As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information

Here's a long debated topic. Should we leave the creation of new money in the hands of bankers or place its creation solely with our government?

Let's try and answer it.

The Creature from Jekyll Island

On the night of November 22, 1910 a delegation of the nation's leading financiers, led by Senator Nelson Aldrich, left New Jersey for a very secret ten day meeting on Jekyll Island, Georgia.

Aldrich had previously led the members of the National Monetary Commission on a two year banking tour of Europe. He had yet to write a report regarding the trip, nor had he yet offered any plans for banking reforms.

"Despite my views about the value to society of greater publicity for the affairs of corporations, there was an occasion near the close of 1910, when I was as secretive, indeed, as furtive, as any conspirator. . . . Since it would have been fatal to Senator Aldrich's plan to have it known that he was calling on anybody from Wall Street to help him in preparing his bill, precautions were taken that would have delighted the heart of James Stillman." Frank Vanderlip, in the Saturday Evening Post, February 9, 1935

Accompanying Senator Aldrich to Jekyll Island were:

• Frank Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of New York, associated with the Rockefellers
• Henry P. Davison, senior partner of J.P. Morgan Company, regarded as Morgan's personal emissary
• Charles D. Norton, president of the Morgan dominated First National Bank of New York
• Col. Edward House, who would later become President Woodrow Wilson's closest adviser and founder of the Council on Foreign Relations
• Benjamin Strong, a lieutenant of J.P. Morgan
• Paul Warburg, a recent immigrant from Germany who had joined the banking house of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, New York directed the proceedings and wrote the primary features of what would be called the Aldrich Plan.

After the Jekyll Island visit the National Monetary Commission "wrote" the Aldrich Plan which formed the basis for the Federal Reserve system.

"In 1912 the National Monetary Association, under the chairmanship of the late Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, made a report and presented a vicious bill called the National Reserve Association bill. This bill is usually spoken of as the Aldrich bill. Senator Aldrich did not write the Aldrich bill. He was the tool, if not the accomplice, of the European bankers who for nearly twenty years had been scheming to set up a central bank in this Country and who in 1912 has spent and were continuing to spend vast sums of money to accomplish their purpose." Congressman Louis T. McFadden on the Federal Reserve Corporation: Remarks in Congress, 1934

After several failed attempts to push the Federal Reserve Act through Congress, a group of bankers funded and staffed Woodrow Wilson's campaign for President. He had committed to sign a slightly different version of the Federal Reserve Act than Aldrich's Plan.

In 1913, Senator Aldrich pushed the Federal Reserve Act through Congress just before Christmas when much of Congress was on vacation. When elected president Woodrow Wilson passed the FED.

"Our secret expedition to Jekyll Island was the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System. The essential points of the Aldrich Plan were all contained in the Federal Reserve Act as it was passed." Frank Vanderlip, autobiography, From Farmboy to Financier

"I have unwittingly ruined my country." Woodrow Wilson later said referring to the FED

The Fed

The US Federal Reserve Bank (FED) is a privately owned company (Wikipedia describes the Fed as a complex business-government partnership that rules the financial world) that controls, and profits immensely by printing money through the US Treasury and regulating its value.

"Some [most] people think the Federal Reserve Banks are U.S. government institutions. They are not ... they are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the U.S. for the benefit of themselves and their foreign and domestic swindlers, and rich and predatory money lenders. The sack of the United States by the Fed is the greatest crime in history. Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers, but the truth is the Fed has usurped the government. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will." Congressional Record 12595-12603 — Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency (12 years) June 10, 1932

"... we conclude that the [Federal] Reserve Banks are not federal ... but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations ... without day-to-day direction from the federal government." 9th Circuit Court in Lewis vs. United States, 680 F. 2d 1239 June 24, 1982

The FED began with approximately 300 people, or banks, that became owners (stockholders purchased stock at $100 per share) of the Federal Reserve Banking System. The Fed is privately owned - 100% of its shareholders are private banks, the stock is not publicly traded and none of its stock is owned by the US government.

The US government pushed through the Sixteenth Amendment (which exempted income taxes from constitutional requirements regarding direct taxes) restarted an income tax on Americans to pay the interest to the FED and reorganized the IRS to collect the monies – the interest - "owed" to the FED from its citizens.

Sir Josiah Stamp, president of the Rothschild Bank of England and the second richest man in Britain in the 1920s, said the following in 1927 at the University of Texas:

"The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin. Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again. Take this great power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. But if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit."

The FED banking system collects billions of dollars in interest annually and distributes the profits to its shareholders - the interest on bonds acquired with its newly-issued Federal Reserve Notes pays the Fed's operating expenses plus a guaranteed 6% return to its banker shareholders.

The US Congress gave the FED the right to print money at no interest. The FED creates money from nothing, loans it out through banks and charges interest. The FED also buys government debt with money from nothing, and charges U.S. taxpayers interest.

The Grip of Death

"We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it." Congressman Louis T. McFadden in 1932

"The financial system used by all national economies worldwide is actually founded upon debt. To be direct and precise, modern money is created in parallel with debt...The creation and supply of money is now left almost entirely to banks and other lending institutions. Most people imagine that if they borrow from a bank, they are borrowing other people's money. In fact, when banks and building societies make any loan, they create new money. Money loaned by a bank is not a loan of pre-existent money; money loaned by a bank is additional money created. The stream of money generated by people, businesses and governments constantly borrowing from banks and other lending institutions is relied upon to supply the economy as a whole. Thus the supply of money depends upon people going into debt, and the level of debt within an economy is no more than a measure of the amount of money that has been created." ~ Michael Rowbotham, 'The Grip of Death'

The FED is the only for profit corporation in America that is exempt from both federal and state taxes.

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

The IRS was restarted within months of the FED's inception. The roots of the IRS go back to the Civil War when President Lincoln and Congress, in 1862, created the position of commissioner of Internal Revenue (The position of Commissioner exists today as the head of the Internal Revenue Service) and enacted an income tax (the initial rate was 3% on income over $800, which exempted most wage-earners) to help pay war expenses. In 1872, seven years after the war, lawmakers allowed the temporary Civil War income tax to expire.

Congress enacted a flat rate Federal income tax in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional the following year because it was a direct tax not apportioned according to the population of each state.

Senator Aldrich was instrumental in the re-structuring of the American financial system through a federal income tax amendment, the 16th - he had originally opposed an income tax as communistic a decade before. The 16th Amendment gave Congress the authority to tax the income of individuals without regard to the population of each State:

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

In 1906 David Graham Phillips wrote a series of articles published in Cosmopolitan claiming that politicians were receiving huge payments from large corporations to argue their case in the Senate. Phillips claimed that the main figures in this scandal was Aldrich and Arthur P. Gorman of Maryland.

David Graham Phillips was murdered on 23rd January, 1911. Two months later Aldrich resigned from Congress.

The Federal Reserve was conceived and given birth by an unholy alliance of American and British bankers. The FED buys U.S. debt with money printed from nothing, then charges U.S. taxpayers interest. The US government pushed through the federal income tax amendment, restarted an income tax on Americans to pay the interest to the FED and reorganized the IRS to collect the monies – the interest - "owed" to the FED from its citizens.

Since the Fed's creation in 1913 the dollar has lost more than 96% of its value.

Undoubtedly the greatest achievement of the FED has been to transform America from being the world's foremost creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation.

Aldrich's motto, when questioned about his activities and the reasoning behind them, was to "Admit nothing. Explain nothing."

Fog the mirror

"Many economists see the power to manipulate policy in reaction to the ups and downs of the economy as the natural evolution of fiscal policy. The purpose of this power is to ward off or lessen financial disasters through keeping rates artificially low or introducing more money into the system, or doing the opposite to rein in inflation during periods of growth." The Atlantic

Alan Greenspan was chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to early 2006. Greenspan used monetary policy to ignite one of the longest economic booms in history. Of course booms can soon turn to bust and nowhere was the boom more evident than in the housing industry - the sub-prime crisis collapsed the housing boom just after Greenspan left the Fed.

The Great Recession started in December of 2007 and took a sharp downward turn in September 2008. It was started by the U.S. sub-prime crisis which burst the housing bubble. Businesses failed, consumers lost wealth estimated in the trillions of dollars and economic activity and international trade slowed:

• Between 1997 and 2005 mortgage fraud increased by 1,411 percent.

• In 2001 the US Federal Reserve lowered the Federal funds rate eleven times, from 6.5 percent to 1.75 percent.

• Mortgage denial rates were 28 percent in 1997, in 2002 – 2003 they were 14 percent for conventional home purchase loans. "Fog the mirror loans" were common, if you breathed you got a loan.

• In June 2002 President George W. Bush set out to increase minority home ownership by 5.5 million. Bush's lofty goals would be accomplished by tax credits, subsidies and Fannie Mae committing $440 billion to establish Neighbor Works America.

• In June2003 Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan lowered the federal reserve's key interest rate to one percent - the lowest rate in 45 years.

• Throughout 2003 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought $81 billion in subprime securities. President Bush signed the American Dream Down payment Act – the Act provided a maximum down payment assistance grant of either $10,000 or six percent of the purchase price of the home, whichever was greater.

• U.S. homeownership rate peaked to an all time high of 69.2 percent in 2004.

• From 2004 to 2006 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchased $434 billion in securities backed by subprime loans.

• In late 2004 the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) suspended net capital rule for five firms - Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley. Free from government imposed limits on the amount of debt they could assume, they all levered up, as much as 40 to 1.

• TheUnited States housing market bubble burst in the fall of 2005. By year-end a total of 846,982 properties were in some stage of foreclosure. From the fourth quarter of 2005 to the first quarter of 2006, median prices nationwide dropped off 3.3 percent.

• The U.S. Home Construction Index was down over 40 percent as of August 2006. A total of 1,259,118 foreclosures were filed in 2006, up 42 percent from 2005. Homeowners were going underwater (they owed more than the house was worth) and many had had questionable credit to start with.

• In 2007, lenders started foreclosure proceedings on nearly 1.3 million properties, a 79 percent increase over 2006.

• Foreclosure proceedings increased to 2.3 million in 2008, an 81 percent increase over 2007 and increased by another half million in 2009 to 2.8 million. By January 2008, the mortgage delinquency rate had risen to 21 percent and by May 2008 it was 25 percent.

• By August 2008, 9.2 percent of all U.S. mortgages outstanding were either delinquent or in foreclosure. By September 2009, this had risen to 14.4 percent.

After Fed chairman Greenspan left office, the Federal Reserve, under the stewardship of new chairman Ben Bernanke, started easing monetary policy aggressively. By December of 2008, the federal funds rate was between 0 and 1/4 percent. The Fed had used up its traditional stimulus, all the 'Creature from Jekyll Island' had left was the ability to print money so they started throwing cash at everything.

Additional stimulus was injected into the economy by:

• The System Open Market Account (SOMA) purchased mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae (agency MBS).

• The Term Auction Facility was $40 billion in loans to rescue the banks. It wasn't near enough, the Treasury department got authorization to spend $150 billion more to subsidize and eventually take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they also bailed out AIG.

• Dollar Swap Lines exchanged dollars with foreign central banks for foreign currency to help address disruptions in dollar funding markets abroad.

• The Term Securities Lending Facility auctioned loans of U.S. Treasury securities to primary dealers against eligible collateral.

• The Primary Dealer Credit Facility provided overnight cash loans to primary dealers against eligible collateral.

• The Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility provided loans to depository institutions and their affiliates to finance purchases of eligible asset-backed commercial paper from money market mutual funds.

• TheCommercial Paper Funding Facility provided loans to a special purpose vehicle to finance purchases of new issues of asset-backed commercial paper and unsecured commercial paper from eligible issuers.

• The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility supported the issuance of asset-backed securities (ABS) collateralized by loans related to autos, credit cards, education, and small businesses. In March 2009, the Fed announced that it was expanding the scope of the TALF program to allow loans against additional types of collateral.

• The Troubled Asset Recovery Program was proposed and $350 billion was approved by Congress – the money was used to buy bank and automotive stocks.

Late in 2008 there was a run on ultra safe money market accounts – according to AMG Data Services a record $140 billion was pulled out in one day. 

In response to the continuing crisis and a stalling economy the US Federal Reserve initiated Quantitative Easing and Operation Twist.

Quantitative Easing (QE) 1, 2, & 3

In September of 2008 the $1.7 trillion QE1 was started. The Fed purchased mostly mortgage backed securities and established a commercial paper lending facility.

In October of 2010 QE2 started. At $600 billion, QE2 was much smaller then QE1 and its buying was mostly confined to purchasing long term government bonds.

QE1 & QE2 failed to restart the economy and housing market.

Operation Twist

Operation Twist is the Fed's initiative of buying longer-term Treasuries while simultaneously selling shorter-dated issues in order to bring down long-term interest rates.

By purchasing longer-term bonds, the Fed drives up prices which forces yields down - price and yield move in opposite directions. Selling shorter-term bonds causes their yields to go up because their prices fall. These two actions "twist" the shape of the yield curve, hence the name Operation Twist.

QE3

On September 13, 2012, the Fed announced that it would buy $40 billion a month of mortgage-backed securities until the unemployment rate fell below 6.5 percent, or the expected inflation rate rose above 2.5 percent. In December the Fed added buying $45 billion/month of longer-term Treasury securities per month – QE3 is more than one trillion dollars a year.

In 1Q2013, which comprised the first three months of QE3, the Fed increased the size of its balance sheet by $285 billion, or 9.8 percent.

During the first 3 months of QE3, the Fed increased the monetary base by 10.83 percent.

Incestuous relationships

In July of 2011, I was one of the first to bring to your attention to the incredible fact that the US Federal Reserve had secretly given away $16 TRILLION dollars;

"The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the US Federal Reserve was recently carried out due to the Ron Paul/Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill passed in 2010. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, while leading the charge for an audit in the Senate, watered down the original language of house bill (HR1207) so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and others, opposed the audit.

What the audit revealed was incredible: between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world's banks, corporations, and governments by giving them US$16,000,000,000,000.00 – that's 16 TRILLION dollars." ~ Richard Mills, aheadoftheherd.com

It gets worse, much worse, in fact it's downright incestuous. Let's do a follow up and see who, besides foreign banks and corporations from Scotland to South Korea, received a large chunk of that money.

But first know this - banks like JP Morgan are some of the largest creditors of the bailed out countries. Instead of having to write off their foreign losses the US Federal Reserve bailouts enabled them to be paid in full.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigates potential conflicts of interest. The GAO did investigate the $16 trillion giveaway and laid out the findings but did not name names. Later those names were released - here's three of the more shocking cases...

1. "In Dimon's (JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon) case, JPMorgan received some $391 billion of the $4 trillion in emergency Fed funds at the same time his bank was used by the Fed as a clearinghouse for emergency lending programs. In March of 2008, the Fed provided JPMorgan with $29 billion in financing to acquire Bear Stearns. Dimon also got the Fed to provide JPMorgan Chase with an 18-month exemption from risk-based leverage and capital requirements. And he convinced the Fed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired the troubled investment bank.

2. Another high-profile conflict involved Stephen Friedman, the former chairman of the New York Fed's board of directors. Late in 2008, the New York Fed approved an application from Goldman Sachs to become a bank holding company giving it access to cheap loans from the Federal Reserve. During that period, Friedman sat on the Goldman Sachs board. He also owned Goldman stock, something that was prohibited by Federal Reserve conflict of interest regulations. Although it was not publicly disclosed at the time, Friedman received a waiver from the Fed's conflict of interest rules in late 2008. Unbeknownst to the Fed, Friedman continued to purchase shares in Goldman from November 2008 through January of 2009, according to the GAO.

3. In another case, General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt was a New York Fed board member at the same time GE helped create a Commercial Paper Funding Facility during the financial crisis. The Fed later provided $16 billion in financing to GE under this emergency lending program." ~ Fed Board Member Conflicts Detailed by GAO, http://www.sanders.senate.gov/

The hands that feed

Below are some of the 18 Fed board members who gave their own banks four trillion dollars:

• Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, has served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 2007. During the financial crisis, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $391 billion in total financial assistance. JP Morgan Chase was also used by the Fed as a clearinghouse for the Fed's emergency lending programs.

In March of 2008, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $29 billion in financing to acquire Bear Stearns. During the financial crisis, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with an 18-month exemption from risk-based leverage and capital requirements. The Fed also agreed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired this troubled investment bank.

"I just think this constant refrain, 'bankers, bankers, bankers' — it's just a really unproductive and unfair way of treating people. People should just stop doing that." ~ Jamie Dimon

• Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, served on the New York Fed's Board of Directors from 2006-2011. General Electric received $16 billion in low-interest financing from the Federal Reserve's Commercial Paper Funding Facility during this time period.

• Stephen Friedman. In 2008, the New York Fed approved an application from Goldman Sachs to become a bank holding company giving it access to cheap Fed loans. During the same period, Friedman, who was chairman of the New York Fed at the time, sat on the Goldman Sachs board of directors and owned Goldman stock, something the Fed's rules prohibited. He received a waiver in late 2008 that was not made public (the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans). After Friedman received the waiver, he continued to purchase stock in Goldman from November 2008 through January of 2009 unbeknownst to the Fed, according to the GAO.

During the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs received $814 billion in total financial assistance from the Fed.

• Sanford Weill, the former CEO of Citigroup, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in New York in 2006. During the financial crisis, Citigroup received over $2.5 trillion in total financial assistance from the Fed.

• Richard Fuld, Jr, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in New York from 2006 to 2008. During the financial crisis, the Fed provided $183 billion in total financial assistance to Lehman before it collapsed.

• James M. Wells, the Chairman and CEO of SunTrust Banks, has served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta since 2008. During the financial crisis, SunTrust received $7.5 billion in total financial assistance from the Fed.

• Richard Carrion, the head of Popular Inc. in Puerto Rico, has served on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 2008. Popular received $1.2 billion in total financing from the Fed's Term Auction Facility during the financial crisis.

• James Smith, the Chairman and CEO of Webster Bank, served on the Federal Reserve's Board of Directors in Boston from 2008-2010. Webster Bank received $550 million in total financing from the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility during the financial crisis.

• Ted Cecala, the former Chairman and CEO of Wilmington Trust, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in Philadelphia from 2008-2010. Wilmington Trust received $3.2 billion in total financial assistance from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.

"The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG." ~ Mises.ca

Parasitic banksters and their political puppets

The financial sector parasites, the banksters and their political puppets, that have historically fed on our society had never been so brazen. The looting of the public treasury is very much in the open - if anyone cares to look - and done with impunity.

This is all happening because our elected politicians do not work for the people, our elected leaders have stuck their snouts deep in the trough of power and self indulgence, representative democracy has been co-opted by big-moneyed interests and political parties represent their establishment not the people's interests.

"The lending suites that were set up for months and years, beyond the initial crisis point, were focused on how to keep banks profitable, not just how to keep them alive. The banks were able to access emergency lending facilities, or change themselves into bank holding companies overnight, to borrow at next to nothing, and if they chose, lend back to the government at a tidy profit. You didn't have to think at all to make money. And you didn't have to worry about that toxic balance sheet, because the government was going to help you grow your way out of it. They will also facilitate mergers to help decimate your competition. The money that the banks borrowed for nothing could have just as easily gone to underwater homeowners. There's nothing special about the banks except that they know the Fed policymakers personally." ~ David Dayen, firedoglake.com

Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild, founder of the International Banking House of Rothschild said:

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws."

The Rothschild brothers, already laying the foundation for the Federal Reserve Act, wrote the following to New York associates in 1863:

"The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests."

Conclusion

Should we leave the creation of new money in the hands of bankers or place its creation solely with our government?

The answer is solely with the government but with a caveat.

Here's bubble blower ex Fed chair Alan Greenspan..."If we went back on the gold standard and we adhered to the actual structure of the gold standard as it existed prior to 1913, we'd be fine. Remember that the period 1870 to 1913 was one of the most aggressive periods economically that we've had in the United States, and that was a golden period of the gold standard. I'm known as a gold bug and everyone laughs at me, but why do central banks own gold now?"

The following link takes you to an excellent article by Nathan Lewis describing the gold standard system in use during the period Greenspan talks about. A very interesting and eye opening read.

This second link takes you to an article written by Murray N. Rothbard, another excellent read on the history of the gold standard and why we are suffering our current monetary chaos.

"The borrower is servant to the lender." ~ The Bible

"When you get in debt you become a slave." ~ Andrew Jackson

The Gold Standard is amenable to today, and it's certainly preferable to the actions, and consequences, of those who have enslaved us in unknown voluntary servitude.

Imposition of a gold standard should be on all our radar screens. Is it on yours?

If not, maybe it should be.