Money week survey result eye opener

26 Sept 2019

From Amanda Vickers, Deputy Leader

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Social Credit is calling on the Commission for Financial Capability to include information on how money originates, on their website and in their educational programmes.

During Money Week (9-15 September), as part of a public awareness campaign by the Commission aimed at empowering New Zealanders to manage their personal finances, the party undertook a survey to find out what people knew about where money comes from.

400 participants of voting age took part in face to face interviews in different parts of the country including Christchurch, Wellington, Whanganui, Auckland, Timaru and Whangarei.

98 percent of people polled didn’t know that notes and coins made up only 2 percent of the money supply and that the rest was simply digital money.

When asked where New Zealand’s money comes from, 20 percent thought it came from the government, and a similar number thought it came from overseas.  17 percent had no idea and 44 percent thought it came from commercial banks, but didn’t know where the banks got it from.

This survey was telling because it highlights the fact that the origin of money, something we all use every day, and which has a huge impact on people’s lives, is something most people don’t have any understanding about.

The way money is created, by banks effectively out of thin air, when they make loans, was only understood by 2.8 percent of respondents yet it’s clearly described by the Bank of England on its website, the German Central bank on its website, the Reserve Bank of NZ, and in the report of the 1956 NZ Royal Commission on Money and Banking,

Internationally, experts like economics professor Richard Werner, from Southampton University, former head of Britain’s Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, and commentators such as Martin Wolf of the Financial Times in London write about it and lecture on it.

In New Zealand it is also well understood by commentators such as Bernard Hickey and Bryan Gaynor and economists such as Shamubel Eaqub.

Yet economics students at all levels, including universities, are taught that banks lend out money people have deposited with them when nothing could be further from the truth.

That is why we’re calling on universities, the Ministry of Education and the Commission for Financial Capability to teach the truth about money and where it comes from.