The Big Picture/with Mark Anderson, American Free Press writer and host of When Worlds Collide on RBN, Saturdays, 7 to 9 p.m. Central

ROUGEMONT, Quebec – The annual September “Congress” on social credit is a spiritually uplifting and ultra-informative way to unravel the riddle of money, as this AFP reporter and assistant Angie learned firsthand Sept. 5-7 in Canada.

Even before the event’s sponsors — the Pilgrims of Saint Michael group — and various visitors delved into the details of the social credit monetary reform system and movements throughout the world to implement it, all were treated to a film of Louis Even, the feisty founder of the Pilgrims group and the Louis Even Institute, showing that he was a Christian warrior of the truest sort. Never before has this reporter witnessed someone who practiced what they preached with such unshakable determination. In his storied life, he was roughed up a number of times. Unionists against social credit seized his literature and burned stacks of it as he watched. But nobody could stop him.

Mr. Even was a modern spinoff of Christ driving the money-changers out of the temple, which is the one Bible episode where Jesus of Nazareth was clearly angry and got physical. “You are a den of vipers!!” He shouted at the bankers of His day as He flipped their tables over. We can all pray for the modern bankers, yes, but we will find that they, too, must be driven from the temple. They will not go quietly and we cannot be nice. As the FBI agent in the movie National Treasure told Nicholas Cage: “Somebody has to go to prison.”

That early-1960s film of the late Louis Even showed how he fought successfully to save some 3,000 families from losing their homes in the greater New Brunswick area near Nova Scotia. He found a loophole in the foreclosure laws and absolutely refused to let the area’s provincial government ignore it and throw Canadian families into the streets where winters are long.

What one sees from the panoramic view is that the Pilgrims, who are Catholic patriots also known as the White Berets, all seem to be like Mr. Even, whose life’s work was an application of the social credit system conceived by Scottish engineer Clifford Hugh Douglas. Those who have continued what Even brought forth innately recognize what too many Christians downplay or ignore – that worship goes hand in hand with good works and genuine social justice to bring forth a much more fruitful life here and salvation in the hereafter. The words “… Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven…” in the Lord’s Prayer are especially accurate here. Most Christians ignore doing truly good works based on faith – to sow good seeds in this life — and obsess about “the end times,” brazenly sure that the very car they are driving will be rendered empty as they are whisked off to heaven in a “rapture.”

It’s fine to be ready for the unexpected regarding the end of our individual lives and the terrestrial world’s eventual end, but we have things to do now that bless the lives of the living and pave the way for salvation later. The central thing to do is stop being “draft horses” for the central bankers under their privately-owned and controlled monopoly on credit and money creation, which adversely affects every single person every day. It cannot be stated too clearly: The bankers’ conquest must be overturned. All other activism of whatever focus cannot overlook this central dilemma that lays the foundation for the rest of the world’s evils.

Social credit itself appears to be a comprehensive way to make the economy serve the people rather than force the people to serve the economy. It is essentially a realignment of the monetary system in which the endless lack of purchasing power — relative to shelves full of goods that are saddled with tax levies, labor costs and interest charges during production and distribution — is finally restored to the people. As the social creditors explain, their system is neither socialism nor communism; rather, it’s a commonwealth with the absolute maximum of freedom. One of its keys is the social dividend, which is an innovative third way for people to receive income.

Full employment is a communistic idea, yet many Americans clamor for it. The social dividend recognizes that every citizen, employed or not, is a natural heir to all of the accumulated wealth in its true form – natural resources and the products made from them – and all inventions.  Thus, every citizen is entitled to a “share” in their nation’s productive capacity and historical advancements. Social credit means that governments would constitutionally create debt-free money as a sovereign act on the people’s behalf – instead of “buying” interest-ridden money from private central bankers. The new interest-free funds would be directly allocated as checks to the citizenry each month or every quarter, in accordance with production. That is a key part of social credit, though there is more to it than that.

As production goes up, so does the dividend; thus the incentive is to produce, not to loaf. Taxes and welfare could be minimized or abolished. This approach gives everyone a basic “floor” of buying power. It would do a great deal to alleviate poverty and crime, along with creating a constant flow of purchasing power to spur business and enable people to buy things without credit cards. From there, the people — relieved of the “pressure cooker” mentality created from relying only on constant work or welfare to survive — would be empowered to pursue their dreams and aspirations. Their time, at long last, would become their own, not the bankers’ to whom all dividends wrongly flow.

Our automated machinery that produces durable goods, parts and components with minimal human labor means production would go up even as our mandated labor goes down. Thus, the social dividend actually increases, even as leisure time increases. The “great bind” is broken and the yoke is lifted. We are draft horses no more.

SIDEBAR: Variety of Guests Tell, Learn About Social Credit

By Mark Anderson

Priests and Cardinals from Rwanda, the Ivory Coast, Madagascar and the Congo, former officials from South America and elsewhere, and a former Swiss central banker who gave up his privileged status all attended the early-September annual Congress of the Pilgrims of Saint Michael in its 70^th year. AMERICAN FREE PRESS was the only American newspaper in attendance to chronicle the overall event, which also was attended by the Ivory Coast’s ambassador to Canada. (see video at www.AmericanFreePress.net; click on video links along the left column on home page)

The Pilgrims are a Roman Catholic lay order that advocate social credit as a Christian application of economic justice. But social credit is broadly practical and can be applied by anyone. Hundreds of “White Berets” — Pilgrims wear them to signify purity of intent – gathered for their Congress in Rougemont, Canada, near Montreal, at the House of the Immaculate, on the same grounds as their Louis Even Institute. Numerous Pilgrims and guests spoke on social credit’s grassroots applications, current or planned, in their respective communities around the world. Former Swiss central banker Francois de Siebenthal told how he helped start 7,500 rice banks in Madagascar, in a commodity-based style of social credit. The people there, he told AFP in an exclusive interview, are no longer on starvation’s brink. They are moving ahead with infrastructure projects and genuine, grassroots economic advancement, with little if any involvement by bankers.

But social credit is really about money. And its components, besides the national dividend (a.k.a. the social dividend explained in an accompanying AFP article) also include what’s known as the compensated discount, which involves having retailers sell goods for a specified discounted price to keep prices low enough to ensure inventories are purchased instead of idling on the shelves; new money is then allocated to rebate the retailers to compensate them for providing the discount, to ensure that their costs are met and a reasonable profit is made.

“This is not price-fixing,” Pilgrim Ives Jacques told AFP, noting that retailers set their own prices competitively before applying the uniform discount that impacts all retailers equally. Fattening wallets with the social dividend and lowering prices with this discount ensures that buying power is always on par with production and inventories – so “price figures” and “money figures” finally correspond. Money supplies can never exceed production and lead to inflation.

Social credit’s founders and current advocates say that, contrary to widely-held popular belief, most nations of the world, particularly Canada and the U.S., do not have enough purchasing power in circulation.  Often free-market think tanks and media suggest that there is way too much money that results in run-away inflation. However, monetary inflation is impossible if the supply of goods and services exceeds the purchasing power of the populace – which social credit backers say is always the case, as underscored in their many books and their newspaper. High prices, they contend, stem from taxation and interest charges, along with labor costs, embedded in all products and services. In order to ease and omit all of these costs, social credit also calls for the social dividend, along with the compensated discount.  (Notably, the dividend is described in the introductory commentary above this sidebar).

All at the Congress agreed that private central banking has to be dethroned. To liberate the world’s peoples from the bankers’ far-reaching villainy, Congress participants believe that social credit is the answer – because money would be a societal creation brought into existence debt-free, instead of keeping the ruinous arrangement used for many decades that obligates governments to, in essence, buy money from central banks at interest.  If every other major political problem, plot and scandal are the tentacles of the “Octopus” of global control, then central banking is the head and the brain, as social credit backers see it, which is reflected in the articles and illustrations in their newspaper, The Michael Journal. (www.MichaelJournal.org). Or call 888-858-2163.