Life and Death Dollars

by Brian Hildebrand

On Saturday, April 9th, Fourth Corner Exchange founder Francis Ayley came to Vashon to give a presentation on Life Dollars, "an Alternative Monetary System that supports a cooperative economy," and the Life Currency Cooperative Exchange, which has hundreds of members in the USA and around the world.



Mr. Ayley, who is originally from Great Britain and currently resides in Bellingham, WA, began the discussion by speaking of his grandmother's experience in England during the Great Depression. In the small town in which she lived during this time people were experiencing severe deprivation and even starvation. Ayley took for granted that those were typical, even unavoidable conditions of the Depression. However, his grandmother opened his eyes by telling him that perfectly good crops were being plowed under for the supposed sake of economic recovery. (Similar such programs were enacted here in the US. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, though deeming such action necessary, called this activity a "shocking commentary on our civilization.")

This revelation led Ayley on a 40 year quest to understand what our economic system is actually based on.
In the first five years of his study he learned classical economic theory, which then led to neo-classical theory, and finally to less mainstream, fringe theories.
Twelve years into these studies he learned of Vincent Vickers, who became a governer of the Bank of England in 1910. in 1919 he resigned in disgust over the fundamental lack of justice in the monetary system. He spent the rest of his life crusading against the Bank of England, leading to the formation of the Economic Reform Party, which advocated for structural change of the economic system. Shortly before his death he completed the book Economic Tribulation.

Today in America we are operating under a monetary system that is the direct descendant of that of the Bank of England. As administered by the Federal Reserve, we are victims of the same usurious kind of system that has been in effect since the 17th century.

When money is "created" by the Federal Reserve, it is created with debt attached to it, having been loaned by the Fed to the US Treasury.
In the ratio between this principal and its interest, there comes a point in time where the interest overtakes the total money in circulation. According to Ayley, that point was reached 15 years ago. (It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt)

Setting aside all moral considerations, this system is fundamentally unsustainable. In the bond exchange between the Fed and the Treasury, the Fed prints the money to back the loan but not to cover the interest. The catch-22 that results reveals the fact that what we are ultimately dealing with is one big ponzi scheme.

For 40 years, Ayley has been looking for the alternative to this system, preparing for the inevitable economic crash when this ponzi scheme collapses. After developing the LETS system in England, he realized that a purely localized exchange system had serious drawbacks and could never truly compete with the international money systems. It was this realization that ultimately led to the founding of Fourth Corner Exchange, and the international cooperative monetary system that is its foundation.




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