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It seems that not many people have noticed the recent action the Federal Reserve took to "prevent an economic crisis", that being the collapse of Bear-Stearns. It seems, in fact, that most people just have very little knowledge whatsoever of what the Fed does, how it operates, and who controls it. So posted here, is an article I made for my college's newspaper. Comments are welcome.
Note: Many of the ideas presented in this article can be considered controversial and are certainly critical of the powers that be. Please keep in mind while reading this that the makings of a true patriot is not blind faith to a flag, but dissent from the corruption and tyranny of one’s government.
Where does money come from? Why is it valuable? What is inflation, and what causes it? Do we have a say in any of this? All of these questions are immensely important considering the current health, or lack thereof, of our economy and the subsequent consequences of such on our daily lives. It is a sad fact of today that many our age and older have little to no knowledge of these issues, their causes, and effects. It is therefore the purpose of this article to make an earnest attempt in providing these answers and also to inform its readers of the current corruption inherent in the very design of our economic system. But before we truly delve into this question of economic corruption, we must first study our current banking system, what it is today, and where it came from.
All money in circulation in the United States (dollars, coins, everything) is printed and regulated by the Federal Reserve Bank, the central bank of the United States. It is important to note, that although it has the word “Federal” in its official title, the Federal Reserve Bank is completely independent of the U.S government. It is essentially a privately owned and operated corporation and therefore does not have to answer to the U.S. government per se, nor the American people. It remains almost completely unaudited, and its actions are not overseen by Congress, the President, or any other outside authoritative organization. This private organization, operated by non-elected officials and effectively free of any sort of checks and balances, has completely controlled the entirety of the U.S. economy since the passing of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Prior to its inception, all forms of currency in the United States were backed by the amount of gold and silver available in the U.S. Treasury. However, as time has gone on and with it inflation, the “Gold Standard” as it was called was removed during the Great Depression and the value of U.S. currency was instead based on the “productivity” of the American economy, whatever that means.
Prior to 1913, there had been a long debate in this nation concerning the implementation of a central bank. In fact, one of the primary instigations for the American Revolution was The Currency Act, which brought about the economic depression which made many resent Britain’s tyrannical rule over her American colonies. Passed by the British parliament in 1764, the legislation effectively banned a debt-free form of currency that was being used in the American colonies, and therefore forced the colonials to accept the currency printed by the Bank of England, an institution that operated much like our own Federal Reserve. Of the Currency Act’s effect on the colonials, Benjamin Franklin later commented: “The refusal of King George III to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, was probably the prime cause of the Revolution”. During the early years of the new United States, the historical feud between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton was fueled mainly by this one philosophical difference. Hamilton, whose face is currently on the ten dollar bill, was revolted by the idea of the American people actually ruling themselves and proposed a strong central government, a central bank to print and regulate the currency of the United States, and having both ruled by the wealthy and “illuminated” elite. Thomas Jefferson, however, believed in the inherent goodness of the common man and believed with strong conviction in their ability to determine what was best for their new nation and their own individual lives, and thus proposed a weak central government and absolutely abhorred the notion of a central bank. About the implementation of a central bank, Thomas Jefferson warned: “I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies… If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency…the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered”. Despite this strong opposition from Thomas Jefferson and his Republicans, Hamilton and the wealthy Federalists were successful in establishing an American central bank in 1791 with the creation of the First Bank of the United States. After the bank’s 20 year charter was completed, the Second Bank of the United States was established in 1816. However, in 1830, the newly elected President Andrew Jackson began and eventually won a war waged against the country’s central banking system which would become known to history as the infamous Bank War. Andrew Jackson, much like Jefferson, had felt that the American central bank was “a curse to the republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country”. Following the Bank War, notes of money were once again printed by the U.S. government and the amount printed was in relation to the amount of gold and silver available to the U.S. Treasury. The idea of a central bank would not be successfully made a reality again until 1913.
It is quite clear in regards to today’s economics that despite the previous dissent of the American revolutionaries, and the efforts of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson, the philosophy of wealthy elitist control over both the state and the issuing of money has been ultimately successful. Unfortunately, this measure of success has not been to the benefit of the American people, but to the wealthy elite who control the government and its policies as well as the economics of our entire nation. There are very definite and legitimate reasons why so many of our Founding Fathers opposed the implementation of a central bank like the Federal Reserve. To get to why, we must first examine the way in which our money system is absolutely, entirely, and actually quite simply worthless and fake. To first illustrate this, imagine depositing 100 of your hard-earned dollars into a bank, like many of us do quite often. This means the bank now owes you your 100 dollars whenever you wish to retrieve it. Thusly, this money becomes a liability to the bank. However, what the bank does then with your money is loan it, with interest, to someone else; making it an asset. Due to the interest, the bank earns money on the loan they have given out. Any person with a simple understanding of positive and negative integers can quite simply see from this example the worthlessness of money. Essentially, the deposit and the loan cancel each other out, equaling zero, and then more money is artificially created by the bank through interest.
Now, with this in mind, let’s discuss the Federal Reserve and how it works. Essentially, the Federal Reserve is a massive bank responsible for the production of every single denomination of American currency in our economy. The Fed prints the currency, and then LOANS it back to the U.S. government, with INTEREST that they keep for their own profit, much like how a bank would give out a loan for the purchase of a car or a house. This means that with every single dollar loaned, the U.S. government is in debt to the Federal Reserve for the value of that dollar PLUS an additional percentage of debt which is the interest for the loan. Well where does the money for the interest come from if the Federal Reserve is printing all the money in the first place? It comes from, once again, the Federal Reserve. In order to fatten their own pockets with money earned from interest, they print more money, loan it to the U.S. government so that they can then use that new money to pay back the debt from previous loans from the Federal Reserve. However, because the government has borrowed more money, they are now in debt all over again. This means a self-generating debt that the U.S. government, and therefore the American public will never be able to escape. It means inflation and the perpetual devaluing of the U.S. dollar, all so that the private owners of the Federal Reserve can continue to parasitically earn profits; a corrupt abuse of power that will eventually destroy our economy. We are starting to see the effects of this now. The current recession we are in is just beginning, and it will surely get worse. One of the many things causing this is the War in Iraq. War acts as a sort of “economic stimulus” that forces the U.S. government to borrow more money from the Federal Reserve in order to pay for materials of war, which therefore increases the money supply being printed by the Fed, and with that inflation and the money earned by Federal Reserve bankers through interest. If one does the proper research, it becomes easily arguable that long and drawn out wars like Korea, Vietnam, and currently Iraq are fought for this reason, but also to fulfill the political and financial gain of big business in general.
Many our age dismiss the stories told by our elders of when a bottle of Coca-Cola was only 5 cents. We accept inflation as simply the “way it works”. The fact of the matter is that the U.S. economy has been hijacked by incredibly wealthy and greedy businessmen, willing to do anything to further their economic agenda. Quite simply the reasons why our Founding Fathers feared such a powerful central bank was because they knew that with control of our economy, these cruel men of business would inevitably gain control of our government, and eventually our day to day lives. Indeed it was the infamous European banker Mayer Amcshel Rothschild, whose descendants would play a quiet but influential role in the adoption of the Federal Reserve, who once said “Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws”.
There is ample evidence, that throughout American history, these powerful interests have manipulated and even artificially created historical events to further their political and business agendas. The event that precipitated the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was the Panic of 1907, the effects of which convinced many Americans to accept the idea of a central bank. Essentially, it was argued that the economic collapse of 1907 could’ve been avoided had there been a central bank present to regulate the economy. It is now commonly known that J.P. Morgan, in 1907 considered one of the most well-informed insider businessmen of Wall Street, started rumors that a major bank in New York City was bankrupt, which caused a wide-scale panic that caused stocks to drop and the economy to slow down. It was in 1910, on J.P. Morgan’s private Jekyll Island that the Federal Reserve Act would be drafted by himself and dozens of other rich and influential men. Following the creation of the Federal Reserve, there were numerous panics, including one in the ‘20s, and of course the Great Depression. Prior to both, the Federal Reserve had dramatically increased the supply of money available, which therefore increased the amount of loans other banks gave out to their customers. However, the Federal Reserve had the ability to call all this money back, and in both cases did just that, citing a “weakening economy”. By helping to cause massive economic depression and the bankruptcy of hundreds of banks that were unable to get the loans back from their customers, the Federal Reserve and other shared business interests were able to purchase( at pennies to the dollar) banks and even corporations that had previously been competitors. Even today, this same type of cut-throat capitalism continues to be practiced by the Fed. Within the past couple weeks, the New York banking firm Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. suffered a cataclysmic collapse that brought it to the verge of bankruptcy. Again, through citing the “protection of the overall economy”, the Federal Reserve set a precedent in that it overtly intervened in the situation and brokered a deal in which J.P Morgan Chase (the company largely owned by the descendants of the same J.P. Morgan who was instrumental in actually creating the Federal Reserve) would “buy-out” all of Bear-Stearns’ holdings for only $2.00 a share. Within a week, JP Morgan Chase had increased the purchased Bear-Stearns stock from $2.00 to $10.00 a share, a 400% increase in value, and thus a major and profitable acquisition for the Morgans. Crooked business deals like this are surely to continue under the guise of “protecting the economy”, as following these events, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his staff were greeted with overall enthusiasm on the floors of both the Senate and the House, with the courageous exception of Congressman Ron Paul. It is quite obvious from the history of the Federal Reserve, and the system it employs in managing money even today, that the men who created it and operate it did so simply to their own benefit, and often to the detriment of the American people that the institution was supposedly created to “help”. The power these men wield and the means by which they have acquired it is certainly disturbing. However, what is far more concerning and even horrifying is the long term political goals of these powerful and deceitful individuals and what has been done out of just the financial realm to achieve them.
Special Thanks to the creators of Zeitgeist: The Movie as well as author Jim Marrs for some of the information presented in this article.
Power, Corruption, and Economics in the United States
Note: Many of the ideas presented in this article can be considered controversial and are certainly critical of the powers that be. Please keep in mind while reading this that the makings of a true patriot is not blind faith to a flag, but dissent from the corruption and tyranny of one’s government.
Where does money come from? Why is it valuable? What is inflation, and what causes it? Do we have a say in any of this? All of these questions are immensely important considering the current health, or lack thereof, of our economy and the subsequent consequences of such on our daily lives. It is a sad fact of today that many our age and older have little to no knowledge of these issues, their causes, and effects. It is therefore the purpose of this article to make an earnest attempt in providing these answers and also to inform its readers of the current corruption inherent in the very design of our economic system. But before we truly delve into this question of economic corruption, we must first study our current banking system, what it is today, and where it came from.
All money in circulation in the United States (dollars, coins, everything) is printed and regulated by the Federal Reserve Bank, the central bank of the United States. It is important to note, that although it has the word “Federal” in its official title, the Federal Reserve Bank is completely independent of the U.S government. It is essentially a privately owned and operated corporation and therefore does not have to answer to the U.S. government per se, nor the American people. It remains almost completely unaudited, and its actions are not overseen by Congress, the President, or any other outside authoritative organization. This private organization, operated by non-elected officials and effectively free of any sort of checks and balances, has completely controlled the entirety of the U.S. economy since the passing of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Prior to its inception, all forms of currency in the United States were backed by the amount of gold and silver available in the U.S. Treasury. However, as time has gone on and with it inflation, the “Gold Standard” as it was called was removed during the Great Depression and the value of U.S. currency was instead based on the “productivity” of the American economy, whatever that means.
Prior to 1913, there had been a long debate in this nation concerning the implementation of a central bank. In fact, one of the primary instigations for the American Revolution was The Currency Act, which brought about the economic depression which made many resent Britain’s tyrannical rule over her American colonies. Passed by the British parliament in 1764, the legislation effectively banned a debt-free form of currency that was being used in the American colonies, and therefore forced the colonials to accept the currency printed by the Bank of England, an institution that operated much like our own Federal Reserve. Of the Currency Act’s effect on the colonials, Benjamin Franklin later commented: “The refusal of King George III to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, was probably the prime cause of the Revolution”. During the early years of the new United States, the historical feud between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton was fueled mainly by this one philosophical difference. Hamilton, whose face is currently on the ten dollar bill, was revolted by the idea of the American people actually ruling themselves and proposed a strong central government, a central bank to print and regulate the currency of the United States, and having both ruled by the wealthy and “illuminated” elite. Thomas Jefferson, however, believed in the inherent goodness of the common man and believed with strong conviction in their ability to determine what was best for their new nation and their own individual lives, and thus proposed a weak central government and absolutely abhorred the notion of a central bank. About the implementation of a central bank, Thomas Jefferson warned: “I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies… If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency…the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered”. Despite this strong opposition from Thomas Jefferson and his Republicans, Hamilton and the wealthy Federalists were successful in establishing an American central bank in 1791 with the creation of the First Bank of the United States. After the bank’s 20 year charter was completed, the Second Bank of the United States was established in 1816. However, in 1830, the newly elected President Andrew Jackson began and eventually won a war waged against the country’s central banking system which would become known to history as the infamous Bank War. Andrew Jackson, much like Jefferson, had felt that the American central bank was “a curse to the republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country”. Following the Bank War, notes of money were once again printed by the U.S. government and the amount printed was in relation to the amount of gold and silver available to the U.S. Treasury. The idea of a central bank would not be successfully made a reality again until 1913.
It is quite clear in regards to today’s economics that despite the previous dissent of the American revolutionaries, and the efforts of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson, the philosophy of wealthy elitist control over both the state and the issuing of money has been ultimately successful. Unfortunately, this measure of success has not been to the benefit of the American people, but to the wealthy elite who control the government and its policies as well as the economics of our entire nation. There are very definite and legitimate reasons why so many of our Founding Fathers opposed the implementation of a central bank like the Federal Reserve. To get to why, we must first examine the way in which our money system is absolutely, entirely, and actually quite simply worthless and fake. To first illustrate this, imagine depositing 100 of your hard-earned dollars into a bank, like many of us do quite often. This means the bank now owes you your 100 dollars whenever you wish to retrieve it. Thusly, this money becomes a liability to the bank. However, what the bank does then with your money is loan it, with interest, to someone else; making it an asset. Due to the interest, the bank earns money on the loan they have given out. Any person with a simple understanding of positive and negative integers can quite simply see from this example the worthlessness of money. Essentially, the deposit and the loan cancel each other out, equaling zero, and then more money is artificially created by the bank through interest.
Now, with this in mind, let’s discuss the Federal Reserve and how it works. Essentially, the Federal Reserve is a massive bank responsible for the production of every single denomination of American currency in our economy. The Fed prints the currency, and then LOANS it back to the U.S. government, with INTEREST that they keep for their own profit, much like how a bank would give out a loan for the purchase of a car or a house. This means that with every single dollar loaned, the U.S. government is in debt to the Federal Reserve for the value of that dollar PLUS an additional percentage of debt which is the interest for the loan. Well where does the money for the interest come from if the Federal Reserve is printing all the money in the first place? It comes from, once again, the Federal Reserve. In order to fatten their own pockets with money earned from interest, they print more money, loan it to the U.S. government so that they can then use that new money to pay back the debt from previous loans from the Federal Reserve. However, because the government has borrowed more money, they are now in debt all over again. This means a self-generating debt that the U.S. government, and therefore the American public will never be able to escape. It means inflation and the perpetual devaluing of the U.S. dollar, all so that the private owners of the Federal Reserve can continue to parasitically earn profits; a corrupt abuse of power that will eventually destroy our economy. We are starting to see the effects of this now. The current recession we are in is just beginning, and it will surely get worse. One of the many things causing this is the War in Iraq. War acts as a sort of “economic stimulus” that forces the U.S. government to borrow more money from the Federal Reserve in order to pay for materials of war, which therefore increases the money supply being printed by the Fed, and with that inflation and the money earned by Federal Reserve bankers through interest. If one does the proper research, it becomes easily arguable that long and drawn out wars like Korea, Vietnam, and currently Iraq are fought for this reason, but also to fulfill the political and financial gain of big business in general.
Many our age dismiss the stories told by our elders of when a bottle of Coca-Cola was only 5 cents. We accept inflation as simply the “way it works”. The fact of the matter is that the U.S. economy has been hijacked by incredibly wealthy and greedy businessmen, willing to do anything to further their economic agenda. Quite simply the reasons why our Founding Fathers feared such a powerful central bank was because they knew that with control of our economy, these cruel men of business would inevitably gain control of our government, and eventually our day to day lives. Indeed it was the infamous European banker Mayer Amcshel Rothschild, whose descendants would play a quiet but influential role in the adoption of the Federal Reserve, who once said “Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws”.
There is ample evidence, that throughout American history, these powerful interests have manipulated and even artificially created historical events to further their political and business agendas. The event that precipitated the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was the Panic of 1907, the effects of which convinced many Americans to accept the idea of a central bank. Essentially, it was argued that the economic collapse of 1907 could’ve been avoided had there been a central bank present to regulate the economy. It is now commonly known that J.P. Morgan, in 1907 considered one of the most well-informed insider businessmen of Wall Street, started rumors that a major bank in New York City was bankrupt, which caused a wide-scale panic that caused stocks to drop and the economy to slow down. It was in 1910, on J.P. Morgan’s private Jekyll Island that the Federal Reserve Act would be drafted by himself and dozens of other rich and influential men. Following the creation of the Federal Reserve, there were numerous panics, including one in the ‘20s, and of course the Great Depression. Prior to both, the Federal Reserve had dramatically increased the supply of money available, which therefore increased the amount of loans other banks gave out to their customers. However, the Federal Reserve had the ability to call all this money back, and in both cases did just that, citing a “weakening economy”. By helping to cause massive economic depression and the bankruptcy of hundreds of banks that were unable to get the loans back from their customers, the Federal Reserve and other shared business interests were able to purchase( at pennies to the dollar) banks and even corporations that had previously been competitors. Even today, this same type of cut-throat capitalism continues to be practiced by the Fed. Within the past couple weeks, the New York banking firm Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. suffered a cataclysmic collapse that brought it to the verge of bankruptcy. Again, through citing the “protection of the overall economy”, the Federal Reserve set a precedent in that it overtly intervened in the situation and brokered a deal in which J.P Morgan Chase (the company largely owned by the descendants of the same J.P. Morgan who was instrumental in actually creating the Federal Reserve) would “buy-out” all of Bear-Stearns’ holdings for only $2.00 a share. Within a week, JP Morgan Chase had increased the purchased Bear-Stearns stock from $2.00 to $10.00 a share, a 400% increase in value, and thus a major and profitable acquisition for the Morgans. Crooked business deals like this are surely to continue under the guise of “protecting the economy”, as following these events, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his staff were greeted with overall enthusiasm on the floors of both the Senate and the House, with the courageous exception of Congressman Ron Paul. It is quite obvious from the history of the Federal Reserve, and the system it employs in managing money even today, that the men who created it and operate it did so simply to their own benefit, and often to the detriment of the American people that the institution was supposedly created to “help”. The power these men wield and the means by which they have acquired it is certainly disturbing. However, what is far more concerning and even horrifying is the long term political goals of these powerful and deceitful individuals and what has been done out of just the financial realm to achieve them.
Special Thanks to the creators of Zeitgeist: The Movie as well as author Jim Marrs for some of the information presented in this article.
