Annual Rally At the Federal Reserve

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Dawn Brohawn, Center for Economic and Social Justice, 703-243-5155 or info@cesj.org

 

Rally for Monetary Justice

Washington, D.C., April 16, 2015 — Citizen-activists from around the country will rally at Lafayette Park across from the White House to deliver their “Declaration of Monetary Justice” to President Barack Obama and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Friday, April 17, 2015, from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM.

Members of the Coalition for Capital Homesteading will issue a challenge to citizens, politicians and policy-makers: “Own or be Owned: Why We Can’t Wait.” They believe that the economic foundations of America’s political democracy, and the economic independence of the majority of citizens and families, are threatened by what most Americans view as a Wall Street biased and overcomplicated money, credit and tax system that concentrates ownership and power in a tiny portion of citizens and their government allies.

The Declaration of Monetary Justice calls on the President and Congress to instruct the Federal Reserve and local banks to use the Fed’s existing discount powers under Section 13, paragraph 2. This would open up a now-untapped source for financing new equity issuances for faster rates of asset-backed private sector growth, rather than increasing debt-backed money for speculation and non-productive purposes.  Insured, asset-backed money and nearly cost-free capital loans would be made available to every citizen through their local banks to invest in profitable companies seeking to grow by issuing new full-dividend-payout voting shares, while reducing corporate income taxes by making dividends deductible at the corporate level and taxable taxable when received at the personal level.  This can be done under present tax law today for workers in 100% employee-owned leveraged S-Corporation Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs).  By creating new owners of new productive capital purchased with “future savings” acquired through tax-deferred dividends, future equity ownership and increased mass purchasing power would be spread broadly as all citizens begin receiving the earnings of capital as “second incomes.”

Norman Kurland, one of the Coalition’s founders, explains that unlike some organizations and politicians opposed to the Federal Reserve existence, “We have no interest in ending the Fed, or turning its functions over to the Treasury Department, as some are demanding. We want the Fed to become a more accountable and effective engine of non-inflationary, private-sector growth with justice.” As a lawyer and economist who served as Washington Counsel for economic visionary and leveraged ESOP architect Louis O. Kelso, Kurland drafted the first ESOP laws enacted by Congress in 1974 and pioneered the first 100% bank-financed leveraged ESOPs.  In 1985 he wrote and lobbied successfully for passage of a bipartisan Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice to develop a report promoting worker ownership throughout Central America and the Carribbean, for which he was appointed deputy chairman by President Ronald Reagan.

“Federal Reserve policies today are making the rich richer, while encouraging destructive uses of credit that sink consumers and our government deeper into debt. Instead, by supporting productive uses of credit and universal citizen access to a new means of acquiring productive capital for accumulating tax-deferred retirement assets and rising dividend incomes, the Fed could serve a socially just purpose. It could promote sustainable economic growth, expanded job creation and shared prosperity in a market system.”

The Coalition for Capital Homesteading grew out of an annual rally inaugurated in 2005, dedicated to passage of a proposed “Capital Homestead Act” and equal access to capital ownership as a new right of citizenship. The Coalition was spearheaded by the non-profit, all-volunteer Center for Economic and Social Justice, based in Arlington, Virginia. CESJ was founded in 1984 and has an interfaith membership throughout the U.S. and other countries. For more information, visit http://www.cesj.org.