R. Nelson Nash - The Case for IBC

CRISES BAILOUTS INSTABILITY

There is a path out.

This book will show you the way .

Contents

THE

CASE for IBC

How to Secede from Our Current Monetary Regime One Household at a Time

Second Edition

L. Carlos Lara

Robert P. Murphy, Ph.D.

R. Nelson Nash

Copyright 2018

By: L. Carlos Lara, Robert P. Murphy and R. Nelson Nash

First Edition-Printed February 2018 in the United States by Sheridan Books, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan

ISBN 978-0-9997786-0-9

Second Edition-Printed October 2018 in the United States by Sheridan Books, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan

ISBN 978-0-9997786-1-6

Cover Art and Design by Stephanie Long

Acknowledgements

Everything in this book has been, directly or indirectly, built upon the foundation laid by earlier thinkers. All of the authors are adherents to the Austrian School of economics, and so we thank those who have devoted their lives to the dissemination of these crucial ideas of economic liberty. Nelson Nash would like to single out his debt to Leonard Read in particular, who was Nelsons personal mentor on these matters.

Although he is not listed as a formal co-author, we would like to thank David Stearns, president of Infinite Banking Concepts LLC and director of the Nelson Nash Institute, for his invaluable assistance in developing the content both of this book and, more generally, the IBC Seminar for the general public that was this books genesis.

Over the years, we have received invaluable assistance from actuaries and the management of mutual life insurance home offices, helping us to better understand the mechanics of Whole Life policies and the operation of these special business structures.

We also salute the graduates of our Authorized IBC Practitioner Program. These financial professionals are in the trenches every day, helping business owners and households secede one at a time from the prevailing banking and Wall Street nexus.

As usual, graphic artist Stephanie Long provided the compelling cover image.

Finally, we would like to especially thank Anne Lara, who was instrumental in the preparation of the final manuscript. Anne went above and beyond the call of duty by sacrificing the bulk of her Christmas break to ensuring that the turnaround from Word documents to finished product was achieved in record time.

REPRESENTATIONS:

STATUS: The Authors of this book warrant and represent that they are not brokers or to be deemed as broker-dealers, as such terms are defined in the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or an insurance company, or bank.

LEGAL, TAX, ACCOUNTING, OR INVESTMENT ADVICE: The Authors of this book are not rendering legal, tax, accounting, or investment advice. All exhibits in this book are solely for illustration purposes, but under no circumstances shall the reader construe these as the rendering of legal, tax, accounting or investment advice.

DISCLAIMER AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITY: The Authors of this book hereby disclaim any and all warranties, express, or implied, including merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose and make no representation or warranty of the certainty that any particular result will be achieved. In no event will the Authors, their employees, or associated persons, or agents be liable to the reader of this book, or its Agents for any causes of action of any kind whether or not the reader has been advised of the possibility of such damage.

This book is dedicated to all those who

love Liberty and champion Sound Money .

Introduction

This book is a distillation of the IBC Seminar for the general public that was originally conducted by R. Nelson Nash, L. Carlos Lara, and Robert P. Murphy. (Beginning in 2018, the IBC Seminar will be presented by Lara and Murphy.) Although each of us had published books and articles for the public, we realized that we had developed material for live audiences in our seminar that was nowhere in print. This book fills that gap.

The content of the following chapters, as well as the material in the appendices, provides a great deal of information regarding our diverse backgrounds and how we all came together, united in our passion for Austrian economics and privatized banking. Even so, this Introduction will provide some additional historical context that should hopefully make it easier for the reader to absorb our message.

R. Nelson Nash discovered the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC) in the midst of an epiphany in the early 1980s. Simply put, IBC is a way to use properly designed Whole Life insurance policies to put the banking function back at the you and me level. By recapturing interest payments that otherwise would flow to outsiders, IBC gives financial independence to business owners and households.

Nash had a successful career in the life insurance business, using his revolutionary insights to help people see banking as a process, rather than as something that bankers did. Nash eventually began putting on seminars for the public (around 1996), in order to increase the rate at which he spread his message. Out of these seminars Nash developed the material that became his underground classic, Becoming Your Own Banker , which was first published in October 2000. As of this writing, Becoming Your Own Banker has sold some 400,000 copies. It is still the essential text for anyone wishing to understand IBC.

David Stearns joined Infinite Banking Concepts in June 2004 after retiring from the U.S. Army as a Lieutenant Colonel. Stearns worked closely with Nash to launch the IBC Think Tank in August 2005, out of Birmingham, Alabama. The IBC Think Tank is a forum of instruction and fellowship, allowing IBC practitioners to encourage and learn from each other. (Currently the Think Tank is reserved for Authorized IBC Practitioners and their invited guests.)

L. Carlos Lara is a business consultant living in Nashville. Following a personal financial upheaval in the 1980s, he had been led to the Austrian School of economics, and in particular its explanation of the boom-bust cycle. In 2007, while working on a lecture teaching the dangers of fractional reserve banking that he was going to present to commercial bankers (!), Lara consulted a Study Guide on Austrian economics. He discovered that the author, Robert P. Murphy, also lived in Nashville (at the time). Soon after that meeting, it was Lara who introduced Murphy to Nashs book, Becoming Your Own Banker . Murphy was intrigued, and after some study, he realized that IBC made perfect sense.

Especially in the wake of the financial crisis and the various rounds of Quantitative Easing (QE), Murphy and other academic Austrian economists were warning the public about the dangers of runaway monetary policy. However, the academic Austrians, though experts at diagnosing the problem of government interference in our monetary and banking systems, provided no immediate solution except to acquire inflation hedges such as the precious metals. The long-term solution of course was education and turning public opinion, but this seemed like a very distant goal.

Amidst this pessimism, Lara explained to Murphy that IBC offered a way to achieve privatized banking one household or business at a time! Rather than trying to reform the whole system with top-down change, a strategy of seceding from the dominant banking/Wall Street nexus was much more effective and peaceful. In order to drive home this message, Lara and Murphy co-authored the book How Privatized Banking Really Works in 2010.

Lara and Murphy began giving presentations explaining the virtues of IBC to the general public. However, they soon realized a glaring problem: If their writings and public talks convinced members of the public to get an IBC policy, where did these people go to get one? Lara and Murphy did not want to actually sell life insurance to the general public, yet a trained financial professional was necessary to make IBC work.