Producer’s Comments on the Movie, Money as Debt II - Promises Unleashedhome / references / reviews
I am gratified to report that Money as Debt (2006) has sold over 10,000 copies. Tsiporah and I have shipped DVD's to 45 countries and counting. I have been thanked effusively by people from all over the world. I estimate that millions have watched Money as Debt online for free. Google no longer offers statistics but when they did back in 2007, just the one posting had anywhere from 1500 to 8000 views per day. It is posted in many places, Google, YouTube, and Vimeo, downloadable from many filesharing sites, and embedded, linked to or written about on thousands of web pages (not always favorably). I have found 12 translations from Hebrew to Russian to Japanese, and made two custom foreign language versions myself. The French version, "L'argent dette" gained great popularity in Europe in a very short time and is soon to have a mainstream distributor. I was hired by a Hungarian publisher to create a fully Hungarian version. Money as Debt II took me almost three years to complete. However, some of that time was also devoted to developing the Digital Coin proposal. During that three years, sales of Money as Debt DVD's are what made this work possible. Thank you to the many who purchased DVD's (and those DVD buyers who purchased art as well) In Money as Debt II, I have leaned heavily on what I learned from Tim Madden, described as "Canada's foremost authority on deceptive accounting practices of financial institutions". Tim was my initial personal "tutor" on the subject. Some of the information and insights in the movie come directly from Tim's experiences as an expert witness in court, which he recounted at a 5 hour seminar I took the assignment of videotaping. As described in my comments on the original Money as Debt, this video project saw my very first attempt at animation, the 17 minute version of Money as Debt I did for United Financial Consumers. In the intervening three years since making Money as Debt, I have had many discussions and a few heated arguments about the unpayability of interest. On the one hand, many monetary reformers cannot see past the idea of money as a stock and claim the interest can't be paid because it wasn't created. They fail to see that the flow of money makes it possible to pay any amount of interest from a much more limited stock of money as long as it flows back to the borrower as earnings. I have written about his extensively on my disputed information page. On the other side of the fence, those trained in economics learn that there is no shortage as ALL monies get recycled now. Really? In Money as Debt II I attempt to present my own theory that it is not the interest that is the problem but the failure to RECYCLE 100% of BOTH Principal and Interest within a closed loop, that creates the systemic shortage of money that necessitates continuous growth of the money supply. I always comfort myself about sticking my un-credentialed neck out with two simple observations. I know of no professional economist or monetary theorist that some other similarly professional economist or monetary theorist has not denounced as completely wrong if not insane, incompetent, or a criminal patsy of the élite. Therefore, the worst I can do is be considered just as wrong as professionals. 2. Those in charge have a bad track record. Should we just sit still, shut up and NOT do our own thinking? In reading various online comments about the original Money as Debt, I often encounter criticism for proposing that government issue money instead of borrowing it from bankers. Why give more power to these crooks?!!! These folks don't seem to get the idea that we would never get back the exclusive right of government to create money unless the current crop of banker bought-and-paid-for politicians were ousted. And... I am not speaking exclusively about federal governments. In self-defense, municipal, regional or provincial/state level governments may have to issue their own money. In any case, my true feelings about what the future really needs in the way of money are embodied in my Digital Coin Proposal in which basically anyone, including governments at all levels, could self-issue credit and be responsible for collecting back their own credits in sales of products or services or collection of taxes. Money as Debt II is largely an argument that the current system cannot be reformed to eliminate the monetary growth imperative, not even by returning exclusive power to create money to government, although that is an instructive idea for most people and a step in the direction of understanding self-issued credit. Many monetary reformers cannot let go of the idea that only government should create money, and if governments were recaptured by honest people who would put such a system in place, it would be a huge step in the right direction in my opinion and an improvement in our situation, which is why I support it. However, if my analysis is correct, we would still end up with a growth-dependent money system as long as we continue to finance our activities with credit of "money" that has to be paid back, with interest, in "money". To adapt to a net no-growth future I am advancing the argument that the very nature of money must change from what it is now, a promise to pay money back in the distant future, to a promise to pay in products and/or services now or in the immediate future. I hope you enjoy Money as Debt II, Promises Unleashed As comments and criticisms come in I may add more content to this page.
Making the Movie – the Hardware & Software used All work was performed on an Apple Mac Pro with dual 2.8 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors and 4 GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM. Money as Debt animations were hand-drawn and animated in successive versions of Flash. The 3-D animations were created in Swift-3D and incorporated into the Flash projects. Photoshop was also used on occasion The music was primarily created by playing on a MIDI input keyboard using the amazing capabilities of Reason. Some music was generated in Apple's Garage Band and Soundtrack Pro. I am indebted to various contributors for offering free online some of the sound samples, drum loops & MIDI files I incorporated. I built the all the geometric 3-D models myself in Swift-3D and Carrara Landscapes and skies were created in Bryce and Vue . Additional mesh models were downloaded from “free stuff” at 3D Café , Help3D and 3DModelFree.com. Most mesh models were purchased from 3D CAD Browser and Content Paradise The final video editing was performed in Apple’s
Final Cut Pro. The DVD was authored in Apple's DVD Studio Pro.
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