Page 1 of 2 SPEAKING FREELY The evil of the US dollar
By Asif Salahuddin
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Imagine a large building full of about 50 people in a remote area, not
accessible to other human beings.
Each person would need to have his basic needs - food, clothing, shelter and so
forth, met. In doing so, each person would have to develop skills to go about
earning his livelihood to support his needs. But it would be nonsensical for
every person to develop each skill that is needed to survive. What would happen
in reality
is that each person would develop a few key skills and use these as his source
of living; for example one person may specialize in growing crops and rearing
animals, whist another may specialize in plumbing and carpentry.
Now these people would have to trade with one another to benefit from one
another's skills. For example, the farmer may trade 10 chickens with the
builder in exchange for him renovating his room, or a cleaner may trade half a
day's cleaning in return for a knitter to knit two woollen jumpers for him.
As the number of skills or trades in the house (offered by the people resident
there to one another) will be quite numerous, it would not only be very
difficult and complex to keep track of all the exchange ratios between
different goods and services, but also extremely impractical for day-to-day
living.
Enter the use of a paper currency, which would remove the difficulties faced in
exchanging goods and services with one another. From now on, for example, one
hour's worth of cleaning could be assigned a value of one unit of the currency,
a woollen jumper as five units, one chicken as three units and so on.
So instead of the farmer dragging around a number of goats with him to obtain
building services from the builder, he now simply needs to take with him the
appropriate amount of currency in his wallet to obtain this service.
Now imagine all the 50 people in the house working away hard to earn a living
through their particular skills - except one. This individual, let us refer to
him as the central banker or just banker for short, instead of learning to lay
bricks, learning to treat people, learning to cook or develop any other skill
the other people in the building needed to trade with and survive on a
day-to-day basis, does something different and unique.
What this individual does is to print and control the currency being used in
the building. On the surface, this may look innocent enough, but look at the
consequences for him and the rest of the people in the building.
As mentioned previously, instead of trading goods and services directly, the
residents now trade with one another through the use of this currency. So if
the cook needs some medical attention, instead of having to bake a number of
cakes there and then, he now simply offers the doctor in the building the
necessary amount of currency. This currency the cook has earned, which he is
now using for his treatment, may have been earned by him for example in the
previous week by selling cakes to the farmer.
But what does the banker need to do if he falls into a similar predicament?
Does he spend hours working away providing a service or days making a product
in order to save up for his treatment? No - he does not need to; the banker
simply prints some of the paper currency which the people in the building trade
in and exchanges this for his treatment. And he does this for whatever goods or
services he may require.
The net result is that while the other 49 people in the building have to work
(producing physical goods or providing tangible services) to earn their paper
currency and therefore purchase other goods and services through the use of
this currency, the banker needs not engage in any real work.
All he needs to do is simply ensure that he has the means to print the currency
he may require and further ensure - through force if necessary - that the other
people in the building will use his paper money for all the transactions
occurring in the building. And this leads to a very important conclusion at
this point - that effectively the banker is obtaining the goods and services he
needs to survive absolutely free from the rest of the residents (minus of
course his cost of printing the paper notes, which is negligible).
To maintain this privileged position the banker will resort to force or
intimidation to make sure that only his currency is used in the building at all
times. Effectively, the behavior of the banker is more akin to that of a
gangster.
This arrangement will remain to be the case as long as the rest of the people
trade in his currency and the banker can print this currency freely without any
restriction - that is, he does not have to back up the currency he prints with
any material substance of value such as gold or silver (for example, for every
1,000 units of currency printed he would have had to have one ounce of gold in
reserve.)
So the question arises, if the banker's currency is not backed up by gold or
silver, why is it worth anything, considering that at the end of the day it is
just bits of paper? As illustrated above, paper currency will have value as
long as there are people who will trade goods and services using it.
It is interesting to note the effects on the price of goods and services as
currency is printed and fed into circulation. Let us assume that in the above
building there are a total of 5,000 units of currency collectively amongst the
50 people living there and that the price of an adult cow is 400 units as
currently sold by the farmer. Further, at present, there is only person
interested in buying this cow at this price.
Now imagine that the banker prints an extra 1,000 units of currency. With this
extra currency, he loans part of it to some of the other people, say 400 units
each to two people (each of whom help the banker exert his dominance in the
building). Now suddenly these two people are also interested in purchasing the
cow, since they now have the funds to do so.
However, the farmer is now faced with a total of three people all wishing to
buy his cow for 400 units. As a result, the farmer increases his price to 480
units, which results in only one of the people still managing to stay in the
bidding to buy the cow. This may well be the original bidder, but now he has to
dig deeper into his savings to pay for this product.
Essentially, what has happened in the building is the process of inflation,
which has caused the prices of goods and services to rise substantially. This
has happened simply because there is now more paper currency in circulation
chasing the same number of goods and services.
So far, we have just examined the effects of this currency arrangement on one
large household. Imagine now a small community of 10 such buildings, each with
about 50 people residing in it and living in a similar fashion. They too would
have their own currencies circulating in their respective households.
However, our banker from the first building has designs on these other
buildings as well. If he could get the occupants of these neighboring buildings
trading in his currency then its purchasing power would increase.
For example, imagine in one of the other buildings the main product which was
produced there was paraffin oil, and this was an essential but costly item for
day-to-day living in not just that building, but all the other buildings. If
the banker himself wished to buy this product, then he would for once have to
offer a tangible physical product or service as opposed to just exchanging his
paper currency for the goods.
But rather than actually having to work to pay for this valuable commodity, the
banker has a better solution for himself - to simply get the other building to
trade in his currency as well.
How does he achieve this? The banker identifies in the paraffin-producing
building, and brings into dominance, a family living there who will agree to
make their whole building trade in the banker's currency. In return, the banker
will provide physical assistance to the family to stay in power and help
legitimize their position. In addition, the banker will support the family's
claim that the paraffin produced in the building is their property, and that
the other people resident in this building have no claim to it (even though
they have a right to).
So just as with the occupants in the banker's building, the occupants of the
paraffin-producing building will now also be trading in the banker's currency.
The effect? The value of the currency will go up, since the residents of the
banker's building can now go and purchase paraffin from this other building
using the currency they have been earning.
And further, the effect of this will now be felt across the entire community of
buildings. Since they all need this essential and costly item of paraffin oil,
to purchase it they will also be required to trade in the banker's currency. To
earn this currency, they will have to offer physical goods and services to the
banker in return for his currency. This will further drive up its value.
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Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
