Sue Peters testifies on monetary reform and banking privileges
Sue Peters of the Upper West Side, representing the American Monetary Institute, discusses how private commercial banks create new money through lending, quoting Treasury officials from 1959, and argues this privilege is the root cause of affordability crises discussed at the hearing.
Can you hear me?
Oh.
Okay, I just want to be sure it can be heard.
Okay.
Hi, my name is Sue Peters, and I'm a resident of the Upper West Side.
I am also a member of a 30-year-old 501c3 working for Monetary Reform, the American Monetary Institute.
I'm going to share an important piece of information.
First, I want to say, everybody knows what this is, right?
This is a $5 bill.
That's money, right?
We don't really use that today.
We use this, our checking accounts, right?
This is a checking account register, right?
This is money, too.
This money of mine in the bank, we think, right?
Okay.
Keep that in mind, please.
What I'm going to talk about addresses all the affordability crises that have been discussed in this room today.
My work experience has made me knowledgeable to share these facts.
I had a 37-year career as a data processing professional.
The last 17 years,
I spent working for a Wall Street bank down on Wall Street, and I was responsible for their bookkeeping report, reporting.
This is a bookkeeping, right?
We don't see it, but the bank sees it.
Of a corporate checking account system, had 40,000 accounts.
And move $2 trillion a day around.
So I tracked all of that with the help of some machines.
Okay.
I discovered, to my total surprise, the special privilege given to private commercial banks that I worked for.
Never taught to any of us.
Quote, every time a bank makes a loan, all it is doing is making a bookkeeping entry in the borrower's account.
That's all it does.
This is the root cause.
That's two minutes?
Yes.
Can you submit a written testimony or you can wrap up in like 20 minutes?
20 seconds.
Okay.
Remember 2011 and the Occupy the Fed movement, right?
It spread around the world.
99% fell this pressure from the 1%, the 1% of the banks.
I'm going to leave you with this quote from the Secretary of the Treasury.
Of President Eisenhower in 1959.
This is the last thing I'm going to say.
Quote, when a bank makes a loan, it simply adds to the borrower's deposit account in the bank by the amount of the loan.
The money is not taken from anyone else's deposit.
It was not previously paid into the bank by anyone.
It's new money created by the bank for the use of the borrower.
End quote.
And let me just say, the bank has that privilege in the law, but we're not told about it.
Thank you.
Thank you.