I would like to suggest what is to me an obvious insight: those with the ability to create money are able to make claims by means of that function on the wealth of the rest of us; they do nothing productive to make these claims, providing no product or service that is actually needed; this process closely mirrors Marx's tortured abstractions regarding invisible wealth being stolen, but does so in MEASURABLE, demonstrable processes of price inflation.
Our currency has decreased in value some 95% since the Federal Reserve was created. Logically, that value went somewhere. People miss this.
How many of you were aware Goldman Sachs controls some $1 TRILLION in assets, and routinely earns profits of $20 billion a year or more?
From the Ascent of Money, by Niall Ferguson (who regrettably otherwise acts as an apologist for the banking monopoly on money creation):
Today, banking assets (that is, loans) in the world's major economies are equivalent to around 150 percent of those countries combined GDP. According to the Bank for International Settlements, total international banking assets in December 2006 were equivalent to around $29 trillion, roughly 63% of the world's GDP.
Not only can it be easily shown that "inflation" is wealth transfer, we can show who got it: the banks.
Capitalism is about providing products and services people need at prices they can pay. Capitalists, themselves, serve the critical function not of funding new enterprises--that is done by banks--but of coming up with new products and services, and assembling the means of delivering them. That is what Steve Jobs did. It is what Thomas Edison did.
The large banks that control America donate equally to both parties in every election. Until ordinary people wake up--and this site devotes a lot of rhetorical attention to "democracy"--unelected elites will continue to amass wealth. Obama has not done, and will not do anything to stop it.
No true populist would resist auditing the Fed. But we have not elected a populist in some time. We elect people in thrall to elites. Romney will be no better.
Education is the only hope.