Chapter XIX Money in the Atomic Age

seller. The goods which may have been consumed and now non-existent, and only the goods are the bases of the deposit credits — of money. You need no gold reserves, no chattels, no "securities." The figures on the books of the banks, when placed there only to the credit of the producers of goods, ought to be the only visible form of the billions of dollars which may appear on the books of the banks to the credit of the people - or that would have been true, if the Congress had obeyed the Constitution and kept the power to create money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin (in terms of our own). What I have been leading up to is this fact: Money is figures on the books of banks, to the credit of the people who have sold surplus goods, and service, and the only visible form of this money is personal cheques, and currency. If the Congress will take back the creation and control of money, keep the deposit accounts of the people, and squeeze all of the debt-dollars out, and permit no dollar to appear on the books of the depositories, except a dollar earned by the production of goods; then our money will be the soundest money on earth. So long as a person holds a deposit dollar on the books of the depositories, that means that he has sold surplus goods or services to that amount more than he has consumed; and as often as a person exhausts his deposits, it means another or others have surrendered to him an equal amount of goods to the goods he had formerly surrendered. This will make an endless, unbroken chain, links added as production increased, links (dollars) ever increasing as products increase. Forget all that you have thought you knew about money; forget the school book definitions of money. Just remember that it is "an evidence" that surplus goods and labour have been produced and rendered. Forget bills, forget coins, remember they have not the least relationship to money, any more than your unsigned personal cheque; that your personal cheque, when properly filled in and signed, if you have deposits in the bank to cover, is just as good money as bills and coins. Always when you think of money, think of figures on the books of banks, now; please, God, it may soon be the books of U.S. Depositories. Had