The Something For Nothing Lie

Here's a great article on the "something for nothing" lie the world seems to be living, from LDSFreemen.com. It has this great little fable on the fraud that is modern banking, sans the gold standard:

The entire national and international banking system is now based on lending what the banks do not have or creating “something from nothing”. The USA has had a past history of similar attempts to create wealth out of thin air. The world also has had many of its own attempts of the same. The first may have occurred around the 5th century BC fable of the first bank.

The fable goes something like this: A goldsmith, in a prosperous kingdom city-state, was making an honest living making jewelery and other items out of gold and silver. However, as with many prosperous historical situations, greed and covertness set in. The goldsmith's wife wanted to keep up with the neighborhood but the honest goldsmith's income cramped her desires. So she applied the necessary emotional pressure to the goldsmith and he relented to her "encouragements" with a plan that would provide her wants.

The goldsmith had a safe place to store gold and many of the local prosperous inhabitants deposited their savings, in the form of gold, in the safe place of the goldsmith for which a storage fee was paid to the goldsmith and he issued a receipt for their "deposit". In time it became apparent, by the "depositors" that making purchases with the receipts instead of "withdrawing" their gold was much more efficient and convenient. So it became a common practice to exchange gold receipt for goods and services in the kingdom.

The goldsmiths idea to satisfy his wife's desires was to issue his own receipt for gold he did not own. He gave it to his wife and she went to the bizarre and began satisfying her desires. After a few weeks everything was going fine with no apparent repercussions from the small fraud. The goldsmiths wife soon began again her pleas for more and the goldsmith issued more receipts to himself to satisfy his wife. Weeks went by and no problems occurred until one day a rumor of some fraud in the receipts cause all the persons holding receipts to "run" to the goldsmiths safe place to "withdraw" their gold. When all the gold was withdrawn and there were still people waiting with receipts in hand for their gold, the goldsmith and his wife were apprehended and taken by those people to call on the king in his court. Finding that fraud had been committed, the king ordered the decapitation of the goldsmith and his wife.