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Author Topic:   THE FEDERAL RESERVE FRAUD
Rainbow~
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posted April 22, 2006 02:07 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
THE FEDERAL RESERVE FRAUD

The first misconception that most people have is that the Federal Reserve Bank is a branch of the US government.

IT IS NOT.

THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK IS A PRIVATE COMPANY.

Most people believe it is as American as the Constitution.

THE FACT IS THE CONSTITUTION FORBIDS IT'S EXISTENCE.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress shall have the power to create money and regulate the value thereof, NOT A BUNCH OF INTERNATIONAL BANKERS!

Today the FED controls and profits by printing WORTHLESS PAPER, called money, through the Treasury, regulating its value, AND THE BIGGEST OUTRAGE OF ALL, COLLECTING INTEREST ON IT! (THE SO-CALLED NATIONAL DEBT).

The FED began with approximately 300 people or banks that became owners, stockholders purchasing stock at $100 per share - the stock is not publicly traded) in the Federal Reserve Banking System. They make up an international banking cartel of wealth beyond comparison.

The FED banking system collects billions of dollars in interest annually and distributes the profits to its shareholders.

The Congress illegally gave the FED the right to print money through the Treasury at no interest to the FED.

The FED creates money from nothing......
.....and loans it back to us through banks, and charges interest on our currency.

The FED also buys Government debt with money printed on a printing press and charges U.S. taxpayers interest. Many Congressmen and Presidents say this is fraud.

Who actually owns the Federal Reserve Central Banks?

The ownership of the 12 Central banks, a very well kept secret, has been revealed:

1. Rothschild Bank of London

2. Warburg Bank of Hamburg

3. Rothschild Bank of Berlin

4. Lehman Brothers of New York

5. Lazard Brothers of Paris

6. Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York

7. Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy

8. Goldman, Sachs of New York

9. Warburg Bank of Amsterdam

10. Chase Manhattan Bank of New York.

These bankers are connected to London Banking Houses which ultimately control the FED.

When England lost the Revolutionary War with America where our forefathers were fighting their own government, they planned to control us by controlling our banking system, the printing of our money, and our debt.

The individuals listed below owned banks which in turn owned shares in the FED. The banks listed below have significant control over the New York FED District, which controls the other 11 FED Districts. These banks also are partly foreign owned and control the New York FED District Bank: First National Bank of New York, James Stillman National City Bank, New York, Mary W. Harnman, National Bank of Commerce, New York, A.D. Jiullard Hanover, National Bank, New York, Jacob Schiff, Chase National Bank, New York, Thomas F. Ryan, Paul Warburg, William Rockefeller, Levi P. Morton, M.T. Pyne, George F. Baker, Percy Pyne, Mrs. G.F. St. George, J.W. Sterling, Katherine St. George, H.P. Davidson, J.P. Morgan (Equitable Life/Mutual Life), Edith Brevour, T. Baker.

How did it happen?

After previous attempts to push the Federal Reserve Act through Congress, a group of bankers funded and staffed Woodrow Wilson's campaign for President. He had committed to sign this act.

In 1913, a Senator, Nelson Aldrich, maternal grandfather to the Rockefellers, pushed the Federal Reserve Act through Congress just before Christmas when much of Congress was on vacation. When elected, Wilson passed the FED. Later, Wilson remorsefully replied, referring to the FED, "I have unwittingly ruined my country".

Now the banks financially back sympathetic candidates. Not surprisingly, most of these candidates are elected.

The bankers employ members of the Congress on weekends (nickname T&T club -out Thursday...in Tuesday with lucrative salaries.)

Additionally, the FED started buying up the media in the 1930's and now owns or significantly influences most of it.

Presidents Lincoln, Jackson, and Kennedy tried to stop this family of bankers by printing U.S. dollars without charging the taxpayers interest.

Today, if the government runs a deficit, the FED prints dollars through the U.S. Treasury...buys the debt...and the dollars are circulated into the economy.

In 1992, taxpayers paid the FED banking system $286 billion in interest on debt the FED purchased by printing money virtually cost free. Forty percent of our personal federal income taxes goes to pay this interest.

The FED's books are not open to the public.

Congress has yet to audit it.

Congressman Wright Patman was Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Currency for 40 years. For 20 of those years, he introduced legislation to repeal the Federal Reserve Banking Act of 1913. Congressman Henry Gonzales, Chairman of a banking committee, introduced legislation to repeal the Federal Reserve Banking Act of 1913 almost every year.

It's always defeated.

The media remains silent, and the public never learns the truth.

The same bankers who own the FED control the media and give huge political contributions to sympathetic members of Congress.

THE FED FEARS THE POPULATION WILL BECOME AWARE OF THIS FRAUD AND DEMAND CHANGE. We, the People, are at fault for being passive and allowing this to continue.

THE FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD - A GOVERNMENT BOARD, HAS CHEATED THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OUT OF ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY THE NATIONAL DEBT SEVERAL TIMES OVER.

The depredations and the iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks acting together have cost this country dearly.

They are private credit monopolies prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; the rich and predatory money lenders. This is an era of economic misery and for the reasons that caused that misery, the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks are fully liable. Half a million dollars was spent on one part of propaganda organized by those same European bankers for the purpose of misleading public opinion in regard to the Federal Reserve Bank.

WHAT MONEY LOOKED LIKE WHEN IT WAS STILL BACKED BY SOMETHING

Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its power.

But the truth is the Federal Reserve Board has USURPED THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. IT CONTROLS EVERYTHING HERE AND IT CONTROLS ALL OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS. IT MAKES AND BREAKS GOVERNMENTS AT WILL.

No man, and no body of men, is more entrenched in power than the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks.

These evil-doers have robbed this country. What the Government has permitted the Federal Reserve Board to steal from the people should now be restored to the people.

The Federal Reserve Act should be repealed and the Federal Reserve banks, having violated their charters, should be liquidated immediately.

FAITHLESS GOVERNMENT OFFICERS WHO HAVE VIOLATED THEIR OATHS SHOULD BE IMPEACHED AND BROUGHT TO TRIAL.

If the media is unbiased, independent and completely thorough, why haven't they discussed the FED?

Currently, half the states have at least a grass roots movement in action to abolish the FED, but there's no press coverage.

In July, 1968, the House Banking Subcommittee reported that Rockefeller, through Chase Manhattan Bank, controlled 5.9% of the stock in CBS. Furthermore, the bank had gained interlocking directorates with ABC.

In 1974, Congress issued a report stating that the Chase Manhattan Bank's stake in CBS rose to 14.1% and NBC to 4.5%. The same report said that the Chase Manhattan Bank held stock in 28 broadcasting firms.

After this report, the Chase Manhattan Bank obtained 6.7% of ABC, and today the percentage is most likely much greater. It only requires 5% ownership to significantly influence the media . This is only one of 300 wealthy shareholders of the FED. It is believed other FED owners have similar holdings in the media. To control the media, FED bankers call in their loans if the media disagrees with them.

Rockefeller also controls the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the sole purpose of which is to aid in stimulating greater interest in foreign affairs and a one world government. Nearly every major newscaster belongs to the Council on Foreign Relations. The Council on Foreign Relations controls many major newspapers and magazines. Additionally, major corporations owned by FED shareholders are the source of huge advertising revenues which surely would influence the media.

Every day I hear people complaining about what they don't like about our government and media, but not one of them are willing to put forth an effort to try and change it, especially when it comes to their personal lives.

We are as much a slave on a personal level, as our government is to the international bankers.

We keep right on using the tool they put out here to control us, credit cards, and we are imprisoned by it. We are no longer willing to save up to buy something, we have to have it right now, so the Government has made it easy to have what you want without the having to save for it, (CREDIT).

Don't you think it funny that in a land with so much wealth, only 2 PERCENT of the people own their homes? (CREDIT)

Do you know 60 PERCENT of Americans have at least 3 Credit cards used to it's maximum? (CREDIT). Do you know that only 1 PERCENT of the people have their car paid for? (CREDIT).

To be free, you must throw away your credit cards, and NEVER buy anything that you cannot afford at the moment of purchase. We will never be a free people until we rid ourselves of the burden placed here to control us, and when we stop renting from the powers, the power will cease to exist.

I will close with Thomas Jefferson's Warning To America :

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

Written by Jefferson in a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802).

NORTHSTARZONE - The Zone of Truth



ccpm



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Harpyr
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posted April 22, 2006 10:06 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Harpyr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

I couldn't agree more.


hey jwhop..I know that you also agree that the Federal Reserve Act should be repealed. Why don't you come revel in the moment alittle.. It's not very often you and Rainbow agree.

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TINK
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posted April 22, 2006 10:13 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
This is one of the most important topics and you hardly ever hear about it. Mention the fact that the Fed Reserve isn't Federal and almost everyone thinks you're nuts.

Jwhop has some good stuff to share on the topic. I hope Big Daddy graces us with his presence.

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Harpyr
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posted April 24, 2006 11:46 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Harpyr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
oooohhh jwhop..

Are you ignoring this thread, or what?

It makes me think you only come here to argue..

------------------
Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816: "I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

"According to Business Week, the average CEO [Chief Executive Officer] made 42 times the average blue-collar worker's pay in 1980, 85 times in 1990 and a staggering 531 times in 2000."
-- AFL-CIO "Executive Paywatch"

"Of course, I have as much power as the President has."
-- Bill Gates, in "The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth", Wired, November 2000

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Harpyr
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posted April 25, 2006 01:34 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Harpyr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I mean... heaven forbid jwhop agree with us radical leftists, right?

I found jw's silence on this thread amusing at first and now it's just annoying.

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Rainbow~
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posted April 25, 2006 02:18 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Harpyr.....

I once heard somebody say, "The Federal Reserve is about as 'federal' as Fed Ex.."

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Harpyr
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posted April 25, 2006 02:41 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Harpyr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

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goatgirl
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posted April 25, 2006 04:42 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Maybe he doesn't want to "preach to the choir"...he's got other fish to fry

------------------
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." - Aldous Huxley

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TINK
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posted April 26, 2006 09:21 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Jwhop?
You know I must admit that all this money stuff confuses me a bit. C'mon, maybe you could enlighten me.

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Iqhunk
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posted April 26, 2006 01:21 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

Thanks for putting this up Rainbow. I will see if I can find more articles.

Bretton Woods agreement is important too. Today's FIAT Currencies anywhere in the world are worthless in actuality. Thats why commodities like Silver and Gold doubled. Many banks smelt the currency bubble and are stocking up on precious metals to hedge.

I still insist to every human being who can afford to, buy some arable land with 20-30% of annual savings, year after year. This will be the best hedge against the artifical currency manipulations.

One of the heinous NWO agendas is to weaken the common Americans financially. (Physically they are weakened by Atkins diet, flouride in drinking water, Pepsi, Coke, Junk food and subliminal frequencies)

Tax cuts for the rich are part of the plan.
The rich have to be rewarded by Tax breaks ONLY IF THEY INVEST IN WEALTH CREATION IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY. Find out how many Aristocrats behind corporations are registering in Tax havens, exploiting in the name of outsourcing and so forth. They wont be rich if American masses did not use thier goods and services.

Making people get leveraged on debt which can be repayed only by land disposession, that is another plan. If every common Joe who earns less than 36K per annum owns an Acre or two and does not get into debt, no Federal Agency can dispossess him.

I think 75-80% of Americans are in the sub 36K per annum bracket [correct me if wrong] and this entire class must increase in health, wealth and political power for the good of the entire world. American middle and lower middle class prosperity can be the Nemesis of the World's wicked and all their supporters.


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Harpyr
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posted April 26, 2006 06:12 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Harpyr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
boy.. I have to wonder if maybe it reaaaaaly gets under jwhops skin to agree with us. Perhaps it just shakes him up to be outside of his little right vs. left comfort zone, so much that he can't bring himself to address it.


Have you ever heard of the Aleuts who first met the Russians? Or maybe I heard this about the Native Americans when they first saw the Spanish?.. oh well, anyway.. they had never seen ships like the explorers had and so they actually couldn't see them. In the Aleuts' perspective, these Russians just appeared on the beach.. they never saw the ships at sea because they just couldn't comprehend such a thing.


Maybe this thread is like that for jwhop.

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Harpyr
Newflake

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posted April 26, 2006 06:14 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Harpyr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Iqhunk- I that assessment is spot on.

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Mirandee
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posted April 26, 2006 09:56 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Maybe this is the reason that Jwhop has grown silent on the Federal Reserve Bank.

In reading this keep in mind that Bush, with the help of his partners in crime in Congress, also passed new bankruptcy laws that favored the credit card companies. Under the new bankruptcy laws it is more difficult for the average joe to file debt bankruptcy but of course, easier for the corporations and the wealthy to file bankruptcy.

Bush packs the Federal Reserve
by gjohnsit
Wed Apr 12, 2006 at 07:52:47 AM PD

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher made an interesting statement today.

Answering audience questions after a speech to the Dallas Friday Group, Fisher said the U.S. dollar is a "faith-based currency" dependent on the credibility of a central bank.

Credibility is a very tricky concept. The reason why the Federal Reserve (and all Central Banks, for that matter) were created was to "insulate the Federal Reserve from elective politics".

But while no one has been watching, the Federal Reserve has become packed with Bush appointments. There is no longer a single sitting member that doesn't owe his job to President Bush.


Why does this matter?

Technically it's not supposed to matter. Like federal judges, Federal Reserve members get appointed and then are free from political interference. At least...that's how its supposed to work.

We all know that this isn't how it works in real life. Federal judges may be appointed for life, but every president still wants to pack the courts with their appointees. If it didn't matter then the politicians wouldn't care. The same goes for the Federal Reserve.

Bush is only the third president in history to have appointed every member of the Federal Reserve. (Ronald Reagan and FDR being the other two.)

Political Connections

Like most Bush appointments, he values loyalty over quality.

If both Warsh and Kroszner are confirmed, said Fed-watcher Schlesinger, "for the first time in recent decades, and maybe the first time ever, the board would include three governors who recently served in the administration that appointed them.'' That, he said, "unavoidably make the board a more political cast.''...

It doesn't stop with Warsh and Kroszner. All of Bush's Federal Reserve appointments have a political ting to them.
Warsh is a current White House economic advisor and a former Morgan Stanley investment banker. Kroszner is the University of Chicago economics professor who served on the Council of Economic Advisors during Bush's first term.

Prior to this, Bush appointed two other Fed board members: Susan Bies, a former Tennessee banker, and Mark Olson, who was with Ernst & Young and U.S. Bancorp and was a legislative assistant to former Republican congressman Bill Frenzel of Minnesota.

Adding together the shifts to the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve, it could be argued that the policy organs that hold sway over the judicial and monetary influences on business are more free-market, Reaganesque, and pro-growth than anything we've seen in a long time.
How does this effect me?

Monetary policy, once the subject of heated political debates, is now the domain of economic geeks and gold bugs. Politicians no longer even mention it. Yet, that doesn't mean that it no longer effects Joe Sixpack. In fact, it might be the most important economic element in our future.
Inflation: A persistent increase in the level of consumer prices or a persistent decline in the purchasing power of money, caused by an increase in available currency and credit beyond the proportion of available goods and services.
In other words, more currency chasing fewer goods produces price inflation. Price inflation is a symptom of monetary inflation, in the same way that a high temperature in a person is caused by a virus infection.

It's important to keep that in mind when discussing the Federal Reserve, because the primary job of the Federal Reserve is to manage the amount of money in the system. So how has the Federal Reserve been doing at their primary job?

The answer is "**** poor". They are flooding the markets with cash, which by definition devalues the currency. And if that isn't bad enough, it is getting worse.

Although the Federal Reserve is working overtime to try and hide what they are doing, the real truth about their inflation leaks out anyway.

This shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone that remembered what Ben Bernanke had to say back in 2002.

What has this got to do with monetary policy? Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent) that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.

A more direct method, which I personally prefer, would be for the Fed to begin announcing explicit ceilings for yields on longer-maturity Treasury debt (say, bonds maturing within the next two years). The Fed could enforce these interest-rate ceilings by committing to make unlimited purchases of securities up to two years from maturity at prices consistent with the targeted yields.

Yet another option would be for the Fed to use its existing authority to operate in the markets for agency debt (for example, mortgage-backed securities issued by Ginnie Mae, the Government National Mortgage Association).

Things that make you go "Hmmmm"
What does it mean when people start quiting their jobs at a company? Generally that's consider a very bad sign.

A sure sign of underlying problems is rapid employee turnover. Employees know when problems exist, and in a reasonably healthy job market, the good ones will leave early.
The Federal Reserve is no different in this respect. The fact is that except for Greenspan and Laurence H. Meyer every single member of the Federal Reserve that Bush inherited resigned before their term was up.
Coincidence? Maybe, but it would be a pretty big one.

So how does this relate to Bush?

The Federal Reserve has more control over the economic future of this country than any other organization other than Congress. Bush has now packed the Fed with politically-connected members. With the Fed now packed with "politically friendly faces", the Fed is now working overtime to push money into the system (despite whatever you may have heard otherwise).
In the short-run this pushes the economy along with massive doses of cheap credit. That is exactly what politicians have always wanted, and Bush is no exception.

In the long-run this will have terrible consequences. Once price inflation becomes dug in its extremely hard to get it out. In the past only deep recessions have cured price inflation.
This is a legacy that will live past Bush's term in office.

My note: Then we will hear Jwhop and all the Bush supporters blaming it all on the Democrats.

George Bush presided over a minor change in the Federal Reserve Act. The Sarbanes-OxleyAct was passed in 2002. The American Congress failed again to deal with the Federal Reserve. Bush managed to keep all discussion and changes confined to some reporting requirements for financial institutions. Bush knows very well who he serves, and he really serves his master well. It's amazing how few grasped the significance of Alan Greenspan being knighted by the Queen of England! Greenspan was knighted on September 26, 2002. An obvious reward for preventing any real discussion, or change, of the Federal Reserve during the Sarbanes-Oxley Act debates. Had an American President been knighted, serious questions would have arisen. It was so much easier to reward her manager, Alan! Do you still believe that Alan Greenspan has the power of Darth Vader? He is only a little man, faithfully serving his queen.

The Federal Reserve will always debase the currency to take its cut, and guarantee that the government has a tax base available to feed its bureaucratic family. The government is a total slave of the Federal Reserve. For example, analyze the latest real estate boom. There will be a major boost in property taxes based on the new valuations. Many people will be surprised when they receive their new tax bill. This will guarantee more money for the government coffers. They know that people will do almost anything to keep their homes. What's another job or two per family? Besides, the extra job will provide more tax revenue for the government. This will require more day care, or baby-sitting services for many families, which create more income for the government. This will cause more meals to be eaten out, which creates more revenue for the government Meanwhile, prices will continue to go up, which creates more sales tax revenue for the government. Are you getting the point yet? Deflation is end of the government. The local, state, and federal government will all fail!

This is the strategy of the Federal Reserve. The majority of the people will always believe that more is better. Knowing that, and now having a democracy ensconced in the US, it was time to feed and breed. Prices always go up, and everything is "Wunnerful, Wunnerful" Bring on the Champagne Lady. Alan runs the bubble machine. The illusion of money has destroyed most people since society (goverment) developed socialism. Democracy feeds on the illusion of something for nothing. As each demagogue promises more than his competition, the tax burden becomes oppressive. The monetary illusion serves to conceal the costs through currency debasement. This assures the complete destruction of the society that embraces this perversion. Any attempt to introduce logic into a dialogue will be defeated by claiming you're an elitist devoid of compassion. Envy, hate, and manipulated passions are the hallmark of democracies. While all this destruction is occurring, money diverted by the mechanism of currency debasement is constantly being transferred to the British Crown in the City of London.


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jwhop
Knowflake

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From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
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posted April 26, 2006 10:36 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Once again Mirandee, you post an article by a twit. An ignorant or dishonest twit because if he had a brain he would know the Federal Reserve is not a division of government and would have said so...if he was honest.

The nation needs sufficient money in circulation..whether it be treasury notes or federal reserve notes. Otherwise credit is tight, businesses have higher debt service loads because of higher interest rates and so do consumers. Businesses cut back on purchases, hiring and expansion in periods of tight credit. So do consumers cut back on spending and particularly if they don't have a job due to business contractions.

Interest rates are low, the economy is and has been booming, unemployment rates are low...lower than the average throughout the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's.

So, who did your twit writer expect Bush to appoint to the fed board of governors, a leftist moron with no banking or business experience?

The twit makes another mistake concerning the fed. The depression was caused specifically because of a lack of adequate money supply. Caused by the fed taking money out of circulation...cutting back on the money supply. The money was considered good but there wasn't enough in circulation to keep the economy going. Businesses closed right and left, couldn't borrow money to stay in operation, jobs were nonexistent, breadlines, soup kitchens and a long depression followed that deliberate contraction of the money supply.

On the other hand, those who had money were able to buy on the cheap...businesses, stocks and controlling interest in lots of businesses. This benefited the moneyed class....and bankers, who called loans and took businesses they held as collateral for outstanding loans.

So, the point is that both an oversupply of money in circulation or an undersupply are both disastrous. But the undersupply is far more so.

Linking the fed to the British Crown is another non starter.

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lotusheartone
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posted April 26, 2006 10:40 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Great post Jwhop!..lots of Love


to EveryOne. ...

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Mirandee
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posted April 26, 2006 10:47 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
"It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
-Henry Ford


Quote: This shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone that remembered what Ben Bernanke had to say back in 2002.

So what did Ben Bernanke say back in 2002?

Recently the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) called for a radical overhaul of the global economic system.

The powerful Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has now voiced grave doubts about the policy and called on politicians to begin debating an overhaul of the current global economic system.
In another radical move it has also suggested ditching many national currencies in favour of a small number of formal currency blocks based on the dollar, euro and renminbi or yen.
The BIS's leading economist and head of monetary policy, William White, said growing levels of personal and corporate debt, both in the UK and internationally, were signs that while the fight against inflation may have been won, it has been at the cost of unbalancing the world economy.
That's some pretty radical stuff coming from an organization that is "a coalition of central banks and helps oversee the global financial system". In other words, these are the guys that run the world's economic system and they are saying that the current system can no longer function in its current state. (i.e. It's broke)
In a world with a real news media, this kind of stuff would have gotten headlines around the world, while a missing teen in Aruba would hardly have been noticed. Instead, I can't find this mentioned in a single American news outlet.

This is hardly the first time that an important international body has warned that the current global economic regime is busted. In Sepetember of 2003 the IMF (International Monetary Fund) warned that America's yawning trade deficit could collapse the dollar. A month before the IMF warned that America's budget deficits could bring economic instability.
Of course that was nearly three years ago and both conditions have worsened a great deal. Does that mean that the warnings were false alarms? Hardly. It means that the catastrophic outcomes are closer. How do I know this? Because every once in a while there will be an announcement that indicates that the people who run the system understand how serious the situation is.
For instance, the first indication that Da' Boyz were preparing for trouble was five months ago when they announced a suspension of M3 reporting. While most people complained about the ending of the ability to accurately determine monetary inflation, I thought what was most interesting was what else they were no longer going to report "large-denomination time deposits, repurchase agreements (RPs), and Eurodollars".

RP's are the only accurate way to determine if the Fed was monetizing debt (i.e. printing dollars out of thin air to buy federal debt). Eurodollars are the only accurate way to determine the amount of dollars that are circulating the world outside of our borders (i.e. a reflection of our ballooning trade deficits).
The reason I find this most enlightening is because of what our current Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, had to say back in 2002.


"What has this got to do with monetary policy? Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent) that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.
[...]
A more direct method, which I personally prefer, would be for the Fed to begin announcing explicit ceilings for yields on longer-maturity Treasury debt (say, bonds maturing within the next two years). The Fed could enforce these interest-rate ceilings by committing to make unlimited purchases of securities up to two years from maturity at prices consistent with the targeted yields.
[...]
Yet another option would be for the Fed to use its existing authority to operate in the markets for agency debt (for example, mortgage-backed securities issued by Ginnie Mae, the Government National Mortgage Association)."

And then last week there was another news story that got very little press, but emphasized exactly how seriously Da' Boyz were taking the coming economic crisis.
A bank created to provide emergency backup for the Treasury market will be ready to operate in the next 18 months, a bond industry group is set to announce today.
The so-called NewBank exists largely on paper, but like a superhero on standby, it can spring into action to stabilize the government securities market if a legal or financial disaster strikes.
The bank is a result of a five-year effort by government and banking officials to draw up plans in the unlikely event that either J. P. Morgan Chase or the Bank of New York, the only existing clearing banks in the Treasury market, are suddenly unable to operate.
It's safe to say that if JPM suddenly failed then a cornerstone of the world's economic system has already failed. JPM is the world's largest holder of derivatives, totalling tens of trillions of dollars in national contracts. Derivatives are an obscure financial instrument that the world's financial institutions increasingly use to insure against risk. Ominously it was only four months ago that one of the major derivative players in America, Refco, filed for bankruptcy.
To further reinforce the idea that the world's economy is heading for a World Of Hurt (WOH), many of the most brilliant and successful investors in the world have given us notice. Bill Gross, chairman of America's largest bond fund, has said, "the dollar as a currency is doomed". It is already well known that Warren Buffett and George Soros have made financial bets in the tens of billions of dollars against the American dollar. Buffett has gone so far as to say America is headed for a "sharecropper society".
If the smartest men in finance are betting against the dollar then it only makes sense for you to be worried.

At this point let's put two and two together.

The Fed is no longer going to publish reports that reflect how much debt it is monetizing, nor how many dollars are in ciculation because of our trade deficits.

The new Fed chief has spoken publically about the wisdom of theoretically dropping money from helicoptors over Manhatten in order to boost the monetary supply and suppress the value of the dollar.

A new "bank" has been specifically created to monetize treasuries in case the world's largest derivative player goes bankrupt.

A major derivative player has gone bankrupt.

The BIS has called for an overhaul of the global economic system.

The IMF has sounded the alarm about America's trade and budget deficits.

The smartest investors in the world are betting against the American currency.


Are you scared yet? If not, why aren't you?

How did we get into this mess?
A very good question. For a good answer, let's look at what the BIS says is the primary reason for the need for a global overhaul.
The BIS, which is controlled by a coalition of central banks and helps oversee the global financial system, warned that by pushing interest rates so low, inflation targeting has encouraged the public to take on more debt and has accelerated a flow of money out of the world's major economies.
In a new BIS report he said: "In a number of English-speaking countries what has been observed is a decade-long reduction in the household saving rate and a significant increase in consumption.
[...]
Mr White said: "Those countries with the biggest external deficits [the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand] also tend to have the biggest internal imbalances. Rising asset prices in such countries (recently, for housing in particular) have led to higher perceptions of wealth, and more spending." However, he added, far from managing these worrying build-ups, inflation targeting can encourage them.
Mr White's comments mark a significant departure for the BIS, which for many years has championed inflation targeting as an essential component of stable economies.
So let's translate this into something simple to understand:
The BIS has championed inflation targeting for decades, but now realizes that it causes asset bubbles in real estate and low saving rates because it discourages savings and encourages speculation. It's solution is to fold all the existing currencies into the four major ones of the world.
Or to put it an even simpler way: the guys who got us into this mess want to fix it by advocating a more intense version of the same mess.
So why, after acknowledging the problem, do they propose a solution that is fundamentally flawed to begin with? It's because they refuse to acknowledge the root cause of the problem. Instead they mearly look at the symptoms. They see accelerating debt levels, but they fail to acknowledge that debt levels have been rising for generations, and only recently have hit levels that are shaking the foundations of the global financial system.
Perhaps a more helpful solution would be to acknowledge the root causes of this rise in debt levels itself - and that is the nature of the global currencies.

"Government is the only agency that can take a valuable commodity like paper, slap some ink on it, and make it totally worthless."
Ludwig von Mises

What is Money?
Money is any marketable good or token used by a society as a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of account. Since the needs arise naturally, societies organically create a money object when none exists. In other cases, a central authority creates a money object; this is more frequently the case in modern societies with paper money.
In the past money was precious metals like gold and silver. It had intrinsic value. In other words, if you had a gold coin that was valued at $20 and you took a big knife and cut it into twenty pieces, you had twenty bits of gold that was each worth about a dollar.
Today you have a $20 Federal Reserve Note (note I didn't say "dollar"). If you take a knife and cut it into 20 random pieces you have twenty pieces of paper that are basically worthless, even for toilet paper. There is no instrinsic value to paper money.
That begs the question of: Why does paper money have any value at all then?
The most obvious answer is because "People will accept it as money." But that doesn't really get at the nature of paper money, nor does it answer the question of "How did we get into this mess?"
To understand this you must realize what a Federal Reserve Note (FRN) is - it's an IOU.
Fiat currency, which is what we have now, is debt-based. In other words, every time that a FRN (or a dollar of credit) is created, a dollar of debt is created. Every FRN in existence is someone else's liability.
Prov 22:7 "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender."

The Lie
Think about that for a moment. More money in the system means more debt in the system. It's a treadmill. The faster you go only means that you are expending more energy.
It's a concept that is hard to get your mind around because it goes against how we've been trained since we first picked up a coin as a child. Even now something inside of me rebels against the idea. The idea that more money means more "wealth" is ingrained into us. Yet once you've accepted the idea that money means debt then you realize that your concept of wealth is fundamentally flawed. You break your back all your life to accumulate money thinking that you are accumulating wealth, when in actuality you are mearly accumulating someone else's debt burden. Is that really what you consider to be wealth? Is that really what you want to work your entire life for?
But The Lie is even worse than that when you consider that those debt-based pieces of paper are backed by the American taxpayer. Each taxpayer has been saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in liabilities and that is the only thing keeping the dollar from collapsing. You are an American taxpayer and therefore you are working your whole life to accumulate more of your own debt burden. It's practically Matrix-like when you consider how deep The Lie goes.
And that brings us back to the the problem that the BIS was warning us about - unsustainable rising levels of debt. The same people who are printing the money are also telling us not to take on the debt that they issue. Can you see the irony here?
"The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its REIGN by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
President Abraham Lincoln, 1863
At this point I should answer the question that might be on your mind: Who got us into this mess? The answer is really quite simple: The federal government sold us out to the banks. Why would they do that? The answer is control. Debt-based currency is easy to track, unlike currency with instrinsic value like gold and silver. It is no coincidence that the Federal Reserve was created the exact same year that Income Tax was created.
This wasn't the way our country was created. Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gave only Congress the power "To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;"
Article 1 Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution prohibited: "...make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts;"
And yet in 1913, Congress created the Federal Reserve, a group of private banks, and gave them the power to create the nation's money. They didn't even bother to amend the Constitution to allow this. They simply ignored it.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
-Thomas Jefferson
Those are wise words from the creator of America's Democratic Party. It's sad that those words of warning were ignored.

End Game
If you've read all the way to this point you are probably both depressed and angry. I can offer two things: a) a vision of how it will end, and b) a way to protect yourself from that end.

"Give me control of a country's money and I care not who makes the laws".
- Meyer Rothchild

Fiat money has been tried before in history. It has always ended the same way - with hyperinflation and currency collapse.
China started a 500 year experiment with paper money in the 10th Century. The currency collapsed at least seven times (probably more, but that's all I could verify) before they finally gave up and went back to precious metals.
France experimented with fiat money in the 1720's and then again in the 1790's. Germany had their own experiment in the 1920's.
Fiat currencies have even failed in our own country during the Revolution and again during the Civil War (Confederate side).
It has been done over and over again - more times then I could list here and you would want to read. Every time it ended the exact same way.
I've read that the average life-span of a fiat currency is around 60 years (give or take several decades). The world is currently midway through the fourth decade of total fiat currency, although most countries were in it long before 1971. Given that history it should surprise no one that serious imbalences and stresses are appearing around the globe, for it is the nature of the currency regime itself. Fiat currencies normally don't fail overnight (although in Weimar Germany it practically did). Sometimes they fade away gradually with a modest amount of price inflation similar to what we are experiencing today.
The Fed will even tell you exactly how much they have destroyed the currency in your pocket. For instance, a dollar's basket of goods bought in 1913 (the year the Federal Reserve was created) now costs $19.66 to buy. A dollar's basket of goods bought in 1971 (the year we defaulted on the international gold standard) now costs $4.80. Now that's arrogance. Sort of like a pickpocket telling you exactly when he's going to steal from you and how much.
About three months ago there was an interesting sentence buried deep in an obscure financial article about the rising price of gold that caught my attention.
Obviously the next key level would be $515/oz and this looks quite possible. Although some commercial banks are trying to push the price lower I think it's not an issue for as long as it holds above $490/oz.
Why would commercial banks be working to push the price of gold lower? The answer is amazingly simple: The banks have a product to sell - paper money. Gold was money for 5,000 years, and is therefore, a competitor of the bank's only product.
To put it another way, the banks who control the current economic system are making ungoldly amounts of wealth from the status quo and want it to continue for as long as possible eventhough they know that the current system is doomed. To do this they are selling their gold hoards that were given to them when our government sold us out.

"A capitalist will sell you the rope you will hang him with if he can make profit on it."
- Lenin

And that is their weakness and your opportunity. They are handing you the tools to survive the collapse of the system they have created. Silver and gold has more than doubled in dollar terms since Bush became president. You can bet that it will do far more than that before it is over. One thing you can be certain of - paper money will eventually return to its instrinsic value.

I think Henry Ford was right. I am up for the revolution, anyone else?

Our founding fathers dumped tea into Boston harbor as a symbol of "taxation without representation" and face it we are taxed to death and we have no real representation in Washington D.C.

Bush ran the state of Texas and 2 companies into bankruptcy that should have been a big clue right there where our nation would be headed under his leadership. It was for me and half of the country anyway.

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Mirandee
unregistered
posted April 26, 2006 10:57 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
See this is how you get Jwhop to reply, folks. You post Bush's involvement in it and he has to jump in and discredit the source of the truth.


Of course he is a twit, Jwhop because he dares to tell the truth.


Of course once the truth was posted you just had to jump in and try to sell us the BS you have bought into. Because before Bush appointed all the members of the Fed you were all for abolishing it. But when Bush sold it as the best thing since sliced bread you of course are all in favor of it now. It has to be the truth if Georgie is all for it. Right? And you quoted verbatum the whole line of crap you are being sold.

Are you and lotus my shadows or something? Neither of you showed up until I posted. People were even wondering where you were. I am flattered that you two just hang on my every word.

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lotusheartone
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posted April 26, 2006 11:01 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Mirandee..speaking for mySelf..i just happen to be on..right now..as for what I agree with..or disaagree with..is the result of going within..and then waiting for the answers..and affirmations that follow..to guide me. ...

that's all..plain and simple..and I'll add I don't agree with everything..and if I have no affirmations..I do not respond..

Lots of Love to EveryOne

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted April 26, 2006 11:32 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
My views on the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 are well known and have nothing to do with Bush, Republicans, Democrats, leftists or rightists.

Those who scammed the American public in 1913 are beyond the reach of any punishment for their treason. Giving control of the printing and circulation of a nations money to a non governmental body is treason as it's directed against the interests of the people and specifically forbidden by the Constitution; which states in part, "Congress shall have the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof". It doesn't say a word about Congress handing the power off to a non accountable private corporation or corporations.

I would put every banker in the federal reserve system in jail...for a long, long time, confiscate all their holdings and go after the gold they stole from the federal treasury wherever in the world it is. Those who keep the fiction going...in Congress, those who have resisted an accounting of the fed and headed off bills to return control of the money to Congress would be dealt with most severely as well.

Every loan based on credit would be wiped off the books...which is almost all loans made by a federal reserve national bank where no money ever changed hands; those would be marked paid as agreed.

The United States would go back onto a currency backed by precious metals...primarily silver.

The federal reserve system is an outrage that needs immediate correction but I don't see that happening since Americans and citizens of other nations which also have a central bank in charge of their currency are clueless as to the how the system works and who it benefits. If a quiz were given, I would guess at least 75% would think the Federal Reserve is a Federal Agency.

Most also don't know there are provisions for the Congress to take back control by paying a few million dollars to buy out the fed banks. At the time, 1912 and 1913 when the bill was being debated, the bankers came out strongly against it. A cover because they were strongly for it but sentiment was running strongly against banks and corporations at the time. Most people thought the Federal Reserve Act was a restriction on banks.

The Federal Reserve System is not Federal, but is rather a non public private corporation with virtually no oversight by the US government. Most people haven't gotten the word yet and few alive today or back in 1913 know or knew.

Some people found out when a suit was filed against the US government over a traffic accident between Lewis, a private citizen and a vehicle owned by the Federal Reserve. Lewis sued the United States government for injuries and the courts ruled the Federal Reserve was a private corporation...not an agency of the US government. Lewis lost in US Circuit Court, appealed and lost at the US Federal Court of Appeals. The case is: Lewis v. United States, 680 F.2d 1239 (1982) http://nesara.org/court_summaries/lewis_v_united_states.htm

I'm pretty confident Robert Bork was not confirmed by the Senate as an Associate Justice for the US Supreme Court because of something I heard him say in the confirmation hearings.

The issue raised was how Bork would deal with previous court decisions...Stare Decisis. Bork mentioned in his answer that he supposed there were some issues...like the legal tender issue...i.e., Federal Reserve Notes as opposed to US Treasury notes or gold and silver coin which the Constitution recognizes as money were beyond overturning. His answer left the impression he thought there was something wrong with the nations money but thought it couldn't be corrected. I think that's what sunk his confirmation....the mere mention of that issue. Bork is a brilliant jurist, perhaps the most brilliant of the brilliant but resistance sprung up in the Senate and he wasn't confirmed.

Woodrow Wilson and every member of the House and Senate who voted for the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 should have been hung for treason. But, they are beyond any punishment in this world now.

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lotusheartone
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posted April 26, 2006 11:44 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I agree with your post Jwhop!

Love and Light to ALL. ...

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Mirandee
unregistered
posted April 27, 2006 12:09 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Quote:

"Once again Mirandee, you post an article by a twit. An ignorant or dishonest twit because if he had a brain he would know the Federal Reserve is not a division of government and would have said so...if he was honest."

We have already established, in Rainbow's post, that the Fed is not a part of the government, Jwhop. I did not think it necessary to post that part of "the twits" article. It was long enough as it was why repeat what was already established in Rainbow's post?

Are you denying what is known that Bush packed the Reserve with his cronies? As the article states there is not a sitting member who does not owe his job to Bush. Bush appointed Ben Bernanke as Greenspan's replacement in 2002. Do you deny that?

This is just a thought I had while reading the two articles I posted and Rainbows post...then putting that together with the information I posted in the Eminently Quotable thread about some people thinking that the real reason for Bush's war in Iraq and his planned war with Iran is that Bush is protecting the dollar against the Eurodollar. Hussein had announced that he was switching to the Eurodollar in oil sales prior to the pre-emptive attack by the U.S. and Great Britain and Iran switched to the Eurodollar some time ago. Right now all world trade and all oil sales in the Middle East is based on the dollar exchange. Except for Iran and what would have been, Iraq. There are also many in Europe pushing their governments to switch to the Eurodollar. Hmmmmm might be something to what some propose to be the real reason behind these wars. It does give reason to wonder at any rate. It could be the U.S.'s way, under the leadership of Bush and his administration of CEO's, of letting the world know what lengths the U.S. will go to in order to protect the dollar and keep it as the exchange currency for all world trade. Especially if the future of the Reserve and the dollar doesn't look too well.

As I said just a thought.

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Mirandee
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posted April 27, 2006 12:23 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I also agree with your last post, Jwhop.

The Federal Reserve was treasonous from the beginning and it still is and should be abolished. American citizens should be paid back the money that was stolen from them.

Once again, it amounts to how many Americans are going to stand up and fight for the Constitution and how many are going to remain silent.

Write your representatives in the House and Congress and demand the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 be abolished as unconstitutional.

Of course it probably will do little good if your Reps are Republican.

Quote: George Bush presided over a minor change in the Federal Reserve Act. The Sarbanes-OxleyAct was passed in 2002. The American Congress failed again to deal with the Federal Reserve. Bush managed to keep all discussion and changes confined to some reporting requirements for financial institutions.

That was a Republican Majority Congress that failed to deal with the Federal Reserve at the prompting of Bush. But if the Federal Reserve can make or break nations and pretty much owns the government it might take a revolution to ever get it abolished.

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Iqhunk
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posted April 27, 2006 03:56 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
JWHop wrote:
<<The United States would go back onto a currency backed by precious metals...primarily silver. >>

One of the best points posted by you.

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goatgirl
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posted April 27, 2006 12:40 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Jwhop,

Thanks for the post. I agree entirely, except for one thing. Hanging would have been too good for those involved.

~~~

A problem I see here is the level of knowledge young Americans and I could include my own generation here also, have due to being "educated" by the public school system is disgusting. It's not laughable because it's a crime actually.

The public school system was based on the Prussian model, which was not there to educate. It was to turn out good little soldiers, those who know how to shut up, and follow orders.

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
I found this essay in the Fall '91 issue of Whole Earth Review. It finally clarified for me why American school is such a spirit-crushing experience, and suggested what to do about it.

Before reading, please set your irony detector to the on position. If you find yourself inclined to dismiss the below as paranoid, you should know that the design behind the current American school system is very well-documented historically, in published writings of dizzying cynicism by such well-known figures as Horace Mann and Andrew Carnegie.

The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher

by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991

Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn't what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it.

Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are:

The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.

In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make the kids like it -- being locked in together, I mean -- or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can't imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.

Nevertheless, in spite of the overall blueprint, I make an effort to urge children to higher levels of test success, promising eventual transfer from the lower-level class as a reward. I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and [school]teaching are incompatible.

The lesson of numbered classes is that there is no way out of your class except by magic. Until that happens you must stay where you are put.

The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch. I demand that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. But when the bell rings I insist that they drop the work at once and proceed quickly to the next work station. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of.

The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their argument is inexorable; bells destroy past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as an abstract map makes every living mountain and river the same even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.

The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal. As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. My judgments come thick and fast, because individuality is trying constantly to assert itself in my classroom. Individuality is a curse to all systems of classification, a contradiction of class theory.

Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels; they trick me out of a private instant in the hallway on the grounds that they need water. Sometimes free will appears right in front of me in children angry, depressed or exhilarated by things outside my ken. Rights in such things cannot exist for schoolteachers; only privileges, which can be withdrawn, exist.

The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study. (Rather, I enforce decisions transmitted by the people who pay me). This power lets me separate good kids from bad kids instantly. Good kids do the tasks I appoint with a minimum of conflict and a decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to learn, I decide what few we have time for. The choices are mine. Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.

Bad kids fight against this, of course, trying openly or covertly to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn. How can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will of those who resist.

This is another way I teach the lesson of dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. This is the most important lesson of all, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. It is no exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned. Think of what would fall apart if kids weren't trained in the dependency lesson: The social-service businesses could hardly survive, including the fast-growing counseling industry; commercial entertainment of all sorts, along with television, would wither if people remembered how to make their own fun; the food services, restaurants and prepared-food warehouses would shrink if people returned to making their own meals rather than depending on strangers to cook for them. Much of modern law, medicine, and engineering would go too -- the clothing business as well -- unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people poured out of our schools each year. We've built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don't know any other way. For God's sake, let's not rock that boat!

In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students' homes to spread approval or to mark exactly -- down to a single percentage point -- how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these records, the cumulative weight of the objective- seeming documents establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at a certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual judgment of strangers.

Self-evaluation -- the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet -- is never a factor in these things. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but must rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.

In lesson six I teach children that they are being watched. I keep each student under constant surveillance and so do my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children; there is no private time. Class change lasts 300 seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other, even to tattle on their parents. Of course I encourage parents to file their own child's waywardness, too.

I assign "homework" so that this surveillance extends into the household, where students might otherwise use the time to learn something unauthorized, perhaps from a father or mother, or by apprenticing to some wiser person in the neighborhood.

The lesson of constant surveillance is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate. Surveillance is an ancient urgency among certain influential thinkers; it was a central prescription set down by Calvin in the Institutes, by Plato in the Republic, by Hobbes, by Comte, by Francis Bacon. All these childless men discovered the same thing: Children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under central control.

It is the great triumph of schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among even the best parents, there is only a small number who can imagine a different way to do things. Yet only a very few lifetimes ago things were different in the United States: originality and variety were common currency; our freedom from regimentation made us the miracle of the world; social class boundaries were relatively easy to cross; our citizenry was marvelously confident, inventive, and able to do many things independently, to think for themselves. We were something, all by ourselves, as individuals.

It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for "basic skills" practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you.

We've had a society increasingly under central control in the United States since just before the Civil War: the lives we lead, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the green highway signs we drive by from coast to coast are the products of this central control. So, too, I think, are the epidemics of drugs, suicide, divorce, violence, cruelty, and the hardening of class into caste in the U.S., products of the dehumanization of our lives, the lessening of individual and family importance that central control imposes.

Without a fully active role in community life you cannot develop into a complete human being. Aristotle taught that. Surely he was right; look around you or look in the mirror: that is the demonstration.

"School" is an essential support system for a vision of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows to a control point as it ascends. "School" is an artifice which makes such a pyramidal social order seem inevitable (although such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution). In colonial days and through the period of the early Republic we had no schools to speak of. And yet the promise of democracy was beginning to be realized. We turned our backs on this promise by bringing to life the ancient dream of Egypt: compulsory training in subordination for everybody. Compulsory schooling was the secret Plato reluctantly transmitted in the Republic when he laid down the plans for total state control of human life.

The current debate about whether we should have a national curriculum is phony; we already have one, locked up in the six lessons I've told you about and a few more I've spared you. This curriculum produces moral and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum of content will be sufficient to reverse its bad effects. What is under discussion is a great irrelevancy.

None of this is inevitable, you know. None of it is impregnable to change. We do have a choice in how we bring up young people; there is no right way. There is no "international competition" that compels our existence, difficult as it is to even think about in the face of a constant media barrage of myth to the contrary. In every important material respect our nation is self-sufficient. If we gained a non-material philosophy that found meaning where it is genuinely located -- in families, friends, the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy -- then we would be truly self-sufficient.

How did these awful places, these "schools", come about? As we know them, they are a product of the two "Red Scares" of 1848 and 1919, when powerful interests feared a revolution among our industrial poor, and partly they are the result of the revulsion with which old-line families regarded the waves of Celtic, Slavic, and Latin immigration -- and the Catholic religion -- after 1845. And certainly a third contributing cause can be found in the revulsion with which these same families regarded the free movement of Africans through the society after the Civil War.

Look again at the six lessons of school. This is training for permanent underclasses, people who are to be deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And it is training shaken loose from its original logic: to regulate the poor. Since the 1920s the growth of the well-articulated school bureaucracy, and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling exactly as it is, have enlarged schooling's original grasp to seize the sons and daughters of the middle class.

Is it any wonder Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money to teach? Even then, philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of teaching would take, pre-empting the teaching function that belongs to all in a healthy community; belongs, indeed, most clearly to yourself, since nobody else cares as much about your destiny. Professional teaching tends to another serious error. It makes things that are inherently easy to learn, like reading, writing, and arithmetic, difficult -- by insisting they be taught by pedagogical procedures.

With lessons like the ones I teach day after day, is it any wonder we have the national crisis we face today? Young people indifferent to the adult world and to the future; indifferent to almost everything except the diversion of toys and violence? Rich or poor, schoolchildren cannot concentrate on anything for very long. They have a poor sense of time past and to come; they are mistrustful of intimacy (like the children of divorce they really are); they hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction.

All the peripheral tendencies of childhood are magnified to a grotesque extent by schooling, whose hidden curriculum prevents effective personality development. Indeed, without exploiting the fearfulness, selfishness, and inexperience of children our schools could not survive at all, nor could I as a certified schoolteacher.

"Critical thinking" is a term we hear frequently these days as a form of training which will herald a new day in mass schooling. It certainly will, if it ever happens. No common school that actually dared teach the use of dialectic, heuristic, and other tools of free minds could last a year without being torn to pieces.

Institutional schoolteachers are destructive to children's development. Nobody survives the Six-Lesson Curriculum unscathed, not even the instructors. The method is deeply and profoundly anti-educational. No tinkering will fix it. In one of the great ironies of human affairs, the massive rethinking that schools require would cost so much less than we are spending now that it is not likely to happen. First and foremost, the business I am in is a jobs project and a contract-letting agency. We cannot afford to save money, not even to help children.

At the pass we've come to historically, and after 26 years of teaching, I must conclude that one of the only alternatives on the horizon for most families is to teach their own children at home. Small, de- institutionalized schools are another. Some form of free-market system for public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers. But the near impossibility of these things for the shattered families of the poor, and for too many on the fringes of the economic middle class, foretell that the disaster of Six-Lesson Schools is likely to continue.

After an adult lifetime spent in teaching school I believe the method of schooling is the only real content it has. Don't be fooled into thinking that good curricula or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with themselves and their families, to learn lessons in self-motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love -- and, of course, lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home life.

Thirty years ago these things could still be learned in the time left after school. But television has eaten most of that time, and a combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family time. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human, and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in.

A future is rushing down upon our culture which will insist that all of us learn the wisdom of non-material experience; this future will demand, as the price of survival, that we follow a pace of natural life economical in material cost. These lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is like starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.

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After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." - Aldous Huxley

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