While Ben Hur is trying to flood the system with even more Debt, there are alternative ways of running the Economy. As with all systems, there are pros and cons, but maybe something in the middle would work. Irving Fisher’s 100% Money, A Summary;

In the United States, as in a few other countries, most of our bills are paid by check—not by money passing from hand to hand.

When a person draws a check, he draws it against what he calls “the money I have in the bank” as shown by his deposit balance on the stub of his check book. The sum of all such balances, on all such stubs in the whole country, i.e. all checking deposits, or what we ordinarily think of as the “money” lying on deposit in banks and subject to check, constitutes the chief circulating medium of the United States. This I propose to call “check¬book money” as distinct from actual cash or ”pocket-book money.” Pocket-book money is the more basic of the two. It is visible and tangible; check-book money is not. Its claim to be money and to pass as if it were real money is derived from the belief that it “represents” real money and can be converted into real money on demand by “cashing” a check.

But the chief practical difference between check-book money and pocket-book money is that the latter is bearer money, good in anybody’s hands, whereas check-book money requires the special per¬mission of the payee in order to pass.

In 1926, a representative year before the great depression, the total check-book money of the peo¬ple of the United States, according to one estimate, was 22 billion dollars, whereas, outside of the banks and the United States Treasury, the pocket-book money—that is, the actual physical bearer money in the people’s pockets and in the tills of merchants —amounted, all told, to less than 4 billion dollars. Both together made the total circulating medium of the country, in the hands of the public, 26 billion dollars, 4 billions circulating by hand and 22 by check.

Many people imagine that check-book money is really money and really in the bank. Of course, this is far from true.

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