• Privately owned central bank causing mayhem since 1913
By Victor Thorn
On December 23, 1913 as distracted congressmen left D.C. for their upcoming Christmas recess, the Federal Reserve Act was passed with unprecedented secrecy and speed. To mark the 100th anniversary of this disastrous law, AMERICAN FREE PRESS brought together four brilliant thinkers to discuss how a private cartel of bankers has devastated the American dream.
The impact of this legislation extended far beyond economics, as AFP learned during a November 25 interview with G. Edward Griffin, author of a seminal book on the privately owned and controlled Federal Reserve entitled The Creature from Jekyll Island.
“The Income Tax and Federal Reserve acts of 1913 initiated a process whereby America changed from being a parochial, inward-looking and independent nation,” said Griffin. “Instead, Colonel Edward House [President Woodrow Wilson’s puppeteer] and other leaders turned our focus outward. America transformed into an internationalist country.”
The consequences were dramatic, as Griffin explained. “One major effect of the Federal Reserve Act was that the U.S. started financing wars and the economies of Europe,” he said. “By exploiting the notion of patriotism in times of war, politicians reached into the pockets of everyday American people so that we could ‘come to the aid of democracy.’”
Griffin lamented the obvious historical changes that transpired. “Everyone would have been much more resistant to U.S. involvement in WWI and II had it not been for the Fed,” he said. “But this internationalization of the American taxpayer became the new face of globalism.”
When asked for more details, Griffin explained: “My impression is that the Fed was a complete mirror of what had already been established in Europe by individuals such as the Warburgs. I believe those behind the Fed were consciously trying to create a mirror image of central banks such as those in Germany, the Netherlands or the Bank of England. The only difference was that the Fed created 13 regional branches around the country. Still, the end result was a partnership between the government, Wall Street and private banks.”
Regrettably, in 1913 few knew the impact of what had just occurred. Griffin stated, “The Federal Reserve Act created a banking cartel, not a government body.When you understand that it’s a cartel, everything they do starts to make sense. That’s why the participants operated under conditions of great secrecy, even using code names when traveling to Jekyll Island in a railroad car belonging to Nelson Aldrich [whose daughter married John D. Rockefeller’s son]. Jekyll Island itself played into the idea of mystery and intrigue due to its private ownership by J.P.Morgan and William Rockefeller.”
Griffin completed the tale: “Once these men returned to Washington, D.C., they slipped their ‘solutions’ into a congressional bill. While most elected officials thought they were passing legislation that would break the money trust’s grip, they had no idea that bankers themselves had drafted the law. The public demanded action to control the banking industry, so these internationalists decided to turn lemons into lemonade. They effectively said, ‘Why don’t we write this law to our own advantage?’ After all, the purpose of a cartel is to serve its cartel members.”
One of America’s Top Money Experts Blasts the Fed
As director of the American Monetary Institute (AMI) and author of the definitive book on money, titled The Lost Science of Money, Stephen Zarlenga is well qualified to speak about the Federal Reserve.
On November 22, Zarlenga told AFP, “If we follow the Fed’s current course, it clearly leads to feudalism where a few oligarchs with trillions of dollars and power will control a population of serfs. [Former Representative] Dennis Kucinich’s bill, H.R. 2990, presented to the 112th Congress contains necessary reforms.”
When asked for specifics, Zarlenga established this foundation: “Nationalizing the Federal Reserve System is step one. By placing it under the U.S. Treasury’s control, a monetary authority would be created to better ensure against the Fed’s inflationary and deflationary policies.”
But, such a move provides only a partial remedy, according to Zarlenga.
“Nationalizing the Fed is not enough,” he said. “We have to stop banks from having the power to control money, especially in regard to fractional banking. The private control of money equals the private control of society. That’s why whoever controls the money system will control a nation.”
So far, President Barack Obama has done nothing to alter the banking fraternity’s dominance. Zarlenga agreed, adding: “Obama’s appointment of Janet Yellen to lead the Fed doesn’t matter because the system itself is the problem. How many bankers have been thrown in jail over the past five years? Zero. We deserve better from Obama. Instead, he’s overtaxing and overspending. These are the main determinants of his presidency.”
A status quo, hands-off approach to the Fed will merely perpetuate past problems. Few know this fact better than Zarlenga, who quipped: “Over the past 100 years, there have been 48 different business cycles. It took the Fed less than 20 years after being formed to wreck America with the Great Depression. The system keeps collapsing itself, and that’s been done pretty regularly since 1913. These results show that the system must be fixed.”
To illustrate how the Founding Fathers’ vision of monetary policy has been betrayed, Zarlenga quoted the archbishop of Canterbury: “What should be the servant has become the master.”
The Dangers of ‘Quantitative Easing’
• AFP interviews former Treasury undersecretary about Obama’s economic recovery policies
One of the Obama administration’s primary methods of keeping the economy afloat is via monetizing the debt through a Federal Reserve ploy known as quantitative easing (QE). To better understand this practice, on November 26 AFP spoke with Paul Craig Roberts, the assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy under President Ronald Reagan.
At the onset of our conversation, Roberts defined QE as “low interest budget financing of our nation’s debt.” The bottom line is, said Roberts, “Obama’s policies are anti-recovery.”
Urged to provide more details, Roberts said: “QE hurts the economy through the destruction of interest income, which then reduces consumer spending. Retired people are especially hurt because their savings produce no revenue.”
Roberts next addressed the true reasons behind QE. “The Fed is a creature of big banks,” he said. “It isn’t mainly motivated to serve public policy. The whole purpose of QE is to support the balance sheets of half-a-dozen banks that we’re told are too big to fail.”
In a November 11 column for The Wall Street Journal, financier Andrew Huszar, who helped manage the Fed’s purchase of bonds, agreed with Roberts.
Huszar wrote, “I’ve come to recognize the program [QE] for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.”
In addition to serving banks and increasing our national debt, Roberts suggested other consequences.
“Under new Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen, it’s business as usual,” he said. “If she tried to stop QE and the Fed didn’t buy our bonds, who would? No one, so bond prices drop and there’d be a stock market collapse.”
But that’s only a taste of what would follow. Roberts added: “If QE is eased, interest rates rise, thus causing home sales to drop. On top of that, Americans keep getting poorer as prices rise and their incomes remain stagnant.”
At its worst, the perpetuation of these policies will have a catastrophic impact on our standard of living.
According to Roberts, “The Fed and QE are creating the death of our dollar to prevent an economic collapse right now as Obama insists on running up trillion dollar deficits. Meanwhile, the U.S. keeps losing power as BRIC countries [Brazil, Russia, India and China] move away from using the dollar as a reserve currency. We can’t keep creating an increased supply of new dollars when the world doesn’t demand them.”
Eustace Mullins, Man Who Exposed Fed, Honored
While a handful of statesmen like William Jennings Bryan and Charles Lindbergh Sr. understood the Fed’s treachery, Americans largely remained clueless until the publication of Eustace Mullins’s landmark 1952 book, The Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Mullins passed away in 2010, but his memory is kept alive by AFP and other independent publishers, authors, radio talk show hosts and filmmakers like Jon Larsen Shudlick, who conducted a series of interviews with Mullins in 1993.
AFP contacted Shudlick on November 19 to determine Mullins’s influence. Shudlick spoke in a reverent tone, “Eustace was the first person to expose the Fed as a tool of the Rothschild banking cabal. His mentor, poet Ezra Pound, provided the encouragement. Pound told Eustace, ‘Why don’t you apply for a job at the Library of Congress and get access to all the secret books never shown to the public?’ ”
Shudlick continued the story.
“Eustace exhibited such dedication that in the 1940s and 1950s he slept at the Library of Congress,” said Shudlick. “Once in a while there’s a person who can shed light on history. That’s what Eustace did. He was a trailblazer for the truth.”
When questioned about Mullins’s most important contributions, Shudlick replied: “He illustrated the Federal Reserve conspiracy where a cabal of elitists acted against the interests of the American people. Central banks constitute the world’s most vicious money system because they enslave governments and citizens alike with indebtedness.”
Shudlick added this thought: “Eustace coined the term ‘criminal syndicalism’ that referred to those who create wars, depressions and inflation. When compared to other gangsters, Eustace said the Mafia had more redeeming qualities than did banksters.”
When asked why, Shudlick argued: “All the unnatural pain and suffering this country has experienced over the past century can be attributed to the Fed. That’s why mainstream publications wrote hit pieces directed against Eustace. They didn’t want him telling everyone that Federal Reserve banks were privately owned.”
Elaborating more, Shudlick said: “Ron Paul learned about the Fed from reading Eustace Mullins. Plus, Eustace once wrote a speech for Senator Joe McCarthy that exposed the Fed’s sinister plot. Up until then, the media loved McCarthy. But after delivering this speech to bankers in Chicago, newsmen turned on McCarthy and slaughtered him.”
Such a reaction isn’t surprising, especially when Shudlick offered this perspective.
“Eustace used to say, ‘Money isn’t power. Power is being able to issue money,’ ” said Shudlick. “Eustace was a genius for the common man. Patriotism was everything to him. Not love of government, but love of country.”
Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and author of over 40 books.
