Sincerely
William E. Abram
Gerald Gratton McGeer, the True Father of the Bank of Canada
Compiled by Bill Abram
Gerald Gratton McGeer
Gerald Gratton McGeer was one of the most outstanding British Columbians of the last century. He could easily have ranked with Tommy Douglas as the "Greatest Canadian." McGeer was a powerful political orator, colorful, flamboyant and energetic. He could "charm the birds out of the trees one moment and then, with the vice of a buzz saw, demolish his opponents" McGeer left a legacy that still touches all Canadians.
Born in Winnipeg on January 6, 1888, he attended Mount Pleasant School in Vancouver, but dropped out at the age of fourteen because he was bored with school. He turned to manual labour in the iron foundry of Letson, Burpee & Company on the Vancouver waterfront. McGeer became a journeyman iron moulder and a highly-active member of the International Iron Moulders of America. Here he fought against unfair working conditions and became the organizer of several strikes. His overly bright and active mind told him that to change things, he must get into positions of power.
His choice was the legal profession. At the age of twenty-two, he completed high school matriculation in six months with nearly perfect marks. Then, in October 1911, he enrolled at Dalhousie University where he became a stalwart debater in the Dalhousie Mock Parliament. He continued his studies at the Vancouver Law School. An excellent lawyer, he partnered with Gordon Wismer and his enduring contribution to our provincial prosperity came in the (Crow) freight-rate cases of the twenties.
McGeer served two terms in the BC Legislature, from 1916 to 1920 and 1933 to 1934. He became a member of the Federal Government in the election of 1934 and served as a MP for the next 10 years, He also served as Vancouver’s popular Mayor in the tumultuous years of 1935 and 1936 and at the time built his most visible monument, the "noble" Vancouver city Hall. He put the Port City of Vancouver on the world map. In 1947 he was elected a second time as mayor, only to die in office two years later at the age of 59.
McGeer wrote many papers and pamphlets on money, and how usury and other sleight-of-hand
McGeer insisted that no nation is able to control its economy without a publicly accountable national bank. He was Mackenzie King’s most reliable advisor. He exposed the flaws of the recommendations
The following quotation is taken from McGeer’s report of 1933 entitled The Toll Gate: "The barrier that now blocks the way to progress is the misguided management of public credit by the private money system. We must wipe out that 20th century anomaly in much the same way, and for the same reason that we wiped out toll gates and private management of public roads and highways in the 19th century and establish in its place national maintenance, control and regulation of the issue and circulation of public credit as the means of supplying the capital now required."
[For having failed to do that, we have since gone far towards bringing back privatized public roads, and even the sale and lease back of public buildings. The weakness of the deregulated banking system is that to satisfy its compulsion to grow at an ever higher multiple of the previous rate that have already been incorporated in advance in the prices and options granted high executives, it known no upper bounds. It tells us that it must be recontrolled and reregulated, failing which it must inevitably destroy both society and itself.][/quote
Here is some more vital info from Bill
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We are now, as societies that came to popularly embrace capitalism, living to see the bearing up of the so-called "free market" fruits of that/this class collaboration period of history, such as has been, and may still much be, vaunted and believed in. Another Great Depression just may be the worm in that fruit, like the snake in the Garden of Eden. Eh?
It is destined, however, if it continues to roll out as it appears it might, in my view, to bring an end to this class collaboration period of so-called "free market" capitalism history. And it is interesting to see how fresh again is that radical, creative Marxist, Anarchist, generally serious left class critique of capitalism.
Thank you, you free market and . Seriously. You really should have taken Galbraith and Keynes more seriously.
Now, it's too late, and thee and we have to live with the consequences. I have never been more optimistic. One system's failure is another's opportunity.
How do you feel?
What is it that is said about the last laugh?
Interesting sidebar though -- the reason given for the AIG bailout was that this company had too many global connections, and letting them go under would have had mortal global repercussions.
Now as I understand it, the internet was devised by the US military as a means of spreading information to so many places, that it would be impossible to knock out vital information transfers completely during a time of conflict. It has in fact come to be called 'the web'. The AIG thing is also 'a web'. Strange isn't it, how one 'web' works (conveniently), yet the other doesn't (conveniently), in preventing or ameliorating disaster................
Interesting on a whole number of different levels. As was said in a piece on RealNews today, can you imagine what the right wingnuts would now be busily saying, likely within here like flies on a pile of doo doo no less, if it had been a "liberal-democratic" party anywhere, say even the US "Democratic" Party, that had bailed out and effectively "nationalized" Fannie Mae and AIG etc. etc?
The cry of "Revolutionary Socialism" and "An attack on capitalism!!" would be the hue and cry. Whereas here, these so-called "free market individualists" are totally absent and their voices deafening in their silence.
But then it is that we are really in a place, which Ed Deak recognize... I wouldn't want to speak for him. ...where what has passed for almost everywhere, but especially here in the West, meets capitalism, and the two become essentially indistinguishable, essentially one and the same. Certainly in the case of that paler than pale socialist brand known as "social democracy", which in its modern forms wouldn't actually dare to "nationalize" anything, as the extreme right has just done.
As the world gets stranger and stranger, and many of our political/ideological assumptions suddenly appear standing on their head and cross-dressing.
Which says to me that what has passed for socialism, perhaps from the beginning, but certainly since the 1930s Great Depression, is really just two different versions of what is actual "capitalism". At least when I look now at "Red" China and what was Soviet Russia, ditto "the west's" inheritors of the "Fabian Socialist" or "social democratic" tradition, I can't see any substance and style differences.
And which says to me again, we, especially what might be described as working-class "intellectuals", if that is not a contradiction
And the key to it all, to me, is rooted in an advancement of our concept of "democracy", especially applied to the economy, at least as much as to "formal", what has passed for political democracy. The State, or State Power, in and of itself in the hands of any of the prevailing "vanguardists" from Cons through Liberals to Communists and Social Dems, and almost certainly no less the Greens, get they the chance, has proven to be a major disappointment in and of its own to the working class strata of society.
It is time to get back to the drawing board, soon, before all Hell breaks loose here upon us, arising out of the so-called and friggin' chaotic "Free Markets" of both socialism and/or capitalism, whatever the crap one wants to call it.
The problem is that up till now the colonizers and murderers have been more of less isolated in certain areas and had a certain amount of "competition" between them.
Today, the misbegotten, fraudulent theory of neoclassical market capitalism united the predators and now the whole world is their playground for the enslaving and murdering tens of millions every year in the name of "wealth creation" and "efficiency".
Unless we get rid of this criminal theory being taught in our universities as a "science", humanity can kiss their collective asses goodbye.
Won't affect me very much at 81, but I feel sorry for younger people. I only hope there's no such thing as reincarnation, as I wouldn't want to come back with a microchip shot into my head. In the interest of "knowledge and efficiency", of course.
Don't blame the politicians, or the corporate mafia, but the professors who are giving them the scriptural justification for their crimes.
Ed Deak.
I hear ya, Ed. I also understand.
It's just that I am only "coming up" 70, and being a youngster, hope still springs eternal.
Take care, brother.