Ellen Brown's startling, and indeed revolutionary book "Web of Debt" has, as its focus, the history and nature of the United States Federal Reserve banking system. The thrust, in short, is this: the Federal Reserve isn't really federal, it doesn't reserve anything, and it isn't a bank in the sense that most Americans would presume. It is, rather, comprised of a few, enormous, privately owned banks, creates money out of nothing and charges the US government interest for loaning it that money, and therefore neither has nor needs deposits as real banks typically do. Corrupt and cronyistic by its very nature, it provides guaranteed profits to a handful of bankers in exchange for — nothing whatsoever. (The bankers themselves would say that they "protect" nations from their "worst tendencies" to politicize the process of money creation — a wholly specious claim, since the bankers are themselves political to the marrow bone, and far from "protecting" anything are engaged in massive, systematic exploitation. Since Brown's book was published, it has emerged, from the first-ever audit of the "Fed," that it has, in secrecy, "loaned" trillions of dollars to foreign banks. Unsurprising, because, as Brown makes clear, the "Fed" is ultimately largely controlled by foreign banking interests.)
Brown goes on from this discussion of the history and nature of the "Fed" to explore the insidious role that privately-owned central banks play in politics, both domestically and globally. And that role is, indeed massively insidious. It woud be no exaggeration to say that privately owned central banks comprise nothing less than the backbone of an international system of de facto fascist governance. This system was responsible for the financial crisis, or rather national fiscal rape, of 2008, as well as much, much else, and it is a system that continues to play a central role in such matters as rates of US unemployment. Brown goes on to suggest a host of attractive reforms that will be essential to restoring democracy to America. All of this makes her book essential reading.
J. P. Morgan was the power behind Senator Nelson Aldrich who, in 1912, introduced a bill renamed from "The Aldrich" bill to the "Federal Reserve Act":
. . .the Morgan faction . . . brought it three days before Christmas, when Congress was preoccupied with departure for the holidays. The bill was so obscurely worded that no one really understood its provisions. . . . While the national money supply would be printed by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, it would be issued as an obligation or debt of the government, a debt owed back to the private Federal Reserve with interest. And while Congress and the President would have some input in appointing the Federal Reserve Board, the Board would work behind closed doors with the regional bankers, without Congressional oversight or control.
In plain English, the Federal Reserve Act authorized a private central bank to create money out of nothing, lend it to the government at interest, and control the national money supply, expanding or contracting it at will. Representative Lindberg called the Act "The worst legislative crime of the ages." He warned "[The Federal Reserve Board] can cause the pendulum of a rising and falling market to swing gently back and forth by slight changes in the discount rate, or cause violent fluctuations by greater rate variation, and in either case it will possess inside information as to financial conditions and advance knowledge of the coming change, either up or down. This is the strangest, most dangerous advantage ever placed in the hands of a special privileged class by any Goverment that ever existed. . . . The financial system has been turned over to . . . a purely profiteering group. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money."
Who owns the Federal Reserve? The Reserve itself disingenuously claims that "nobody owns it." The truth, however, is that it is owned primarily by just two monster banks:
In 1997, the New York Federal Reserve reported that its three largest member banks were Chase Manhattan Bank, Citibank, and Morgan Guaranty Trust Company. In 2000, JP Morgan & Co. (linked to the House of Morgan) and Chase Manhattan (Rockefeller's bank) merged to become JP Morgan Chase Co., a bank holding company with combined assets of $668 billion.
On the "de-politicizing" of the money supply in the early-20th century (things have now only gotten worse):
. . .[At] the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coteries of powerful international bankers virtualy run the United States government for their own selfish purposes.
They practically control both parties, write politcal platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business . . . .
These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.
Who, today, coordinates the activities of the privately-owned central banks? Apart from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS):
Before World War II, the reins of international finance were held by the powerful European banking dynasty the House of Rothschild; but during the war, control crossed the Atlantic to their Wall Street affiliates. The role of master spider, says Schicht, fell to David Rockefeller Sr., grandson on his father's side of John D. Rockefeller Sr. and on his mother's side of Nelson Aldrich, the Senator for whom the precursor to the Federal Reserve Act was named. David Rockefeller was a director of the Council on Foreign relations from 1949 to 1985 and its chairman from 1970 until 1985; he founded the Trilateral Commission in 1976; and he was instrumental in convoking the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, at which the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were devised, and in founding the elite international club called the "Bilderbergers." The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an international group set up in 1919 to advise the members' respective governments on international affairs. It has been called the preeminent intermediary between the world of high finance, big oil, corporate elitism, and the U.S. government. The policies it promulgates in its quarterly journal become U.S. Government policy.
The Trilateral Commission has been described as an elite group of international bankers, media leaders, scholars, and government officials bent on shaping and adminstering a "new world order," with a central world government held together by economic interdependence. Former presidential candidate Barry Goldwater said of it: "The Trilateralist Commission is international [and] is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateralist Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power — political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical.
The Editors
Progressive Living
|
