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I have read several papers recently by Christian scholars trying to give a biblical foundation for economics. Also, I listened to a Christian scholar from India lecture on the subject. Both of these sources equated capitalism with a biblical form of economics while at the same time failing to deal with monopolies and debt. Often conservatives tell us that low taxes are the solution to the problems of an economy, but fail to realize that both debt and private monopolies drag an economy into depression as well as excess government. The observation is made that small business are responsible for most economic production and that low taxes encourage small business, however it is almost never pointed out that the small business going up against a monopoly advantaged by debt has as little chance of success as a business trying to survive high taxes.

Large corporate business' are able to lower their prices for a period to drive smaller business out of the market. They are able to lower the prices below what it even cost them to produce. The smaller business cannot survive this manipulation of fair price in the market. They have to shut their doors. As soon as this happens, the large business raises its price higher than a fair market price.

A large business does not even have to consciously set out to manipulate its competition out of the market. It only has to be large, and then nature takes its course. The large business is more able to lower prices during a recession, even below market. They think they are following the market price, but they are not. Their ability to drop prices prevents needed production from entering the market. For this reason, the Scripture imposes limits on the size of a business. The limits on size may be indirectly derived from the land and debt laws, but such laws are quite effective in preventing a business from growing to a obscene size.

Conservative Christian descriptions of economics omit nearly all discussion of the negative effects of debt or the biblical responsibilities of creditors to cancel all debt every seven years. This is partly because for some terribly unbiblical reason Christians regard debt forgiveness or cancellation as if it were a form of theft. It seems that Churches give creditors theological smoke screen to hide behind by laying moral responsibility on the debtor in perpetuity. This attitude is not the way God designed the biblical economic system to work. In order to see this we must examine both the biblical commands and the nature of debt and monopolistic business.

The ability of a large business to borrow large amounts of money is due to the fact that creditors know they don't have to cancel the debt after seven years. Then large business gains the advantage to grow at an unusually fast rate, shortening the time required to become monopolistic. Because business is based on competition, the monopolistic tendency of a business increases with the size of the business. The ability to borrow money when combined with competition that can "add house to house" and grow without limits is a recipe for economic disaster. Such growth is exponentially proportional to the creation of debt.

Business are able to add house to house because the world does not follow the land principles of the Bible. The Jubilee law requires land to be restored to individual families after fifty years. This severally limits a mega corporation from gaining large amounts of land. As business' grow into corporations owning chains of stores or factories, they automatically tend to become more worldly and unethical. Large business get large because they are only interested in profits and not in ethics. The large business therefore will make an ethical compromise if it means more profits. For instance the corporations have discovered that their profits increase if they appeal to the flesh through advertising. Those businesses that appeal to the flesh better get more business and more profits. If the monopolistic corporation was not in place, a range of smaller businesses, more closely tied to a moral society, will resist the appeal to the flesh. Moral people will patronize moral business if they are not put out of business by the unethical corporation.

For example, we would like not to patronize the Wal-Mart Mega Corporation. Why? Wall Mart buys cheap Chinese products. They are only cheap because the Chinese are willing to work as slave labor. Wal-Mart supports homosexuals and abortionists because they see that the political wind is blowing this way. Wal-Mart is at the forefront of new world order snooping and surveillance. Did you ever notice all the cameras? Wal-Mart became a large business because it was able to borrow the people's money to expand. It also put millions of small business out of business and millions of people out of better jobs. Wal-Mart due to its monopoly in the market is able to pay its workers unusually low wages. Wal-Mart was able to become large because it was able to acquire more than its fair share of property, because there are no biblical land laws.

The larger a business is, the more willing it is to compromise with the world and unethical business practices. Compromise outside of biblical law leads to success in the worldly market place. Perpetual debt, monopoly, and sin will conspire together to put all property and business under the control of one world master, that with the use of computers, will enslave the entire world. Failure to apply biblical law leads naturally and automatically to this conclusion in a sinful world. Where will the free exception be? It will be in that country or land that keeps itself separate and follows moral biblical laws of economics.

The conservative Christian ideal of economics involves competition and private ownership of property hopefully combined with moral business ethics. However, these ideas fall far short of the biblical model of a sound economic system because they neglect the biblical environment in which these ideas thrive. In fact, they are so deficient that they will not prevent the economic crashes and depressions caused by other systems of economics. Capitalism as conceived by the Christian conservative in America will lead to the same result as Socialism. The defect in the fundamentalist Christian model of economics is due to the failure of the Christian fundamentalist to embrace Biblical Law or failure to understand the sound reasons for Biblical Laws.

One only has to listen to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity exposit on free market economics, the need for deregulation, and government hands off, to get a feel of the deficiency once we understand what is missing. Any further controls on the market place are regarded as government intrusions, or socialism, or communism.

We all despise Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto, and yet many of our nation's policies are communist, like progressive education by the state, a direct income tax, etc, and the nationalization of basic industries. However, Karl Marx was right about the basic nature of unregulated Capitalism. Competition leads to a predictable and provable result. Some people compete better than others because they are either smarter or they put a higher value on competing with others. A person who works 24/7 will always out compete someone who places a higher value on religious pursuits, or family time. One need only look to Japan or China to find a culture with an absurd work ethic. A person can always out compete someone

else by lowering their quality of life in un-economic pursuits or by cutting ethical corners. With no laws to restrain such behavior, they will succeed. Those who compete better tend to add house to house. They grow into large corporations that become monopolistic. China captured America's industrial output by the use of the free market. When we should have restrained their growth with tariffs, we let them put smaller American business out of business, but we sent our business overseas with the predictable result that China now does all the work while Americans are lazy.

To get the picture of Capitalism we must take into account the ability of those competing the hardest, and in the most unethical manner, to borrow the most money. The borrowing of money allows the competition to grow their monopoly at an unnatural rate and to an unnatural size. Borrowing money allows the corporation to expand and add house to house using the resources of others. When the corporation reaches a certain size and obtains a large degree of power, then those who lent the money can no longer compete with it in the market place in order to make a reasonable profit.

Unregulated capitalism in America was combined with fiat currency in 1971 when the United States went off the gold standard. This took the limits off how much credit (borrowing) could be created by the banks. It also took off the limits of how much the American Central Bank could exploit the rest of the world. But let us get back to the root causes: monopolies and debt. Monopolies and debt, and taxes are always the villains that kill off any economy. A point arrives in every economy based on monopoly and debt, when the monopoly, due to its superior profit making ability, is able to shift the debt off onto the people who do not own the monopoly.

This is exactly what happened in America. The debt has been shifted to the people of America and to other nations of the world. Those big business with the most political power, i.e. giving politicians campaign contributions, also control the way laws are written. They wrote the bailout laws to favor banks and U.S. corporations that deserve to fail. They also engineered laws so that debt could be shifted to other nations. While they have their own debts paid off, the average American is left with an unbearable debt burden.

It is time to kick the oligarchs out. It is time for a revolution before they and their greed starve America with debt to death. Hopefully it is not a shooting revolution. Hopefully, states, counties, and cities should realize that the solution is to cancel debt, reduce taxes, and break monopolies. It is a slim hope however, because it will not happen without a spiritual reformation and a turn to biblical economics.

Eventually there comes a point when the people of a land's ability to compete against the monopoly is so reduced that they can no longer service the debt that they have been forced to take on. They begin to default on the debt. This in turn decreases the profits of the monopolies, and the weaker monopolies begin to fire people in order to survive the inability of the people they impoverished to support their profits. The more people that lose their jobs the more debts go bad and so on. An self feeding cycle kicks in and the whole debt system comes crashing down.

Why Christian Fundamentalists cannot understand how competition and lack of regulation of monopolies and lending leads to exactly the result we are seeing today is hard to fathom. Pure historical observation of fiat currencies, lending, and monopolies should be sufficient to demonstrate the case. And of all people, Christians ought to understand the divinely ordained biblical solutions to these two problems:

Any nation that fully follows these principles will quickly become the most prosperous nation on earth. Any nation that follows these principles will be the most generous nation on earth. Any nation that follows these principles will attract loads of real money because the world will know their money is safe, and their investments safe from the cycle of recession and depression.

These principles are Biblical and they must be imposed on the citizens of a country by law. People will not naturally follow these laws. They only benefit when the whole society follows them. Capitalism and competition and the free market do not naturally follow these laws. In fact, left unregulated, the free market will always push debt and monopoly to an unsustainable excess.

If Christians will not submit to the biblical solution for economics here is what they will get. The citizens of a country will get fed up with capitalism and will ignorantly turn to socialism, communism, and fascism. God, in the Scripture, is the one who told us what the proper system of checks and balances on an economy should be. And without the biblical system, men will not work, business will become either a private monopoly or government monopoly, and the people will be in perpetual debt, or at the mercy of banks and currency manipulation. This happens because men are too deficient of the spiritual sense to regulate their own greed and lust for power, even when it makes logical sense for a society to do so.

When the Almighty restores the kingdom to Israel, the nation will be swept clean of debt, clear of banks, and paper money will go into the fire. There will be no income tax and no property tax. The country will not be run by politicians elected by the money of monopolistic corporations who write the very laws the politicians pass. Israel will become a nation of prosperous farmers and productive small industry, with loads of free time left over for religious duties to God and even more time for actually living. Those responsible for the law will not be subject to investigations by powerful enemies on the left.

The Almighty promised that he would bless Israel more than their forefathers. It will happen, and following these laws is the only way that it will happen. And in the age to come, the nations will be taught proper economic laws, and those that follow them will become prosperous beyond any dreams of this age.

We have a capitalist economic system in the United States, or we had one, but should we pretend that the system we have had for the last 100, 70, or 30 years is even close to Biblical? Let us examine the value system of 'conservative economics' and see what is wrong with it and what is lacking in it.

First there is what is called the "work ethic". The problem here is that Christians do not think they are observing the work ethic unless they are working all them time. As a consequence, the have no time for the weekly Sabbath. Biblical work requires a the weekly time out from competition. If one works more than six days, then one is not only not getting rest, and a lower quality of life. One is also unfairly and unethically competing with his neighbor, and lowers his quality of life when he should be resting and worshiping God. And economic system without the Sabbath is an incomplete economic system. The Sabbath is necessary to temper work, and synchronize the work lives of people participating in the economy. It should be recognized that in the United States, the typical work week ends on Friday. This is good, and is due to the influence of the Sabbath. The economy has therefore benefits from this somewhat. In other countries, this is not so, and the people suffer. The Japanese have an excellent work ethic, but they work so much that they have little time for rest. The Chinese work themselves to slave labor, and manage to out compete those who live to take a rest.

Also, just because the majority of people are off on Friday in America, and do not work on Sabbath at a regular job does not mean the Sabbath is understood at all, or that it is properly used. This is were the work ethic without the Sabbath leads to too much work. After the sixth day, Christians with the "work ethic" do not really relax, but they engage in some other type of work or competition for a living. Even those who try to slow down on Sunday go shopping in the afternoon.

Second there is the concept of "private property". Do we have any private property in America? Private property ceased to exist in the United States around the 1880 when the government figured out how to impose the property tax. The churches knew better and exempted themselves. That's why church property is not taxed. You can always identify property you don't own. If you have to pay someone else to use it, then it is not yours. The payments are called taxes or rents. After someone buys a piece of property, we still maintain the charade of private ownership by referring to persons who "buy" property as the owner. Actually, they are tenants.

There is still private property of another type in America. If you own things like tools or household goods, then you own them privately. You pay no tax or rent on them. So there is still some private property. However, it may not remain that way. There are actually states and jurisdictions that charge a tax or rent on these things also. And in some places there is even something called a poll tax. That means a tax on your head. Apparently those paying a poll tax don't even own themselves. Direct taxation always falls unequally on the poor. The rich know how to exempt themselves.

What else does not belong to you. If you pay a direct tax on your labor or work, then it is called the income tax. Again, you can be only taxed on what you are considered not to own. So we must conclude that those who pay such taxes don't own their own labor or work. A biblical tax can only be for a service you receive.

So we can all sit back and relax. We can call it democratic free market capitalism. But we are pretending. We can even pretend that the way things are run in America is more biblical than socialism or communism. Perhaps a wee bit. But we must stop thinking that it is even remotely close to the biblical model of economics. Until we do so, we will have no idea how it needs to be changed to make it biblical. Biblical private property is really private. The only person who has any right to 'tax' is God, since he owns everything. But then even God does not tax the actual property, but only what food is grown on the property. This is called a tithe. Part of the reason our economy is so far away from the biblical model, and the reason that Christians don't remember the biblical model, is that our forefathers let biblical principles fall down like the proverbial frog being slowly boiled in the frying pan.

What about "free market competition". If one takes a look at that law code called the "Federal Register" or OSHA rules, or DNR rules, or any of the zillion and one "regulations" placed on ordinary people doing ordinary business, you will realize what "free market" really means, and who is allowed to compete and who is not allowed to compete. So again, we shouldn't pretend that America is following the biblical model of free market economics. If you are a farmer in Peru and bring your produce to the open air market, then that's easy. Try it in America in any major city, and you will see what kind of regulatory headache, tax and fee schedule, etc. that you will have to navigate. Do you want to sell "organic produce". It may be organic, but you can't sell it without being certified!

Supposedly all these laws are for health and safety, or to compel market participants to be honest. That's only 1% true. They are 99% chains on the free market. As for the 1% of liars, cheats, and polluters of the environment, there is a biblical way to deal with it that does not require hamstringing business with regulation. Liars, cheats, and polluters under a biblical system are simply taken to court and sued when the commit a crime. If this were done justly, then the rest of the market would regulate itself just fine, and we could all reap the economic benefits. And of course crime has to be limited to what the bible says is wrong: lying, cheating, stealing, ruining you neighbors property, etc. So as long as you cannot waltz down to the town square and set up your vegetable stand to sell your garden produce without cross-eyed looks from the authorities, lets not say we have a free market economy. And lets not pretend that it is even close to Christian. The closest thing to free market we have is called the, "Garage Sale" and technically you have comply with regulations to do even that.

So we really do not have private property in America, real money, or a free market, but we are told that America believes in "private" property, "money" and a real "free" market. We are told that business' compete on their merits, and that the deck is not stacked against them like in other countries. If you ever read George Orwell's novel 1984, then you will be familiar with "newspeak". Newspeak is a unique language invented by fascistic governments that turns lies into truth and truth into lies. Newspeak is not the vision of some futuristic totalitarian society. Newspeak is widely spoken and understood right here in the United States of America.

Take any country in the world in any system of government 150 years ago, and you will find that it was economically freer then. But now all the countries of the world are on fiat paper currency. Is it valid then to compare America to other countries of the present and then conclude that America is better off, or "freer"? That's like comparing America to a shrinking ruler. America will always look bigger and better if the ruler keeps shrinking. We should use a fixed standard, not a changing standard. To say America has a better economy or principles of economics is like saying a sneak thief has higher standards than a contract killer. When we pass laws that prohibit business from selling produce in the town square, and then call it the free market because we can somehow say that our rules are freer than the country next door, we have entered the surrealistic world of relativistic newspeak.

Normally we measure economic value by a ruler called 'money'. But if the ruler shrinks 30% every 10 years, then is the measure valid over time? Certainly not. Just because the newspeak dictionary says that paper is money we believe it is money. What is actually happening is exactly the kind of theft that the kings of old committed. Gold and silver were used for money then. And it was really money then. However, they did not have a newspeak dictionary to deceive the people into using paper. What a king would do is acquire some gold coins. Then they melted it down and mixed it with lead or some other metal to make more gold coins than they acquired. Then they went out and spent them as if they were worth a whole gold coin each.

Now the market figures out that the gold coins are worth less, so they raise prices, but not before the king has gotten away with a little bit of everyone's property. Shortly thereafter, some of the poor people who were just able to pay their bills before the king's theft are now unable to pay their bills due to the higher prices. They are forced to borrow. Guess who has extra gold to lend? That's, right the "king"! They borrow from the king, who charges interest on the loan. Then after a while these poor people find that they cannot repay the loan.

Now why did I put the words, borrow, lend, loan, and repay in italics? Because of the king's theft, and because it is not called theft and prosecuted as theft, the king's lawyers are able to cover it up. The truth is that the king did not merely borrow from the people with his coin scam. He stole from the people what was their property. So in order to rectify the moral perceptions we must introduce some new terms which really show what is going on. We must translate the deceptive newspeak back into reality. Your an American? Good. You already know "Newspeak". Excellent! What we now require is the Gregg Reverse Newspeak Dictionary:

interest = what the thief charges you for letting you use the goods he stole

Now of course we expect the king to understate the amount he has stolen from the people. When discovered, he might confess that he is stealing 3% per year. But he does nothing to rectify the injustice. So how much is he really stealing? Who knows, but he might try to steal a lot more by this scheme if he finds that he cannot collect enough taxes to pay the bills for his rich living. The United States Government says it is stealing 3% per year in the official inflation numbers, but it is probably stealing more since it does not report the theft rate truthfully.

The scripture says, "The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous sheweth mercy, and giveth" (KJV Psalm 37:21). We must understand these words in their just and correct use. The king's lawyers cover up his theft by shifting the use of these terms the poor who are merely recovering what was stolen by telling them that they are borrowing from the king. Under such a scheme the poor have the perfect right to recover what was stolen. They have the perfect right to 'borrow' (according to the unjust king) and then 'default' (according to the unjust king) on the 'debt' (according to the unjust king). So let us define some more terms:

default = refusing to play the game by the thief's rules and keeping your recovered property without trying to defend yourself using the thief's rules.

bankruptcy = keeping a little bit of what you recovered using the thief's rules.

negotiation = pleading with the thief to return only some of your recovered property to him.

debtor = (1) the king's bad name for one who seeks to liberate their own property, (2) a person justly getting even with the system.

So, contrary to what most conservative Christian counselors tell us, the 'debtor' (see proper definition above) has the moral high ground. The 'debtor' has every right to recover his own property, and not only that, but he or she has the right to recover an amount of property equal to punitive damages also. To understand the rate of punitive damages, we turn to this parable that the Prophet Nathan told King David.

And the LORD sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. 2 The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: 3 But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. 4 And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him. 5 And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die: 6 And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity (KJV 2 Samuel 12:1).

The people have the right to recover up to four times what the banksters stole in the first place. Let us now try to quantify how much the banksters stole. If the average house hold income was 40,000 for the last 30 years, then the actual amount stolen is: $1200/year. For 30 years: $36,000. Adding punitive damages: $144,000. And that is just at 3% inflation. The reality is more like 12% inflation at the present. At 12% inflation for the past three years, one has the right to recover $57,600.

So we see that total debt forgiveness is the least remedy that the people deserve. Bankers like to call this attitude that people should not pay their loans, 'moral hazard'. This is the term they use to describe the increasing tendency of people not to pay their debts when the bank gets extremely greedy in its lending. That's what you get for letting a thief define the terms of the theft. The sad thing is that Christians have gone along with this. If Churches and Christians everywhere would read their bibles and proclaim the illegitimacy of the thieves, and morally support the recovery of the stolen property then we are on the road to truth and prosperity.

Actually, the biblical concept of debt forgiveness does not even apply in the case of recovering property from a thief. Yet, as long as the thief calls it a debt, this biblical remedy is an option. For whatever a criminal would do to his neighbor must be done to him.

We must dissect the thief to make sure we know what all his innards look like. We don't want to misidentify some legitimate lenders with the thief. If you borrowed from your relatives or neighbor, then you are obligated to pay them back for seven years after the initial loan. That's because they actually worked for the substance they lent you, and they did not take it from you in the first place. If you owe rent or utilities, or for food, or fuel, or for anything obtained from a sole proprietor business, then you need to do your best to make it right within seven years. If your debt is measured by a debt currency, then you probably owe them the rate of inflation also, simply so they get equal value for whatever they lent. They do not have a right to additional profit called interest. You do not have to pay them that. Only the real value of the loan when it was made is due. All the biblical laws on debt apply here. And none of the new speak translations apply.

Now to dissect the thief we operate on the principle that the thief will be anyone who actually perpetrates the theft, or any individual corporation or business that has the spoils of the theft given to them by the thief. But, first to make a dividing line we must further quantify the extent of the theft. The theft has been perpetrated on that last three generations, or for 100 years worth of wealth. The cumulative inflation rate is 300%. If we average out annual income, we pick the mid 1970's or 25,000/year. Total: 2,500,000. Times 300%: 7.5 million. Punitive damages: 30 million.

So you can bet that any one corporation or individual that is worth more than 30 million, and who received any borrowed money to grow to that size, is complicit with the thief. This is actually quite generous since many participants with the thief are being sheltered by the biblical fourfold penalty clause. There may be business which grew larger than 7.5 million without the use of stolen property. These are not guilty.

Who definitely is included? All banks. All large corporations. All Credit Card Companies. GM, Ford, Capital One, Bank of America, Chase Bank, Citi, etc. If they lend money or borrow large amounts, then they are complicit with the thief. The poor are under no obligation to pay them back. In fact, they are entitled to punitive damages!

I include this section to make it clear that it is not just Americans that have been defrauded by the banksters, corporations, credit card companies, and other lenders, who have benefited from the inflationary feeding trough. People in every country of the world have been enslaved and defrauded of their property by the banks in New York, Tokyo, and London, and by every government that has gone off of sound money and engaged in a policy of devaluation and inflation. That includes Russia and China. So it is no wonder why the world is experiencing an economic apocalypse.

Christians do not understand economics because they do not understand what the Scripture teaches about it. One has to look no further than Gary North, a famous Christian economics teacher. While North understands the bible's teaching on sound money and perhaps private property, he does not understand the bible's teaching on debt, slavery, borrowing, or the year of Jubilee. The year of Jubilee he rejects outright, saying that, "Jesus Annulled the Jubilee Laws". Then he claims that one could be sold into slavery if he or she could not pay a debt. However, this is not so either, because the Scripture specifies that one could be sold only to pay restitution for a theft or other willful destruction of a neighbor's property (Exodus 22:1). North limits the debt release in the seventh year to just a charitable loan made to a poor Christian. This is not what the bible says. All loans were forgiven, not just charitable loans. North's limitation will not solve any debt problem. Most loans are not charitable loans! North also limits the usury law to interest on charitable loans. He allows interest on so called commercial loans. But again, the Scripture makes no such distinction. Any interest whatsoever is banned for any fellow Israelite. North's interpretation of economics fits the culture of reformed Calvinism where the Calvinists are in control of the city state. But this version of capitalism is not Biblical. It makes you gag. It makes me want to use another term for biblical economics. Capitalism is so tainted with usury, monopolies, and debt, that it is useless as a term.

Once again, if commercial loans are not forgiven in the seventh year, and if the Jubilee law is abolished, then what is to keep debt from compounding, and monopolies from building by adding house to house until we need another depression to clean out the debt and break down the monopolies? If Gary North cannot define Biblical economics correctly, then what Christian can? Very few. Most of them speak ignorance when seeking support from the bible, or they chose to ignore it altogether.