ABSTRACT
Ownership economics shows that interest and money cannot be understood or exist without a property rights system and the associated ownership premium. Ownership premium, interest and money provide the foundation of economic activity and constitute it as a mesh of mutual nominalmonetary obligationsthat have to be fulfilled not only by debtors but also by creditors. Money-creating creditors originate credit contracts, in the money of account on which all actors – creditors and debtors alike – in turn have to base their economic operations. However, the money issuers also have the responsibility to ensure that money for economic activity is continuously created and destroyed through the drafting and the fulfillment of credit contracts, in which property is constantly burdened and unburdened and interest obligations are entered into and discharged. This overarching responsibility can only be fulfilled by the issuer, because debtors receive money in a credit contract not only against interest but above all against good loan security, and because creditors themselves are liable for the created money with equally sound property assets. Therefore, the operations of an ownership-based economy are not directed by an ‘invisible hand’ (classical economics) or an auctioneer (neoclassical economics). What turns out to be invisible are hundreds of millions of credit contracts, denominated in the same money of account, and the implied threat of debt recovery action, which keeps all actors, from banker to wage laborer and social security beneficiary, moving. For example, the German SCHUFA 1 monitors more than 300 million credit contracts alone in a country with a population of just 80 million.
