AND I WANT MY MONEY BACK! This country, our economy, and our currency are going to hell in a hand basket and it is being helped along by the greedy bankers and the "I don't know much about economics, but I am reading the Greenspan book" Congress.
If you have been paying attention you are probably not surprised to find out that there are idiots in charge of our money, the financial system, banking, insurance and Treasury.
THATS RIGHT! I'M CALLING THE WHOLE LOT OF YOU OUT! YOU ARROGANT, POMPOUS, MONEY GRUBBING THIEVES.
To be honest, I used to think that these criminals ... well, that they just "got it". That they, of the priveledged, educated class knew what they were doing because they were ...the big brained people. For the rest of us, economics was just too complicated to follow.
John Adams once lamented
"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation."
Follow my broke ass over the fold..
The only difference between people that steal is HOW MUCH they steal. Small petty thieves wind up in prison. Those that empty the public coffers for their own fulfillment wind up in places of power. THEY ARE STILL THIEVES NONE THE LESS, and it doesn't take a "big brain" to be a thief.
You've all heard about the Bear Sterns bailout a few weeks back, and the "new idea" for the FED to oversee... well practically everything money? I started to research this to find out just what the heck was going on and how it affected me and my fellow Kossaks. In order to fully understand how we have arrived at this time and place under an enormous mountain of debt you need to understand a few things. First and foremost Congress' role as pertains to money.
Article 1, Sec. 8 of the United States Constitution states (edited):
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
Next the Coinage Act of 1792, Congress established the US Mint and directed its functions, officers, units of weight and measure.
Dollars or Units—each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenths parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver.
Thus far we have established Congress role in regulating our money. The forefathers of this country understood the importance of sound money which is why it was spelled out in the Constitution.
Now we come to a time that the US Congress abdicated on its duties (once again). On December 23, 1913 to a virtual empty hall Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act. Primarily derived from Republican Senator Nelson Aldrich and his associations with various banking cartels and captains of industry. Including the marriage of his daughter to John D. Rockefeller.
In 1908, the year after a national money panic purportedly created by J. P. Morgan, Congress established, in 1908, a National Monetary Authority. In 1910 another, more secretive, group was formed consisting of the chiefs of major corporations and banks in this country.
They were -- Nelson W. Aldrich (Republican whip in the Senate and father-in-law to John D. Rockefeller, Jr.) -- A. Piat Andrew (Asst Secretary of the Treasury) -- Henry P. Davison, Sr. (partner in JP Morgan Company) -- Charles D. Norton (President, 1st National Bank of New York) -- Benjamin Strong (head of JP Morgan's Bankers Trust, later chairman of the Federal Reserve) -- Frank A. Vanderlip (President, National City Bank of New York, representing William Rockefeller) -- Paul M. Warburg (partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Company, representing the Rothschilds and Warburgs in Europe).
What was this newly formed Federal Reserve and most important what was its primary duty? From the FED's own website here are its primary functions. Interesting to note that it is not called a Central Bank, which was not wanted in the days.
The Federal Reserve System is the central bank of the United States. It was founded by Congress in 1913 to provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system. Over the years, its role in banking and the economy has expanded.
Today, the Federal Reserve’s duties fall into four general areas:
* conducting the nation’s monetary policy by influencing the monetary and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates
* supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation’s banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers
* maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets
* providing financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions, including playing a major role in operating the nation’s payments system
Lets focus broadly on those first three.
Since the creation of the FED the USD has lost 95% of its purchasing power. We have experienced a Great Depression, stagflation, and under a Volker FED prime interest rates over 20% in 1980-81. The FED has used US taxpayer dollars to bail out private investors and private banks in the way of S&L scandal, LTCM, and most recently Bear Sterns to name just a few. Has the FED succeeded in a stable monetary and financial system?
But what is the FED really? In 1982 Lewis vs The United States determined;
Federal reserve banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of a Federal Tort Claims Act, but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations in light of fact that direct supervision and control of each bank is exercised by board of directors, federal reserve banks, though heavily regulated, are locally controlled by their member banks, banks are listed neither as "wholly owned" government corporations nor as "mixed ownership" corporations; federal reserve banks receive no appropriated funds from Congress and the banks are empowered to sue and be sued in their own names.
You see there is nothing FEDeral about the FED. It is a private bank in charge of the peoples money. Congress and Woodrow Wilson illegally gave up the power of the purse to the banking cartel right under our noses. Under FDR the FED began issuing fiat currency in place of our legal money and established a federal income tax.
They had no right. The Constitution designed our monetary system to make sure the power of coin was placed under the citizens control via the Congress.
Glass-Steagall Act I - II
Following the stock market crash of 1929 the US Govt. passes the Glass Steagall Act in 1933. This was actually broken into two different acts the first in 1932 did something recently familiar.
* The Federal Reserve rules regarding the acceptability of commercial paper for rediscount purposes were liberalized.
Accepting bad paper as collateral. (Want to buy some swamp land in Florida? How about some subprime securities?)
The second GS act was most known for the separation of the banking powers into two distinct groups Investment Banks and Commercial Banks. This was done in order to regulate banking commerce. The greedy banks had created the stock market crash by their use of deposits to speculate in risky adventures.
The Bank Holding Company Act 1956
The Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 was implemented in response to banks forming bank holding companies in order to own both banking and non-banking businesses. This Act, among other things, generally prohibited a bank holding company from engaging in most non-banking activities or acquiring voting securities of certain companies that are not banks
.
In essence cutting off the banks from engaging in insurance underwriting of investment activities. With these regulations in place the US separated the banking, securities and insurance activities. Thus by the late 50's America had one of the most heavily regulated financial industries in the world. It also had the strongest and least corrupt financial industry in the world. It was a system that other nations copied and envied.
We were the envy of the world having survived our first major financial crises to our economy. So how did we get into the mess we are at now?
In doing research I had no idea as to the mass of information I would have to comb through. In order to make it digestible I decided to make this a two part diary. To be continued, starting in the modern age of banking as the crimes continue.