Truman E Carpenter, was my Grandfather. I never met him. He died January 5 1938, approximately. My mother [See: Sally Ann Holte/Mom] was orphaned at the beginning of 1938 when his plane went down. She was barely 2 years old when he died. Doing research on him, I thought some of it was interesting stuff and wanted to share it somewhere along with URLS to other places there is info on him.
Some of Those URLs are here:
 | One of my friends dates to my younger days and his name is Richard Torgerson. I met a lot of fine and wonderful people during my days studying Buddhism and he was one of them. Richard Torgerson, is a man who managed to combine an investment advisor career with high idealism. |
Thus he is involved in financial business, but in a way that is rare nowadays. His Financial West Group seeks to follow the guidances of:
I've heard John Turmel before. I'd even seen a debate between him and someone else. But I hadn't actually listened to what he had to say until today (2/13/2015). (Or if I had, his delivery had prevented me from taking him seriously.) His poetry is even more corny than mine. I think he's from my Father's generation and he's interesting to listen to. I'd suggest he has 5 important observations:
Turmel makes a lot of important points, one's he's been making for years. In fact he talks so much his words fly by and I probably will have to go back and listen to him several more times before I get everything coming out of him. My first exposure to Turmel that I can recall was with a rival "outsider" economist who was accusing all around him of plagiarizing his ideas. But Turmel has been talking since 1980, so it's possible that he was inspired by the guy, or that the guy was inspired by him. I could have heard Turmel before 2000 myself, and just hadn't "thunk" of it. But that's why I'm writing this series. I'm not blowing smoke out of my rear end. These aren't ideas I thunk of myself. And this is too important a matter to be either trying to own or to plagiarize. His arguments are similar to those of the MMT folks. For people having trouble being taken seriously, too many of the people in the anti-Money Usury crowd are too flinty. When they agree, instead of arguing over who said it first, they should debate together and agree on commonalities. Turmel doesn't seem too self conscious in his speech. I guess that is why I didn't take him serious at first. He seems comfortable with getting 400 votes for PM of Canada. Personally I'd prefer that he be listened to.
Turmel demonstrates that the reserve system is a bait and swindle. The banking system pretends we have a reserve system for our currency, and that having "reserves" actually protects the system, when we don't and it doesn't. Turmel explains that the money supply is equal to the sum of all those fractional reserve loans. Every penny of money in our system starts as a loan, with interest rent being collected from it. Thus the money supply equals
Yes there is a "money multiplier" as I was taught in Econ 101. At one time I accepted it verbatim as a good thing. But it depends on a con that pretends that our deposits are a bailment, when we find out that banks don't treat deposits as a bailment.
I was taught that banks loaned our deposits and that created a "money multiplier". We deposit a Dollar. They can loan 90 cents (c). The loanee deposits 90c. They can loan another 81c of the 90c. Etc... The original idea was that because it takes a while for loans to be paid back, and so banks needed that 10c (10%) on hand in case people wanted their money at the til. The 90c ends up deposited in a bank and then 81c of that is loaned. As money is loaned and spent it passes through various hands until it inflates the economy. All Well and Good.
When I studied about the money multiplier and reserve banking I also learned how that multiplier unwinds and how that used to create bank panics, recessions and even depressions.
If the money multiplier inflates the economy on the upswing. It deflates the economy on the downswing. As depositors take their money out of the system, suddenly banks are missing reserves. This contracts the money supply. Usually at the moment that it is most stressed and people are most vulnerable to not being able to pay back their loans. Essentially the Fractional Reserve system baits us with the notion of having sufficient money to keep the economy moving. But the switch comes when the business cycle inevitably heads downward due to natural events (floods, droughts, crop failures) or simply due to the banks being over-extended and no longer having sufficient "fractional reserves" to make loans. Suddenly people don't have the ability to pay payrolls, banks can't make loans, and this creates a cascading effect. Turmel refers to the consequences in his quote:
"This period of outstanding material prosperity experienced by the U.S.A. was terminated by the action of the Federal Reserve Banking system by foreclosing on most overdrafts. President Hoover drew attention to the disastrous consequences and requested reconsideration. He was ignored. The demand of the banks for repayment in cash of loans that existed only as entries in their ledgers caused the financial credit system to collapse. Yet, the real credit of the people hadn't changed. This proves that financial credit is a misrepresentation of the real credit. Those factories, raw materials and skilled people were still there but the money that represented them had disappeared. The people were so used to trusting their banker's money dial that when the dial read empty, they turned off their machines rather than check the engines." [http://turmelpress.com/watch80.htm]
The Fractional Reserve system aggravates the business cycle, just by it's existence. But it gets worse.
Turmel explains in his "Wachitsuh Hussle" article:
"Any casino is an example of inflation-free banking at work. The casino banker knows that the fundamental rule for avoiding the inflation of his chips is to make sure that all wealth coming into the game gets its own chips to represent it. There is no limit to the number of chips issued so long as wealth is stored to back them up." From The WACHITSUH HUSSLE, 1980 [http://turmelpress.com/watch80.htm]
Turmel explains that Casinos operate relatively fairly because they treat their chips as a bailment. Essentially each Casino has it's own money supply which an honest casino treats as a bailment. As long as the money stays within the casino it can be cashed in at it's stated value at any time. Banks on the other hand don't treat money as a bailment. This avoids inflating the number of chips beyond the value of the consideration (real money, credit, assets) the chips represent.
An Honest casino doesn't charge gamblers interest on their chips. Banks do.
The For Profit banks treat the system as if it were a casino, but not an honest one. Indeed when we buy something with a credit or a debit card, they may deduct it from our balance, but they treat the transaction as a credit transaction. Our money is not treated as a bailment, but as their property and they loan it out like it was their property -- at interest they collect as rent on every money based transaction.
Turmel explains that banks essentially print the 90c they loan out. When the receiver deposits 90c, they Print the 81 cents they next loan out. And they then loan each amount at interest. By issuing money at interest they are collecting economic rent on nearly every transaction of the economy as a whole. Since the banks essentially have a monopoly on money this has to go on to ensure that there is enough money for all the transactions that people need to engage in. Money is created as loans, but consumed as purchases, investment and payrolls. The banks thus can collect rents on every transaction in the economy. Legal theft anyone?
By issuing money based on deposits that aren't really theirs banks are doing a bait and switch. If the banks were investing investor funds at their request, with say a money lender, then the investor wouldn't expect to be able to withdraw "his money" on demand.
Thus our "Fractional Deposit System" is essentially as various people describe it, a means to collect rents. Most of the money circulating in our country starts in the form of loans. While the Treasury may have the monopoly on coined money, the banking system has a monopoly on notes. And so when someone needs money to do something they haven't already done, they have to borrow money at interest. If they were borrowing treasury money or from actual deposits they'd be borrowing their own money, but this money is that of the banks. And they have to pay money back at interest.
Because all the money available in the system originates in some form of credit. The total money supply necessary for transactions is equal to the sum of this money before interest. But as he notes for the economy as a whole the money supply usually equals the sum of that Money multiplier, which equals the loans outstanding and that is 100% of the sum of the deposits. This puts a drag on people's ability to payback the interest. Thus Turmel demonstrates that it is interest that causes inflation, since people have to pay back loans at interest when the money they are receiving for their investment rarely adds up to the amount of money to pay back p + i. If as he shows "p" is equal to the total amount of money in the system. Then as Turmel explains in his "Wachitsuh Hussle" article:
"This use of savings to finance new goods means that someone must deprive himself of his current purchasing power and hence creates his demand for interest. The industrialist who finances his plant with someone's savings must pay it back quicker than it depreciates and when it is paid off, again, there is real wealth in the game but no money to represent it. Again, the barter of that wealth is hampered because it is unrepresented by money. Keeping money in short supply deludes people into believing that wealth is in short supply." [From The WACHITSUH HUSSLE, 1980 [http://turmelpress.com/watch80.htm]]
Principle plus Interest becomes usury when the increase in value never keeps up with the interest rates.
Essentially fiat money, or any money issued as loans at interest, is a dishonest Casino Chip. Good money is money that faithfully represents the wealth in the game. In the old days people wanted "good money" to be gold or silver because they wanted to be sure to get their original value back. But in a dishonest casino there is never any chance they'll get paid what they are worth because someone is always taking value from their wages, payday loans, etc... We don't have good money because the banks can charge interest on every transaction they are middle-men in. To have good money we need money that is interest free as long as it is in the game. Others have explained the same thing using different explanations. The numbers never add up as long as interest is being charged.
Turmel recommends that deposits should go into a "bailment" type account for the use of the depositor. Not be instantly loaned up to 90% so that the economy can be artificially expanded. If deposits are the bailment most of us see our bank accounts as, then when we have money we can spend money and when we don't have money, then we have to prove we have some kind of way to earn it. Loans should be based on some kind of evidence of ability to pay, not on deposits. Money should be applied to markets to keep money flowing. Not to make banksters incredibly wealthy.
Essentially fiat money, or any money, is like a Casino Chip. And Good money is money that faithfully represents the wealth in the game. This is a clearer idea of what Good money is than what you hear from folks who want money to be some commodity like gold because if money is directly a commodity it tends to be pulled out of the game and kept in treasure boxes. The "better" money pushes the "worse" money out of circulation. But the issue is not what the money is made of, but the wealth backing that money. From Turmel's view (which I can support) wealth is:
"All real wealth is energy. It is the sum total of the energy expended in its fabrication. It is the cost in energy units of man, material and tool while interest is not an energy cost." [watch80.htm]
This may be a variant on the "labor theory of value," only updating for horsepower, automation and machinery. This is part of an argument that notes that when people labor for a master they are expending energy, and their pay is a compensation for energy expended. The costs of that energy, if our system were fair would be deductible from income not considered income.
Now he gets featured on Alex Jones, and Alex Jones believes the Federal Reserve is the Hellmouth and should be ended. Much as did Andrew Jackson in the 1800's. But the problem with the banking system isn't that we have one, but The Way that it is constituted This should have been fixed way back at the beginning of the country. But privateering through usury has been a lucrative employment since Hamilton wrote his first two reports on the economy. Why would you have to equip an expensive pirate ship when you can loot and steal by lending at interest? It wasn't the Federal Reserve system (or national banks) that was at fault. It was the constitution of the banking system as a whole that was the problem and the systems ability to charge interest on every transaction that made Planters feel poor and rightly paranoid about Eastern bankers. But it's also why doing away with the first, second and third National Banks didn't get those planters out of trouble or make the economy stable.
Turmel and many others agree that we should create money to pay for "future contracts" and labor, not for the self aggrandizement of the banks. Money should always be backed up by tangible things and actual values. We should issue notes to pay for production and retire those notes on delivery. My friend Rick DiMare suggests that we coin money and back our notes with that. But in any case money should be spent for worthwhile enterprise and paid back. We can either pay it back through taxes or by delivering on promises to pay. The list of things that money notes and eMoney should fund, in my mind, includes roads and infrastructure, farmer equipment & fuel, and the like. That way money doesn't become a drain on the economy.
So what is important is the economic argument, not who said it first:
Turmel is Canada. Quiggin in Britain and Australia. I wonder who borrowed from whom? When Keynes was talking in London, there were economists in the United States who were preaching the same principles. Keynesianism wasn't invented solely by Keynes, and the "children" of Keynesianism aren't bedazzled by some Godlike Authority of Keynes, but by the common sense and logic of his arguments. Many "neo-Keynesians" are starting to sound like Turmel. The one thing that anyone who is honest should do is to re-examine premises. A lot of our premises about money are faulty.
My wife loved Ruth Behar. We saw her documentary. But we also had her songs. My wife loved to play our copies of her records, and truth is I love the music too. A trilling, lamentation about home, and lost loves. My wife sponsored and we saw "Adio Kerida" when it came to the Washington Area. But for years, we lived to the lamentation of the Sephardi, who after 5 centuries still lamented the lost of their homes in "Sepharad" -- Golden Age Spain.
The song:
The song has layers, like all good songs from the heart. On the surface level the person is singing about a spurned love, maybe a child who is ungrateful, maybe a lover. On a deeper level the song refers to Spain, which drove Jews out of their country and brought to a close their golden age when they did. Spain discovered Gold, and many "Nuevo Christianos", some of whom were genuine converts, some trying to be both Jewish and Christian, but many of them converting only because the alternative was murder, wound up being the energy behind discoveries such as the great silver mountain of Potosi. Jews would look for far away outposts of the Spanish empire where they could speak Ladino freely and practice freely as long as they were quiet. And the Inquisition would pursue them to the ends of the earth. This song laments the ungratefulness of Christians, who received a lovely set of myths and principles from the Jewish Teachers Jesus and Paul, and turned it into a horror for Jews.
Taken from http://lyricstranslate.com/en/adio-kerida-goodbye-my-beloved.html
The Song blares in my mind right now. And I don't even need the translation or to put the CD on play. For some reason even though it's not my wife's voice in the CD, I hear my wife's voice.
Raymond Alcide Joseph (born August 31, 1931) is a Haitian diplomat, political activist and journalist. He was the Haitian ambassador to the United States from 2005 to 2010, when he resigned to present himself as a candidate in the 2010 Presidential Election in Haiti. He is the uncle of singer and rapper Wyclef Jean.
My wife, got to work with him and meet him when she was trying to organize student activities for her students at Howard University and showcase Ethiopian and Haitian multiculturalism. Matilde Raquel Holte was a teacher first, but in her own way she was also an activist. As a "Adjunct Professor", "visiting scholar", "Researcher" and Scholar she was able to go places other activists couldn't go and bridge political gaps that otherwise would never get bridged. We met Ambassador Joseph at an event held by the Ethiopian Embassy. I believe it was before the Earthquake. We also saw him again when the Ethiopians sponsored an event to try to help Haiti after it's big earthquake in 2010. My wife was interested in civil rights, multiculturalism, religious diaspora, Jews in the diaspora, and other diaspora's such as the one of African peoples. As such we got invited and I was there as "husband of", sometimes with my Camera, sometimes just trying to absorb all the information. I think I snapped this picture using our electronic Camera. But I'm not sure, I can't find it in my archives, so this may have been snapped by someone at the embassy because the only copy I can find is a grainy print on ordinary paper. I found it while looking up something else. Haiti and Ethiopia happened to be on my mind. This reminded me how I think he's one of the heros of his country. Ambassador Joseph was therefore already on my mind, so I immediately scanned by copy. His Facebook Home page is here:
In 2010 Haiti had a disaster, remember? Probably not. I do. It was horrendous. People died, not only from the Quake, but from neglect. Haiti was already a disaster before the Earthquake, and so the people were very fragile. A lot of folks died from that quake. And the country has been neglected since the beginning.
Modern History is grounded in Ancient History. And both Haiti and Ethiopia have a proud history as independent nations. And were independent, and to the consternation of White Folks, were "black" countries, where white skin was the anomaly. My wife, with her interest in multiculturalism and syncretism found both countries remarkable. I do too. I was privileged to visit the Embassy as "husband of" something I could never do as a Federal Contractor employee supporting IT operations and new development. I got to take the pictures. Including I think this one. We heard testimony from one Ethiopian Jew who was surprised when he left Ethiopia to find out there was such a thing as white Jews. Thanks to her I also met a member of the Lemba tribe who had had the same experience from his community near the border between South Africa and Mozambique.
At the conference on Ethiopian Jews, we heard testimony from "Beta Israel" (House Israel) Jews who, on leaving Ethiopia, were shocked that any Jews could ever be white. When they got to Israel they ran into discrimination from Ashkenazi Jews who were surprised Jews could be anything but what they were used to. And Ethiopians have paid a price for their independence in other ways.
*Note, reading these histories is fascinating because they all parse the story differently. I have my own memories of actual physical books I've read and so the online accounts, in the way they contradict each other or support one another, helped me recall the histories I already knew from talking to a variety of people and reading a variety of physical books. But most are abysmally bad and gloss over details.
A few years ago I read "War is a Racket" by Smedley Butler. He was a leader in my Grandfather Holte's and Great Grandfather Carpenter's generation, A Marine General, and a great human being. I remember people from his generation, they were patriotic, no nonsense, and many of them were extremely honest. Of course there are always the aristocrats, but the tradition of the USA military derives from Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, more the legends about him than entirely the reality and our own militia tradition.
For most career military, military service was about serving the country. Of course for aristocrats serving the country was also about seeking honor and glory, often in service to a future business and politics career, but for many of our people service came first and personal profit a distant second. Smedley Butler was of that sort. As were both my Grandfathers. My Grandfather Holte served in WWI and my other Grandfather died in a plane crash in 1938, the same year that Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific. They didn't serve in the military to get rich, to get famous, or to steal from others. They did it to serve the country. My Grandfather told me that he joined the Army because his Uncles and cousins, who had served in the Army in the Spanish American War convinced him that it was the right thing to do. But as a Flag Officer Smedley Butler and others learned that not everyone connected with the USA military felt that way.
I've been slowly reading the book "Karski, How one man tried to stop the Holocaust", by E. Thomas Wood, and the man Karski really impresses me. He did champion the cause of Jews, as well as his own Polish people, and in public and with evidence, from 1942 on. And he did his level best to get the West to do something to stop or slow the exterminations. He carried the message of Jewish leaders back to the West with suggestions such as bombing switching tracks, dropping leaflets, and similar; and the West ignored him.
No evidence is incontrovertible evidence in the hands of skeptics, and bad or doubtful friends, and his observations weren't accepted until 2 years later when Troops started knocking at the doors of the death camps with cameras and newsfilm crews and showing the world what was there. By then it was too late.
People can't say that saving Poland would have required the West to go to war again. But all it would have required would have been for the West to have spine enough to be willing to go to bat for an ally. The Allies didn't want to keep fighting after Hitler was gone beyond what would be necessary to destroy the Japanese Empire. Roosevelt wanted Russia to help him fight the Japanese. Churchill wanted to buy peace by appeasing Stalin and giving him half of Poland. Roosevelt wanted Russias entry into the war with Japan in in return for carving up part of Poland. And so Poland was considered strategically expendible. Karski tried to fight this but his bad luck was to have bad friends for allies and to be facing an almost impossible strategic situation. Poland was on the Russia physical side of Germany, and Poland was lucky that Russia didn't want to directly rule the entire country.
A former enemy who is the enemy of one's enemy is maybe a temporary friend, but not likely a long term one. Such "friends" are liable to be doubtful and traitorous ones and both the Polish Communists and Russia fell in that category. Karski had an impossible task. While in Poland he gathered messages from all the factions of the Polish underground Government and carried them back to equally fractuous factions in Paris on his first trip and London on his second. Those reports told how the Communist cadres of Poles were perfectly willing to attack the Germans and blame the poles, or turn over Poles to the Germans who weren't among their ranks. The Communist rebels in Poland were more on the side of Russia than Poland. And of course Stalin wanted to regain and make permanent his land grab from when the betrayed Poland in the first place in his Ribbentrop treaty. The Poles were up against a major enemy.
And the difficulty of dealing with this was incredible. Stalin was playing chess, and when his troops murdered Polish officers in Katyn and their other prison camps, they set it up so that they could try to blame the Germans for the Massacres. The true perpetrators of the Katyn Massacres wouldn't be revealed until the 1960's, though the Germans uncovered the bodies in 1942, and in an example of their own stone faced hypocrisy brought in an international team of forensic experts to examine the graves. The Germans claimed a diplomatic coup in accusing the Russians of mass murder (which was true). And as the author notes in the book and Wikipedia confirms:
"In April 1943 the Polish government-in-exile insisted on bringing the matter to the negotiation table with the Soviets and on opening an investigation by the International Red Cross.[48] Stalin, in response, accused the Polish government of collaborating with Nazi Germany, broke off diplomatic relations with it,[49][50] and started a campaign to get the Western Allies to recognize the alternative Polish pro-Soviet government in Moscow led by Wanda Wasilewska."
So Karski's efforts to get the West to champion Poland, only provided Stalin with an excuse to make official his existing war aims (seizing Polish Territory) and also gave an excuse for the West to decapitate the Polish Government in exile (some believe that the death of the Polish leader in exile, Sikorsky, wasn't a complete accident).
And it got worse for Karski. Karski had to work with the American Right to try to convince Roosevelt to back his countries issues. He had to work with Poles who were at each other's throats. And the Polish underground had to work with Polish Communists who took every opportunity to undermine and setup their compatriots rather than working with them. He was trying to convince the USA government to support the Polish cause, and he made friends with Roosevelts advisors on the right such as Elbridge Durbrow and William C. Bullitt. Bullitt was willing to champion his causes, but Bullitt had launched a very personal and public attack on one of Roosevelt's closest advisors, Sumner Welles, for being a Homosexual, and managed to discredit himself around the same time he started to champion Karski's cause. Eventually Bullitt would be a hero among right wing circles, but Bullitt lost all influence on FDR because of this. And Jan Karski met personally with FDR, who was impressed by him, and unfortunately it didn't do much for the Poles. The USA was not going to go to war for Poland against Russia. And nobody was going to save the Jews. One has to be careful with ones friends as much as with ones enemies.
Eventually the Russians came in. Told Warsaw to revolt. Delayed their capture of Warsaw long enough to make sure the Germans crushed them. Killed or imprisoned most of the pro-West Polish Government. Installed a Communist Government. Took the eastern part of the country. Kicked the Germans out of what had been the Eastern Part of Germany, and moved the borders around to what they are now. Karsky had an after the war career as an anti-communist, pro-Jewish, historian and professor at Georgetown. My copy of his biography is autographed, not by the author but him. He died in 2000. I think I stood in line with my wife for that signing, he was a real hero.
Best thing to do is to read the two books; one by him, and the other by E. Thomas Wood.
