Andrew Jackson was nearly assassinated because he opposed the establishment of a central bank. John F. Kennedy was killed because he intended to do away with the Federal Reserve. Donald Trump has the central bankers quaking in their pants. Will Donald J. Trump go the way JFK? Injection advocate and predictor of pandemics, Bill Gates once suggested that he might.
G. Edward Griffin wrote the controversial The Creature From Jekyll Island, a six hundred page book that delves into the creation of the Federal Reserve, a privately owned central bank that masquerades as a government institution.
The following is a review of The Creature From Jekyll Island by Jared and is found at Goodreads.
In the early 1910s, a group of wealthy men got together in secret on Jekyll Island of the coast of Georgia to hatch a devious plan to revise the U. S. banking system (the plan they developed is now referred to as theFederal Reserve System / aka 'central banking'):
The Jekyll Island Plan As summarized in the opening chapter of this book, the purpose of that meeting was to work out a plan to achieve five primary objectives:- Stop the growing influence of small, rival banks and to insure that control over the nation's financial resources would remain in the hands of those present;
- Make the money supply more elastic in order to reverse the trend of private capital formation and to recapture the industrial loan market;
- Pool the meager reserves of all the nation's banks into one large reserve so that at least a few of them could protect themselves from currency drains and bank runs;
- Shift the inevitable losses from the owners of the banks to the taxpayers;
- Convince Congress that the scheme was a measure to protect the public.
The premise of the book is to undo this plan for the following reasons:
In the foreword, it was stated that there were seven reasons to abolish the Federal Reserve System. It is time to repeat them:
- It is incapable of accomplishing its stated objectives.
- It is a cartel operating against the public interest.
- It is the supreme instrument of usury.
- It generates our most unfair tax.
- It encourages war.
- It destabilizes the economy.
- It is an instrument of totalitarianism.
What emerged was a cartel agreement with five objectives:
- stop the growing competition from the nation's newer banks;
- obtain a franchise to create money out of nothing for the purpose of lending;
- get control of the reserves of all banks so that the more reckless ones would not be exposed to currency drains and bank runs;
- get the taxpayer to pick up the cartel's inevitable losses; and
- convince Congress that the purpose was to protect the public.
But the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Federal Deposit Loan Corporation now guarantee that massive loans made to large corporations and to other governments will not be allowed to fall entirely upon the bank's owners should those loans go into default.
The end result of this policy is that the banks have little motive to be cautious and are protected against the effect of their own folly
Examples of bailouts:
- This came to pass with the creation of AMTRAK in 1971 and CONRAIL in 1973. AMTRAK took over the passenger services of Penn Central, and CONRAIL assumed operation of freight services. CONRAIL is a private corporation.
- The government now had a powerful motivation to make sure Lockheed would be awarded as many defense contracts as possible and that they would be as profitable as possible.
- The bank continued to flounder and, in 1983, what was left of it was resold to the former Detroit Bank & Trust Company, now called Comerica.
- A fitting epilogue to this story was written two hundred years later when, in 1980, the First Pennsylvania Bank of Philadelphia, the "oldest bank in the nation," was bailed out by the FDIC.
- (The bank and auto bailouts of 2008 are obvious, recent examples)
Central Bank
- Whether or not to have a central bank in the U.S. has been a huge, recurring political fight. (It has been implemented and defeated and implemented again at least 4 times).
- Hamilton fought diligently against the idea.
- The Federal Reserve System (central bank is unconstitutional: The Constitution prohibits both the states and the federal government from issuing fiat money. This was the deliberate intent of the Founding Fathers who had bitter experience with fiat money before and especially during the Revolutionary War.)
- Andrew Jackson risk his political career on fighting against it.
- The Federal Reserve System is a form of a central bank in place again today (*heavy sigh*)
- Our central bank model is patterned after the Bank of England: The charter was issued in 1694, and a strange creature took its initial breath of life. It was the world’s first central bank.
- The reality of central banks, therefore—and we must not forget that the Federal Reserve System is such a creature—is that, under the guise of purchasing government bonds, they act as hidden money machines which can be activated any time the politicians want.
- the central-bank mechanism was so attractive to the political and monetary scientists that it became the model for all of Europe.
Inflation
- Fiat money (money printed by government without any backing) is the cause of inflation, and the amount which people lose in purchasing power is exactly the amount which was taken from them and transferred to their government by this process.
- Inflation, therefore, is a hidden tax. This tax is the most unfair of all because it falls most heavily on those who are least able to pay: the small wage earner and those on fixed incomes. It also punishes the thrifty by eroding the value of their savings.
- LAW: A nation that resorts to the use of fiat money has doomed itself to economic hardship and political disunity.
- When money is created out of nothing, the true interest is not 8% or 9% or even 22%. It is infinity.
- By creating money through the banking system, however, the process became mystifying to the general public. The newly created bills and notes were indistinguishable from those previously backed by coin, and the public was none the wiser.
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Inflation is a hidden tax
- Inflation is a hidden tax that robs citizens of purchasing tax that politicians can pass by simply printing more money. The public is none the wiser because they don't see it come out as taxes. However, your loss of purchasing power (because additional money is flowing through the economy, goods cost more and your dollar doesn't stretch as far)
Paying off the national debt doesn't even help because the system is so broken:
- The national debt is the principal foundation upon which money is created for private debt. 120 To pay off or even greatly reduce the national debt would cripple our monetary system. No politician would dare to advocate that, even if surplus funds were available in the Treasury. The Federal Reserve System, therefore, has virtually locked our nation into perpetual debt.
The elite exploit the system while most of us are ignorant:
- the Rothschild investment house in London to an associate banking firm in New York. It contained an amazingly frank and boastful summary: The few who understand the system [bank loans earning interest and also serving as money] will either be so interested in its profits or so dependent upon its favors that there will be no opposition from that class while, on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending,... will bear its burdens without complaint.
Lincoln's concern for the future:
- The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic destroyed.
INTERESTING NUGGETS:
- Among primitive people, the most usual item to become commodity money was some form of food, either produce or livestock. Lingering testimony to this fact is our word pecuniary, which means pertaining to money. It is derived from the word pecunia, which is the Latin word for cow.
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- Origin of the dollar:
- Monetary historians generally first associate the dollar with one Count Schlick, who began striking such silver coins in 1519 in Joachim's Thal, Bavaria. Then called "Schlicktenthalers" or "Joachimsthalers," the coins became known simply as "thalers," which transliterated into "dollars." Interestingly, the American colonies did not adopt the dollar from England, but from Spain.
- On July 6, 1785, Congress unanimously voted to adopt the Spanish dollar as the official monetary unit of the United States.
- After ratification of the Constitution, a dollar would contain 371.25 grains of fine silver, and all items in commerce, including other coins, were to be measured in value against that standard.
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- Origin of 'green backs': In 1862, Congress authorized the Treasury to print $ 150 million worth of bills of credit and put them into circulation as money to pay for its expenses. They were declared as legal tender for all private debts but could not be used for government duties or taxes. The notes were printed with green ink and, thus, became immortalized as "greenbacks." Voters were assured that this was a one-time emergency measure, a promise that was soon broken. By the end of the war, a total of $ 432 million in greenbacks had been issued.
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- Russian Navy in U.S. Civil War??: The presence of the Russian Navy helped the Union enforce a devastating naval blockade against the Southern states which denied them access to critical supplies from Europe.
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- The following images are from the Fabian Society (a group of Socialists who are part of this plot:
Stained glass window of Fabian Society (socialists)
Logo of Fabian Society (a wolf in sheep's clothing)
