I recently had the opportunity to read “The Creature from Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin, a prodigious tome dealing with the circumstances surrounding the creation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. I was taken aback by some of its provocative assertions.
– America joined World War I largely to help a few bankers profit off the war (despite a long-standing Monroe doctrine that prohibited our involvement in European affairs).
– The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was supported by international financial interests in order to destabilize Russia and steal the wealth of the Russian people; and So-called “foreign aid” is merely a clever means of shifting the bad debt incurred by banks and wealthy financiers to American taxpayers.
– So-called “foreign aid” is merely a clever means of shifting the bad debt incurred by banks and wealthy financiers to American taxpayers.
The book is narrated in a notably conspiratorial tone and contains some obvious contradictions. For example, it contends that President Lincoln was once a liberator who sought to avoid being goaded into a destructive civil war by European powers jealous of America’s success, and had designs on colonizing Mexico. However, the book still raised some very good points that deserve serious consideration.One that stood out is that over successive generations, people with concentrated wealth have sought to use the American military and the purse power of the taxpayer for personal gain. In fact, Griffin argues, the creation of the current iteration of the Federal Reserve System was a political act designed to hide the fact that a private banking cartel would manage the U.S. currency.
The Federal Reserve, as Griffin explains, is neither “federal” nor a “reserve.”
It is not owned by the federal government, and it does not hold real assets in reserve. In reality, it is a giant debt factory backed by the “full faith and credit” of the government, or taxpayers.
One thing is clear. In the aftermath of the global recession of 2008, America and the world have been swimming in debt. America’s national debt alone has skyrocketed. While the Fed continues to justify flooding the market with cheap “reserve notes” based on the theory that it must supply these notes in order to support asset prices, the overall effect has been to debase the currency and prolong the pain of the American people.
As an entrepreneur who owns real assets — real estate, spectrum licenses and a publishing library, among others — I was able to benefit, at least on paper, from the Fed’s asset inflation strategy. I have been able to refinance my debt at attractive rates, and I’ve seen asset prices (but not necessarily values) climb. But others, especially workers (who derive the bulk of their income from salary instead of capital appreciation) and savers (retirees living on a fixed income), have lost under this post-recession scheme.
via The Hill
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