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Letter to: Liam Halligan, Economics Editor, The Sunday Telegraph,
London SW1W ODT.
26 February, 2007
Pensions
Dear Mr. Halligan
If we fail to identify the real source of trouble with pensions,
we cannot
expect mere Ministers to do any better. They will lie and steal
and
generally make a fool of themselves, out of common or garden ignorance.
We need to ask ourselves the question, how can any one make provision
for
the future by salting away debts.
We have debts, public and private, of many, many trillions of pounds.
If we
did not have those debts we should all die of starvation in the
midst of
plenty. If we paid our debts, we should have no money, none at all.
In the
modern world no money equals no food, equals death.
Charity would only last us a few days. By then of course we should
be
forced to ask, why do we have no money and only debts. How come,
that we
now use debt as money .
Economic growth requires additional new money to service that growth.
But
we live at a time, when private financiers, such as bankers, have
a monopoly
on the creation of new money and to-day, all new money is issued
as credit.
Which is a polite word for debt. All new money must be borrowed
into
existence. Over a period of time we find that we use credit as currency.
That causes all sorts of trouble, but especially when trying to
plan a
pension, unless you are a Member of Parliament and you become a
very special
breed of cat. Or someone who sells you fresh-air in the form of
credit.
I have come to the conclusion that all this can be explained by
of very
special attribute of a human being. He can be blind to what he cannot
see.
What he cannot understand he cannot believe. And what he cannot
believe, he
most certainly cannot understand. Whatever it is, it vanishes.
That is where the money went. It vanished.
When Denis Healey was Chancellor of the Exchequer, I once had a
chance to
talk with him, and when this topic arose, he said to me, “Doctor
Hamlyn, I
have never understood money and I never shall”.
You say we need leadership, but as things are, that could be the
blind
leading the blind.
I think we should take responsibility for this fiasco and enforce
some
sanity into the picture.
Doctor Edward C Hamlyn MBChB
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