promote monetary cooperation between nations by maintaining fixed exchange rates between their currencies. But the method by which these goals were to be achieved was less admirable. It was to terminate the use of gold as the basis of international currency exchange and replace it with a politically manipulated paper standard. In other words, it was to allow governments to escape the discipline of gold so they could create money out of nothing without paying the penalty of having their currencies drop in value on world markets.
Prior to this conference, currencies were exchanged in terms of their gold value, and the arrangement was called the “gold-exchange standard.” This is not the same as a “gold-standard” in which a currency is backed by gold. It was merely that the exchange ratios of the various currencies—most of which were not backed by gold—were determined by how much gold they could buy in the open market. Their values, therefore, were set by supply and demand. Politicians and bankers hated the arrangement, because it was beyond their ability to manipulate. In the past, it had served as a remarkably efficient mechanism but it was a strict disciplinarian. As John Kenneth Galbraith observed:
The Bretton Woods arrangements sought to recapture the advantages of the gold standard—currencies that were exchangeable at stable and predictable rates into gold and thus at stable and predictable rates into each other. And this it sought to accomplish while minimizing the pain imposed by the gold standard on countries that were buying too much, selling too little and thus losing gold.
The method by which this was to be accomplished was exactly the method devised on Jekyll Island to allow American banks to
create money out of nothing without paying the penalty of having their currencies devalued by other banks. It was the establishment of a world central bank which would create a common fiat money for all nations and then require them to inflate together at the same rate. There was to be a kind of international insurance fund which
would rush that fiat money to any nation that temporarily needed
it to face down a “run” on its currency. It wasn’t born with all these features fully developed, just as the Federal Reserve wasn’t fully developed when it was born. That, nevertheless, was the plan, and it was launched with all the structures in place.
The theoreticians who drafted this plan were the well-known Fabian Socialist from England, John Maynard Keynes, 1 and the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Harry Dexter White.
The Fabians originally were an elite group of intellectuals who formed a semi-secret society for the purpose of bringing socialism to the world. Whereas Communists wanted to establish socialism quickly through violence and revolution, the Fabians preferred to do it slowly through propaganda and legislation. The word socialism was not to be emphasized. Instead, they would speak of benefits for the people such as welfare, medical care, higher wages, and better working conditions. In this way, they planned to accomplish their objective without bloodshed and even without serious opposition. They scorned the Communists, not because they disliked their goals, but because they disagreed with their methods. To emphasize the importance of gradualism, they adopted the turtle as the symbol of their movement. The three most prominent leaders in the early days were Sidney and Beatrice Webb and George Bernard Shaw. A stained-glass window in the Beatrice Webb House in Surrey, England is especially enlightening. Across the top appears the last line from Omar Khayyam:
“Dear love, couldst thou and I with fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire!”
Keynes often is portrayed as having been merely a liberal. But, for his lifelong involvement with Fabians and their work, see Rose Martin, Fabian Freeway; High Road to Socialism in the U.S.A. (Boston: Western Islands, 1966).
Beneath the line Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire, the mural depicts Shaw and Webb striking the earth with hammers. Across the bottom, the masses kneel in worship of a stack of books advocating the theories of socialism. Thumbing his nose at the docile masses is H.G. Wells who, after quitting the Fabians, denounced them as “the new machiavellians.” The most revealing component, however, is the Fabian crest which appears Between Shaw and Webb. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing!
COMMUNIST MOLES
Harry Dexter White was America’s chief technical expert and the dominant force at the conference. He eventually became the first Executive Director for the United States at the IMF. An interesting footnote to this story is that White was simultaneously a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a member of a Communist espionage ring in Washington while he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. And even more interesting is that the White House was informed of that fact when President
Truman appointed him to his post. The FBI had transmitted to the White House detailed proof of White’s activities on at least two separate occasions. Serving as the technical secretary at the Bretton Woods conference was Virginius Frank Coe, a member of the same espionage ring to which White belonged. Coe later became the first Secretary of the IMF. Thus, completely hidden from public view, there was a complex drama taking place in which the intellectual guiding lights at the Bretton Woods conference were Fabian Socialists and Communists. Although they were in disagreement over method, they were in perfect harmony on goal: international socialism. There were undoubtedly other reasons for Communists to be enthusiastic about the IMF and the World Bank, despite the fact
that the Soviet Union elected at the time not to become a member. The goal of the organizations was to create a world currency, a world central bank, and a mechanism to control the economies of all nations. In order for these things to happen, the United States would of necessity have to surrender its dominant position. In fact,
it would have to be reduced to just one part of the collective whole.
That fit in quite nicely with the Soviet plan. Furthermore, the World Bank was seen as a vehicle for moving capital from the United States and other industrialized nations to the underdeveloped nations, the very ones over which Marxists have always had the greatest control. They looked forward to the day when we would pay their bills. It has all come to pass.
IMF STRUCTURE AND FUNDING
The International Monetary Fund appears to be a part of the United Nations, much as the Federal Reserve System appears to be a part of the United States government, but it is entirely independent. It is funded on a quota basis by its member nations, almost two hundred in number. The greatest share of capital, however, comes from the more highly industrialized nations such as Great Britain, Japan, France, and Germany. The United States contributes the most, at about twenty per cent of the total. In reality, that twenty per cent represents about twice as much as the number indicates, because most of the other nations contribute worthless currencies which no one wants. The world prefers dollars.
One of the routine operations at the IMF is to exchange worthless currencies for dollars so the weaker countries can pay their international bills. This is supposed to cover temporary “cash-flow” problems. It is a kind of international FDIC which rushes money to a country that has gone bankrupt so it can avoid devaluing its currency. The transactions are seldom paid back.
Although escape from the gold-exchange standard was the long-range goal of the IMF, the only way to convince nations to participate at the outset was to use gold itself as a backing for its own money supply—at least as a temporary expedient. As Keynes explained it:
“I felt that the leading central banks would never voluntarily relinquish the then existing forms of the gold standard; and I did not desire a catastrophe sufficiently violent to shake them off involuntarily. The only practical hope lay, therefore, in a gradual evolution in the forms of a managed world currency, taking the existing gold standard as a starting point. ”
It was illegal for American citizens to own gold at that time, but everyone else in the world could exchange their paper dollars for gold at a fixed price of $35 per ounce. That made it the de facto international currency because, unlike any other at the time, its value was guaranteed. So, at the outset, the IMF adopted the dollar as its own international monetary unit.This is the use of extreme capitalism which extinguishes democracy that the Pope is referring to. He is not a socialist. He is a humanitarian.
Although most of the policy statements of the World Bank deal with economic issues, a close monitoring of its activities reveal a preoccupation with social and political issues. This should not be surprising considering that the Bank was perceived by its founders as an instrument for social and political change. The change which it was designed to bring about was the building of world socialism, and that is exactly what it is accomplishing today.
This hidden agenda becomes crystal clear in the nature of what the Bank calls Sectoral Loans and Structural-Adjustment Loans. In the first category, only part of the money is to be used for the costs of specific projects while the rest goes to support policy changes in the economic sector. In the second group, all of the money is for policy changes and none of it is for projects. In recent years, almost half of the loans to underdeveloped countries have been in that category. What are the policy changes that are the object of these loans? They add up to one thing: the building of world socialism.
As the Fabians had planned it, the word socialism is not to be used. Instead, the loans are issued for government hydro-electric projects, government oil refineries, government lumber mills, government mining companies, and government steel plants. It is delivered from the hands of politicians and bureaucrats into the hands of other politicians and bureaucrats. When the money comes from government, goes to government, and is administered by government, the result will be the expansion of government.
Here is an example. One of the policy changes often required by the World Bank as a condition of granting a loan is that the recipient country must hold down its wages. The assumption is that the government has the power—and rightfully should have the power—to set wages! In other words, one of the conditions of its loan is that the state must be omnipotent.
Paul Roberts holds the William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Writing in Business Week, he says:
The entire “development process” has been guided by the belief that reliance on private enterprise and equity investment is incompatible with economic and social progress. In place of such proven avenues of success, development planning substituted loans and foreign aid so that governments of the LDCs [Less Developed Countries] could control economic activity in keeping with plans drawn up by experts.
Consequently, economic life in the LDCs was politicized from the start. By endowing governments with extensive control over their economies, the U.S. set up conditions exactly opposite to those required for economic growth. 1
Ken Ewert explains further that the conditions imposed by the Fund are seldom free-market oriented. He says:
The Fund concentrates on “macro-policies,” such as fiscal and monetary policies or exchange rates, and pays little attention to fundamental issues like private property rights and freedom of enterprise. Implicit … is the belief that with proper “macro-management” any economic system is viable….
Even more important, it has allowed governments the world over to expropriate the wealth of their citizens more efficiently (through the hidden tax of inflation) while at the same time aggrandizing their own power. There is little doubt that the IMF is an influence for world-wide socialism. 1
An important feature of the Structural-Adjustment Loans is that the money need not be applied to any specific development project. It can be spent for anything the recipient wishes. That includes interest payments on overdue bank loans. Thus, the World Bank becomes yet one more conduit from the pockets of taxpayers to the assets of commercial banks which have made risky loans to Third-World countries.
It isn’t the Pope that is bringing about socialism