SIR,

In response to town councillor Anthony Owen's letter of 28th November.

Anthony wrote the letter as a summary of a meeting in the Welsh Assembly hosted by an AM for an organisation called Positive Money.

Three of us attended – Anthony, Sylvia Gilbert the chair of Action 50+, and myself.

Also attending were six AMs, Phillipa Barlotti of Welsh Green Party, 'Free Speech Wales, Welsh Assembly economic interns and concerned members of the public.

PM is an organisation which has studied the 'creation of money' a topic, I understand, not commonly taught in the study of economics.

They rightly point out that we have allowed banks to control the creation of money in our country, the cost of which, we are all becoming increasingly aware.

The banks get a massive profit on creating money out of nothing through the fractional reserve lending rules. 97 per cent of our money is created this way and so the banks have a monopoly on creating money which they charge interest on.

The national debt is based on borrowing by governments, but if government created the money supply, completely, there would be no national debt. No 42bn a year in interest either.

One of the key questions is that, do we want such an important lubricant as money creation left in the hands of the bankers, or do we the people demand that this means of exchange is brought under our control?

We have all seen the railroad crashes and subsequent suffering in the domino crash of many of our European countries and the suffering which it has caused.

Can we trust our politicians to serve the interest of 'we the people'? Seemingly not.

In sharp contrast with Iceland, where the government bailed out the people and jailed the bankers and now have a thriving economy, our government bailed out the bankers, leaving the British people to pay the price both now and what is to come.

Positive Money is not without it's critics, however, The British Constitution Group in its newpaper, 'The UK Column', bring up some very important points:

Clearly this issue needs to be debated.

The situation which faces us now is that we are sitting waiting for what may be an inevitable economic crash and a possible societal split with a serf glass ruled by wealthy banking oligarchs.

Perhaps this is a bleak outlook – perhaps not. We can either wait for our politicians to create some kind of radical banking reforms.

Or perhaps we can create some kind of regional or local differences. Either way, this issue clearly needs to be aired, discussed and debated.

So as a consequence, we have created a new group, acting under the auspices of Action 50+, to bring these issues to the table to be discussed.

If you would like to hear about our meetings, or you would like to comment or contribute, please contact:

Roslyn Aubrey. T: 01600 714 833 m: 07575 303822 e: [email protected]">[email protected]

Roslyn Aubrey

(Monmouth)