Tuesday, May 7, 2013

In BN win Najib faces tug-of-war between two Malaysias

By Leslie Lau
Executive Editor
MAY 6 — As a fragmented Malaysia emerged this morning in the wake of Barisan Nasional’s (BN) slim victory in Election 2013, Datuk Seri Najib Razak identified the biggest challenge he faces — national reconciliation in a country divided.
But an analysis of how the vote went shows a country with rural-urban and class divisions that will make any reconciliation and necessary reforms even more difficult to implement.
The need to continue dismantling the Bumiputera policies and to introduce the controversial bitter pill of a Goods and Services Tax (GST) — steps necessary to make Malaysia more competitive and lift it out of a middle-income trap — appears to be even more daunting because of the conflicting tug-of-war between the two Malaysias that have emerged.
Najib is now faced with a public seemingly addicted to easy money and handouts, and in winning GE13 he may have committed his government to a continuation of such policies.
Related story: Tensions run high in Johor Bahru hotseat
Corruption also remains a major challenge for Najib, with BN’s popular vote loss presenting him with a tricky path to negotiate.
Initial analysis of this morning’s election results shows BN had won the polls on the back of votes from a largely conservative rural Malaysia as well as Umno voters with an interest in the continuation of affirmative action policies that critics say benefit an elite associated with the party.
But Pakatan Rakyat (PR) appears to have won the consolation prize of a popular vote secured on its campaign to push the message that graft and the government’s tendency to award lucrative contracts to Umno interests were squeezing out the middle class and the Malay working class.
Najib suggested a “Chinese tsunami” saw BN ceding more ground to the opposition, but BN will be well advised to also notice the Malay shift, especially from a growing middle class and a disenchanted urban working class.
Related story: GE13 an urban, not Chinese swing, say analysts
“Intra-ethnic inequality is startlingly high. There has been a lot of disproportionate access [to economic privileges] by the few,” Meredith Weiss, an associate professor at the State University of New York, told the Financial Times in remarks published this morning.
“The underlining trend seems to be that interests are defined now by socioeconomic class rather than ethnicity.”
While Chinese votes clearly swung to the opposition in greater numbers than ever before, PR’s securing of the popular vote suggests that the Malay vote swing would be potentially more alarming.
The federal vote aside, yesterday’s elections saw the opposition make ground in many of the state assemblies — winning 230 seats to Umno’s total of 275.
Related story: Anwar seeks ‘national consensus’ to reject BN rule
In urban Selangor, PR increased its mandate.
While BN regained Perak, PR’s increased majorities in Penang and Selangor tell a story of a middle class and urban electorate from all races moving away from BN.
The right-wing factions within Umno are already trying to shape the narrative of GE13 by suggesting the Chinese were being racial in the way they voted, but a deeper analysis of the election results will suggest the minority was backed by large quarters of the Malay majority.
Yesterday’s elections saw Umno and BN dealt a major blow in urban Johor, and losing in Selangor and Penang — with largely urban and multi-racial votes.
PR also made inroads into Sabah, significantly in urban areas.
With a mandate from rural conservatives and Umno elites, the big question will be how Najib addresses the need for reforms.
Related story: Selangor win shows Pakatan gained Malay support, Pua says
To be fair Najib did win the elections in part by “stealing the opposition’s clothes” as the Financial Times said this morning in an analysis of the GE13 results.
He has started watering down Bumiputera policies and has repealed the Internal Security Act.
But he has also allowed Umno leaders to play on race and religious fears, which may have entrenched not just Chinese but many urban voters of all races against what they see as an Umno of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Dr Mahathir pragmatically balanced the interests the Malays, Chinese, Indians and other races with policies that saw compromise and a united goal of developing Malaysia.
But while he has taken credit for Malaysia’s economic growth, the country is no longer the country Dr Mahathir may have known.
It is a changed country, moving away from racial divisions into one of class and wealth divides.

Dr M questions BN strategists, says Umno to decide Najib’s fate

By Zurairi AR
PUTRAJAYA, May 7 – Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today that Umno would have to decide if Datuk Seri Najib Razak should step down as party leader after Barisan Nasional’s (BN) worse ever electoral performance.
He also questioned Najib’s strategists, and pointed out that their ideas may have contributed to BN’s poor performance.
The former prime minister (picture) said that Najib was expected to face tough questions from critics who will question his capabilities and strategies.
“I had hoped that this time BN would get more seats than in 2008 ... I’m quite disappointed and shocked to find out that in the end BN got less than in 2008,” Dr Mahathir told reporters at the Perdana Leadership Foundation here.
Related story: Dr M blames ungrateful Chinese and greedy Malays for BN’s worst performance
According Dr Mahathir, he did not expect that even after changing leaders from Tun Abdullah Ahmad to Datuk Seri Najib Razak, BN would still fare worse.
“We see his performance was worse than Abdullah. This is something I myself did not expect.”
Sources from the ruling party said today that Najib could step down by the end of the year, after BN extended its 56-year rule but haemorrhaged Chinese and Malay voters in its worst-ever general election performance.
Najib was already under pressure from conservatives in his ruling party for not delivering a stronger majority in yesterday’s election despite a robust economy and a RM7.8 billion deluge of social handouts to poor families.
Related story: Najib defends Utusan, dismisses urban-rural divide view
In January, Dr Mahathir suggested the same fate for Najib, despite admitting that Najib was unfortunately faced with the disadvantage of inheriting a weak government headed by Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
Dr Mahathir also had said it was his personal opinion that Najib should give way to Deputy Umno president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin if BN only scores a slim majority in the elections.
BN won 133 seats in the 222-member Parliament, well short of the two-thirds majority it lost in 2008. Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Rakyat (PR) won 89 seats, up seven from the 2008 election but still well short of unseating one of the world’s longest-serving governments.
It also lost the popular votes to PR parties, and was bested on the popularity front for the first time since 1969, when it had contested as the Alliance Party.
Related story: Utusan inciting racial sentiments to hide GE13 fraud, says Anwar

Najib defends Utusan, dismisses urban-rural divide view

By Syed Jaymal Zahiid
KUALA LUMPUR, May 7 — Barisan Nasional chairman Datuk Seri Najib Razak has dismissed polls data showing an urban-rural divide and defended Utusan Malaysia against accusations of racism after the Umno-owned paper blamed the Chinese for the coalition’s poor showing in the May 5 polls.
The prime minister said the coalition’s own study contradicted claims that BN is favoured only in rural Malaysia, as its own survey showed increased Malay support in the urban areas.
He also appeared to blame Utusan Malaysia’s attacks against the Chinese community on the DAP, claiming the predominantly Chinese opposition party had misled the Chinese into greater racial polarisation by making them think that voting the party would lead to a change of government.
“You blamed Utusan but you don’t ask about the Chinese papers,” Najib told a press conference when asked how is he to achieve national reconciliation if Utusan kept harping on race issues.
He did not say what was objectionable in the Chinese-language newspapers.
Related story: MIC’s Saravanan backs Utusan, says Chinese ungrateful
“What we realise is the opposition party, and particularly the DAP, had painted this picture that if they voted for them they could change the government. And those who voted for the government really believed that they could change the government.
“Even though a huge percentage of them supported the opposition, the government did not change, the BN government is still here. Because the reality is you cannot change the government without the support of the Bumiputeras,” he said.
Analysts have said data from voting trends showed the outcome of Election 2013 was not simply the result of a “Chinese tsunami” as Datuk Seri Najib Razak has claimed but a major swing in the urban and middle-class electorate that saw Malaysia’s urban-rural rift widen.
But Utusan Malaysia, a newspaper that has represented the right-wing forces aligned largely with Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, decided today to publish a number of stories blaming the Chinese for dividing Malaysia.
Related story: Dr M blames ungrateful Chinese and greedy Malays for BN’s worst performance
Umno’s Utusan Malaysia front-paged today the question “Apa lagi Cina mahu (What else do the Chinese want?) in what appeared to be an attempt to shape the results of Election 2013 as a Chinese-vs-Malay vote.
Utusan Malaysia’s front page suggests that Najib will have his hands full dealing with the powerful right-wing faction in Umno from which he received strong backing in the elections.
An analysis of how the vote went shows a country with rural-urban and class divisions that will make any reconciliation and necessary reforms even more difficult to implement.
The need to continue dismantling Bumiputera policies and to introduce the controversial bitter pill of a Goods and Services Tax (GST) — steps necessary to make Malaysia more competitive and lift it out of a middle-income trap — appears to be even more daunting because of the conflicting tug-of-war between the two Malaysias that have emerged.
Related story: In BN win Najib faces tug-of-war between two Malaysias
Yesterday, a former editor of the Umno-owned New Straits Times said BN’s weaker showing in Election 2013 points to a strong wave of rejection from all Malaysians and not just from the minority Chinese.
Datuk A. Kadir Jasin observed that the 13-party coalition not only drew fewer seats in the 222-member Dewan Rakyat and 12 state assemblies in Sunday’s general election compared to 2008, but also lost the popular vote for the first time since polls in 1969.
“Is it not possible that this is not a Chinese tsunami or racial chauvinism but a Malaysian tsunami that is centred on the aspiration and new reality, especially among young voters?” the man who had been group editor-in-chief of the public-listed News Straits Times Press during the Mahathir administration wrote in his blog.
Najib had alluded to a “Chinese tsunami” in an immediate speech just after midnight on Sunday when the Election Commission announced the BN as winners by a simple majority, but the veteran journalist brushed aside the perception as unlikely.
Kadir highlighted that BN took a severe beating this round and bled more seats at both the federal and state levels compared to 2008, leaving it with only 133 federal seats and 274 out of the 505 total state seats despite wresting back Kedah from the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) pact.
Related story: Few elections in the world are genuinely democratic, says Kofi Annan
Meanwhile, on suggestions that the division was more of class and urban-rural gap, the Umno president stressed that BN has the data to show that Malay support in the urban seats have increased since Election 2008.
“We have facts... in the urban areas... that represent the Malays basically strengthened,” he said.
Najib also said DAP’s communal politicking was the chief factor behind the coalition’s reduced majority and that if the Chinese support remained at the same level as 2008, BN would have won the May 5 polls with a supermajority in light of the returning urban Malay votes.
“It is because of their lies to convince the Chinese that they can change the government. That was the problem. If say we have 25 per cent of Chinese support, we would have won two-thirds,” he said.
Najib had previously said that the aftermath of Election 2013 saw deeper racial divide and vowed to embark on a “national reconciliation” effort to unite a split country.
Today the country’s sixth premier held a closed-door meeting with all BN lawmakers where he instructed them to work harder to improve the coalition’s standing, including a directive against racialising its poor performance in Sunday’s ballot.
Related story: Anwar seeks ‘national consensus’ to reject BN rule

Opposition to fight 'stolen' Malaysia polls: Anwar

Anwar Ibrahim said Monday his Malaysian opposition planned to contest the results of a bitter weekend election battle and that the 56-year-old ruling bloc, which retained its grip on power, had "lost its legitimacy".
"I today maintain we won the elections. The Election Commission is complicit in the crime of stealing the election from Malaysians," Anwar told AFP in an interview.
"The government has lost its legitimacy."
Members of Anwar's Pakatan Rakyat (People's Pact) opposition alliance were left bitter and despondent after a Sunday election that they hoped would end with a historic change of power but left them with only minimal gains.
Related story: PM sworn in as opposition protests 'stolen' Malaysia poll
Pakatan had launched a stiff challenge to the ruling coalition that has governed since independence, but the regime won a firm majority in the 222-member parliament in a vote dogged by reports of irregularities.
"We will look at cases in about 30 to 40 constituencies in question and whether (to file) election petitions or to go to the courts," Anwar said.
It was unclear how much legal recourse was available to the opposition. Critics of the Barisan Nasional (National Front) government say it has a history of leaning on courts and other institutions in cases that threaten the regime.
Related story: Malaysians in S’pore react with anger, disappointment over BN win
Prime Minister Najib Razak has denied fraud and rejected any challenge to the polls. He was scheduled to be sworn in by Malaysia's king at 4:00 pm (0800 GMT), his office said.
Pakatan has made major inroads in recent years under Anwar -- a former Barisan star who was ousted and jailed by the regime in a 1998 power struggle -- by capitalising on public fatigue with corruption and authoritarianism.
 

Silver Coin Collectors and Pawn Shops are Getting Duped: “Very High Quality Fakes”

Mac Slavo
May 6th, 2013
SHTFplan.com

With rising precious metals prices comes the age-old scam of counterfeits.
Fake gold coins and bars,  many originating from China, have been discovered at dealers all over the world, including some high profile banks. Some analysts have even suspected that central banks, which hold thousands of tons of gold, may have fallen prey to the scam.
With silver having recently achieved all times highs and currently trading at around $25 per ounce, counterfeiters see a potential boon for their bottom lines. Counterfeiting silver isn’t new, and numerous fake 100 ounce silver bars and U.S. Morgan dollarshave been discovered to date. But now the scammers have turned their sights on the official one ounce bullion coin of the United States – the American Silver Eagle. In April, the US Mint sold in excess of four million silver eagles, highlighting the surging popularity of the coin.
With many more millions of ounces being traded on the open market at traditional coin shops, online retailers and popular auction web sites, unscrupulous counterfeiters can easily slip fake coins into the mix. They do so through online auction sites, where unsuspecting buyers think they’re getting the real thing. Those collectors may then end up visiting a broker in their local area who unknowingly purchases the bunk coins and resells them to other buyers. The process happens everyday and is responsible for perhaps tens of thousands of fake silver coins and bars now in circulation.
In Hamilton, Ontario, the problem is so widespread that they have dedicated a special task force to investigate the five hundred fake American Eagles discovered in the hands of dealers and private owners.
Buyer beware, because that 99.9% silver coin you think you may have in your possession may be nothing more than practically worthless silver plated brass:
Police are warning that fake U.S silver eagle dollar coins have been circulating in the city and have been sold to various establishments over the past few months.
“You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference (with) the naked eye. The coins are actually very high quality fakes,” Const. Mike La Combe said in a Hamilton Police YouTube video. “They are silver and nickel-plated, which gives them the look of an actual silver dollar. However, when you cut them open, you can clearly see on the inside, they are brass filled.”
The video shows some of the roughly 500 fakes that have been confiscated so far.
“They are worth practically nothing, just a couple cents each,” La Combe explained.
LaCombe is a pawn unit investigator and says the coins are being bought online, then sold at “golden” times for the seller when shops are busy or with little staff. During the rush, employees may not have the time to do all the proper authenticity checks, giving criminals the chance to sell fast without getting caught.
“Only buy them from reputable dealers, a place that is established, an expert who works there who knows the difference between real and fake. Don’t buy them off the internet. and don’t buy them from people from the public who aren’t considered experts because more than likely you’re going to get a fake,” added Le Combe.
Via: CBC Hamilton

As the Precious Metals Paper Market Manipulates, the Physical Counterfeit Market Expands

Shenandoah - by John Galt
Is there a relationship between an increase in the manipulation of paper Gold and Silver prices and the sudden appearance of counterfeit coinage on the market?
First, let’s review this video from the Hamilton Police Department in Ontario Canada:

The CBC broke this story in Canada on April 25, 2013 stating:
“You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference (with) the naked eye. The coins are actually very high quality fakes,” Const. Mike La Combe said in a Hamilton Police YouTube video. “They are silver and nickel-plated, which gives them the look of an actual silver dollar. However, when you cut them open, you can clearly see on the inside, they are brass filled.”
The video shows some of the roughly 500 fakes that have been confiscated so far.
“They are worth practically nothing, just a couple cents each,” La Combe explained.
LaCombe is a pawn unit investigator and says the coins are being bought online, then sold at “golden” times for the seller when shops are busy or with little staff. During the rush, employees may not have the time to do all the proper authenticity checks, giving criminals the chance to sell fast without getting caught.
Why is this important? In the same rush inside the United States there is a panic to buy and sell physical coinage based on the idea promoted by the financial media that this is a repeat of 1980-1982 where gold and silver prices collapsed and remained dormant for essentially twenty years as the central banks pressed ahead with a massive currency manipulation to assure the United States of its reserve currency status.
The true test of a fiat currency and phony economy is to determine just how far it can be pushed before the average citizen panics and desires an alternative real currency versus the nonsense pushed on the masses as reality. The best example of this is a quick comparison between the crash in the so-called paper silver market versus physical demand:
SILVER_6MOCASHjgfla
The chart of silver prices above is a totally from reality because it is a blatant attempt to manipulate markets and force that small percentage of the population out of the physical metal to help the banksters repay and repatriate hard currency to real customers that they can not fulfill. The margins on Silver American Eagles reflect that in no uncertain terms as per 24hr Gold the 52 week average is still at 26.46% and at many dealerships that actually have inventory, north of 35%!!!!!
24HRGOLD_SAEPREMIUMjgfla(source: 24hrgold.com registration required)
Yet with all the real evidence people think that governments are not going to promote stories about fake gold or counterfeit sliver on the market? There is a concerted effort by the central banks of the world to dissuade citizens from holding real money and to trust the fiat fallacies they have been promoting in one last ditch effort to save the flailing economies of the West and pray that the suckers will remain and absorb the soon to be hyperinflationary structure being installed to bail out the financial system and the hundreds of billions of dollars, pounds, euros, and cow dung in obligations! So why not promote stories about collapsing market prices and counterfeits to stymie record demand, it’s the last page in their playbook and all they have left!!!!
If anyone think that the system will survive then of course that individual is at the wrong website. I preach doom because history teaches us that man is prone to greed and failure when solutions based on an alternate reality are attempted. The destruction of retirements, freedom, and purchasing power which will soon follow. It  will make many who are shunning today’s physical prices including the premiums ask the question their grandchildren will demand an answer to also:
Why did I wait so long to think about buying physical gold and silver?
http://johngaltfla.com/wordpress/2013/05/06/as-the-precious-metals-paper-market-manipulates-the-physical-counterfeit-market-expands/

THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANKERS

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer'; but you are making it a den of robbers."
Matthew 21, verses 12-13
"All of the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arises, not from the defects of the Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation."
-- John Adams, Founding Father
(In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1787)
Congressman Louis T. McFadden said the following during a speech before Congress on June 10, 1932:
"Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. 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. The depredations and the iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks acting together have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.
Some people think the Federal Reserve banks are United States Government institutions. They are not government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders. In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man's throat to get a dollar out of his pocket; there are those who send money into states to buy votes to control our legislation; and there are those who maintain an international propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us and wheedling us into the granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime."
PERVASIVE MONEY PROBLEMS IN AMERICA
Americans, living in "the richest nation on earth," always seem to be short of money. Women are working in unprecedented numbers, men hope for overtime hours to earn more. Many take part-time jobs evenings and weekends. Children look for odd jobs to earn spending money. But the family debt climbs higher. And psychologists say one of the biggest causes of family quarrels and breakups is "arguments over money." Much of this trouble can be traced to our "counterfeit money" system, which leaves government free to perpetrate the most destructive monetary and economic crimes.
On the national scale, in just ten years the federal debt has grown from less than one trillion dollars to over four trillion. (In Chapter Nine we will discover that the real national debt is much bigger.) The annual interest on that debt is over $250 billion. And now we are told (not asked) that we must come up with between $200 billion and $500 billion to "save" the S & L institutions. All this for only one reason: to protect and perpetuate a fundamentally flawed system whose only object is to enrich and empower the Federal Reserve bankers who own and operate the system.
During the last few years America has become by far the largest debtor nation of the world. And our politicians have made their "contributions" with boundless "generosity!" John Danforth, Republican senator from Missouri, was reported in the Arizona Republic of April 21, 1992 as follows:
"I have never seen more senators express discontent with their jobs. ... I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country. Deep down in our hearts, we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. ... We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected."
PAPER CURRENCY CAN BE A VERY PROFITABLE HUMAN CREATION
Economists use the word "create" when speaking of the process by which paper currency comes into existence. "Creation" means making something that did not exist before. Lumbermen make boards from trees, workers build houses from lumber, and factories manufacture automobiles from metal, glass, and other materials. But in all these cases they did not create. They only changed existing materials into more usable and more valuable forms. Not so with currency. Here we actually create something out of nothing. A piece of paper of little value is printed so it becomes worth a piece of lumber. That difference in value is literally created out of nothing. And with different numbers printed on the piece of paper, it can buy the automobile or even the house. The value of the paper has been created in the true sense of the word.
Paper currency can be created honestly or fraudulently. Gold and silver certificates, being receipts for gold and silver, with a guarantee to pay the bearer on demand, are honest paper currency. Federal Reserve Notes currently in circulation constitute fraudulent, counterfeit paper currency.
Counterfeit paper currency is very cheap to "create," and whoever prints it makes a huge profit! Builders work hard to make a profit of 5% above their cost in building a house. Auto makers sell their cars 1% to 2% above the cost of manufacture, which is considered good business. But counterfeit paper currency "manufacturers" have no limit on their profits since a few cents will print a $1 bill, a $100 bill, or even a $10,000 bill.
THE DANGER OF A MONOPOLISTIC CENTRAL BANK
Thomas Jefferson understood the danger of putting the power to control the currency of a nation in the hands of a few individuals in the form of a monopolistic central bank. This is why he opposed Alexander Hamilton's scheme to establish the First Bank of the United States. Let me repeat what he said in 1791:
"If the American people ever allow the banks to control issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied."
President Andrew Jackson also understood the danger. He refused to renew the charter (a grant of monopoly) of the Second Bank of the United States. In 1836 Jackson said to the bankers trying to persuade him to renew their charter (so they could continue their harmful monopoly):
"You are a den of vipers. I intend to rout you out and by the Eternal God I will rout you out. If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning."
On December 22, 1913, the day before President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, Congressman Charles A. Lindberg Sr. (father of the famous aviator) said to the House:
"This Act establishes the most gigantic trust** on earth. When the President signs this bill, the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be legalized. The people may not know it immediately, but the day of reckoning is only a few years removed. The trusts** will soon realize that they have gone too far even for their own good. The people must make a declaration of independence to relieve themselves from the Monetary Power. This they will be able to do by taking control of Congress. Wall Streeters could not cheat us if you Senators and Representatives did not make a humbug of Congress... The greatest crime of Congress is its currency system. The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking bill. The caucus and the party bosses have again operated and prevented the people from getting the benefit of their own government."
[** At that time the word "trust" was synonymous with "monopoly."]
THE DEPRESSION OF THE 1930s
In 1930 America did not lack industrial capacity, fertile farmland, skilled or willing workers, or industrious families. It had an extensive and highly efficient transportation system in railroads, road networks, and inland and ocean waterways. Communications between regions and localities were the best in the world, utilizing telephone, teletype, radio, and a well-operated mail system. No war had ravaged the cities or the countryside, no pestilence weakened the population, nor had famine stalked the land.
In America's Great Depression, Murray N. Rothbard, Professor of Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, describes how the creation of the Federal Reserve System increased the bankers' ability to inflate the currency supply sixfold. During 1923 to 1929 the bankers did inflate the currency supply enormously. Such an artificial inflation inevitably brings about a subsequent need for deflation. Federal Reserve bankers, the source of America's currency and credit, reduced the currency supply by refusing loans to stable and growing industries, stores, and farmers. At the same time they demanded payment on existing loans. They also increased interest rates. Currency was rapidly taken out of circulation and was not replaced. America was put in a depression and in deep trouble. Goods were available to be purchased, jobs waiting to be done, but little currency was available. Twenty-five percent of workers were laid off. Banks took possession of tens of thousands of farms and businesses through foreclosure. Gloom settled over America.
The contraction of the currency supply caused the stock market to collapse and the ensuing depression. Seven months before the collapse, Paul Warburg, the main architect of the Federal Reserve System, in his annual report to the stockholders of his International Acceptance Bank, wrote:
"If the orgies of unrestrained speculation are permitted to spread, the ultimate collapse is certain not only to affect the speculators themselves, but to bring about a general depression involving the entire country."
Both the inflation and the deflation, causing the depression, had been planned - as predicted by Jefferson in 1791!
CURRENCY INFLATION ENDED THE "GREAT DEPRESSION"
The depression lasted until 1939, when the Federal Reserve System began to send large amounts of currency into circulation for military preparedness. As soon as the currency supply went up, people were hired back to work, farms sold their produce instead of plowing it under, mines reopened, factories began to hum, both industrial and residential construction began anew, and the "Great Depression" was over. Some politicians were blamed for it and others took credit for ending it. The truth was that bankers caused it and bankers ended it. The people were never told that simple truth. The bankers who "manufacture" and "control" our currency have used their huge profits to "buy" our politicians, and ultimately to control our government.
POWER TO COIN AND REGULATE MONEY
When we see the disastrous results of an artificially created shortage of currency, we can better understand why our Founding Fathers insisted on placing the power to create and control money in the hands of Congress. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution states, "The Congress shall have power... to coin money, regulate the value thereof... "
But in 1913 Congress passed the "Federal Reserve Act," relinquishing the power to create and control money to the Federal Reserve Corporation, a private company owned and controlled by bankers. The word "Federal" was used only to deceive the people. The term "central bank" was carefully avoided. The Federal Reserve Act created a Board of Directors, the Federal Reserve Board, to run the Federal Reserve Corporation with a monopoly to create and control the currency of the United States.
This infamous legislation was accompanied with appropriate fanfare and propaganda that it would "remove money from politics" and "prevent boom and bust from hurting our citizens." The people were not told then, and still do not know today, that the Federal Reserve Corporation is a private monopoly controlled by bankers, operated for the financial gain of the bankers at the expense of the people.
Since that day of infamy a small group of privileged people who lend us "our money," have accrued to themselves all of the profits of printing paper currency - and more! Since 1913 they have created trillions of dollars in currency and credit, which as their own personal property, they then lend to our government and our people, with interest. "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer" had become the secret policy of our national government.
The main architect of the Federal Reserve System was Paul Moritz Warburg, who came from a famous German banking family. The kingpin who steered the Federal Reserve Act through Congress was Senator Nelson Aldrich, Chairman of the Finance Committee. He was the maternal grandfather of Nelson A. Rockefeller, of Standard Oil and Chase Manhattan Bank. Aldrich's daughter, Abby Greene Aldrich, married John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1901. At the time, many people regarded Senator Aldrich as the Rockefeller family's mouthpiece in the Senate.
The Federal Reserve Act was passed during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. Just before he died Wilson is reported to have said that he had been deceived and "I have betrayed my country." He also said:
"A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit has been concentrated. The growth of the nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world - no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men."
WHO OWNS THE FEDERAL RESERVE?
There has been much speculation about who owns the Federal Reserve Corporation. It has been one of the best kept secrets of the century, because the Federal Reserve Act Act of 1913 provided that the names of the owner banks be kept secret. However, R. E. McMaster publisher of the newsletter The Reaper, asked his Swiss banking contacts which banks hold the controlling stock in the Federal Reserve Corporation. The answer:
  1. Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin
  2. Lazard Brothers Bank of Paris
  3. Israel Moses Sieff Banks of Italy
  4. Warburg Bank of Hamburg and Amsterdam
  5. Lehman Brothers Bank of New York
  6. Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York
  7. Chase Manhattan Bank of New York
  8. Goldman Sachs Bank of New York.
In The Secrets Of The Federal Reserve, Eustace Mullins indicates that, because the Federal Reserve Bank of New York sets interest rates and controls the daily supply and price of currency throughout the U.S., the owners of that bank are the real directors of the entire system. Mullins states:
"The shareholders of these banks which own the stock of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York are the people who have controlled our political and economic destinies since 1914. They are the Rothschilds, Lazard Freres (Eugene Mayer), Israel Sieff, Kuhn Loeb Company, Warburg Company, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, the Rockefeller family, and the J.P. Morgan interests."
THEY PRINT IT - WE BORROW IT AND PAY THEM INTEREST
An example of the process of currency creation and its conversion into "people's debt" will aid our understanding. The Federal Government, having spent more than it has taken from its citizens in taxes, needs (for the sake of illustration) $1 billion. Since it does not have the currency, and Congress has given away its authority to create it, the government must go to the creators for the $1 billion. But the Federal Reserve, a private corporation, does not give its currency away for free! The bankers are willing to deliver $1 billion in currency or credit to the federal government in exchange for the government's agreement to pay it back with interest. So Congress authorizes the Treasury Department to print $1 billion in U.S. Bonds, which are then delivered to the Federal Reserve bankers. (The bonds are a kind of "IOU" that bears interest.)
The U.S. Treasury prints $1 billion in bank notes. The printing cost is about $20.62 per 1,000 bills - it costs the same irrespective of the denomination - the cost of printing a $1 note is about the same as for a $100 note: about .0206 cents. The Federal Reserve "buys" these bills from the U.S. Treasury, paying only for the printing costs. The bills are then exchanged at full face value for the bonds. The government uses the currency to pay its obligations. What are the results of this fantastic transaction? Well, the government's bills are paid all right, but the U.S. Government has now indebted the people to the Federal Reserve bankers for $1 billion plus interest!
Since this process has been going on since 1913, the people are now indebted to the bankers to the tune of trillions of dollars. The people are taxed billions of dollars each month just to pay the interest on this "national debt." With both the principal and the interest climbing every month, there is no hope of ever paying off this "debt." The working people of the United States now "owe" the approximately 300 banking families and their consorts more than the assessed value of all the assets in the United States. And realize, the bankers got all this for the cost of paper, ink, and bookkeeping!
THE MOUNTAIN OF DEBT
You say this is terrible! Yes it is, but this is only part of the sordid story. Under this "debt-currency" system, those U.S. Bonds referred to above have now become assets of the banks, called their "reserve." Regular commercial banks use these assets to issue loans to individual and commercial customers. Since the banking laws require only about a 12% reserve, this means the banking fraternity can lend up to eight times the amount of the bonds they have on hand. As a result of the $1 billion discussed here, they can lend $8 billion to private customers at interest. This means that together with the $1 billion lent to the government, the bankers can lend out $9 billion at interest for the original cost to them of about $400,000 for the printing! And because the Federal Reserve bankers have been granted a monopoly, the only way our people and businesses can get currency to carry on trade and expand industry and farming is to borrow it from the bankers!
USING DEBT TO EXPAND CONTROL
In addition to the vast wealth drawn to them through this almost unlimited usury, the bankers who control the currency are able to approve or disapprove large loans to big and successful corporations. Bankers can refuse a loan, thereby depressing the price of a corporation's shares on the stock exchange. This enables the bankers' agents to buy large blocks of the shares at depressed prices. Then they can approve a multi-million dollar loan to the corporation, resulting in its share price rising, allowing the bankers' agents to sell the shares, sometimes making huge profits. In this manner billions of dollars are made to buy even more shares.
Using this method since 1913, the bankers and their agents have purchased secret or open control of almost every large corporation in America. Using that control, they force the corporations to borrow huge sums from their banks so that corporate earnings are partially siphoned off in the form of interest paid to the banks. This leaves little "actual profit" to be paid out as dividends.
When bankers lend more, the currency supply expands. When they reign in the loans, the currency supply contracts. By expanding or contracting the currency supply, the bankers can make the stock market go up or down at their pockets' content! They can cause "busts and booms" almost as they wish.
That is why President James A. Garfield said, "Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce."
At the time of writing (July, 1992), the New York stock market has been hovering around record highs for months, while the economy continues to suffer a protracted slump. The bankers no doubt want the stock market to be high and the economy to recover before the coming presidential election. Keep in mind that they endorse all three presidential candidates. Tweedledum and Tweedledee; or Louie, Huey, and Dewey; or Larry, Mo, and Curly - they are all in the hands of the bankers.
WHY LOANS EVENTUALLY SHRINK THE CURRENCY SUPPLY
The only way new currency goes into circulation in America under this wicked system is when someone borrows it from a banker. When people are confident of success, they borrow more currency, which increases the currency supply, and all seem to prosper for a while. Then, as they pay off their loans, the available currency supply shrinks and currency becomes "scarce." Borrowers must always take more currency out of circulation when they repay their loans, than they put in circulation when they receive their loans. Interest and charges make the repayment total larger than the loan. This means that only more people borrowing still more can keep the medium of exchange available to the nation.
This example may aid understanding. When a citizen goes to a banker to borrow $100,000 to purchase a home or a farm, and the loan is granted, the banker gives the borrower a check for $100,000 or credits the borrower's account with $100,000. The borrower, in turn, writes the necessary checks to the builder, seller, subcontractors, etc. (who, in turn, write more checks), thereby putting $100,000 of "checkbook currency" into circulation. However, on a 30-year mortgage with 10% interest, the banker wants $828 per month, or a total of $316,080. The buyer must take that $316,080 out of circulation, reducing the overall amount in circulation by $216,080.
The banker has not really produced anything of value, except the slip of paper called a check or deposit slip. Yet the banker ends up having $216,080 more than he had before, minus a few hundred dollars of clerical and office costs. But the people, as a whole, have $216,080 less.
WHY SMALL LOANS HAVE THE SAME EFFECT
For those who haven't quite grasped the impact, let us consider an auto loan for only three years. Step one: citizen borrows $6,000 and pays it into circulation (to the dealer, factory, etc.). Citizen agrees to repay the banker $7,200. Step two: Citizen pays $200 per month. In 36 months citizen has taken $7,200 out of circulation and paid it to the bank. Net result? $1,200 less currency in circulation.
Since currency requirements increase with expanding population, industry, and commerce, and paying off any loan decreases the available currency supply, it is clear that we would quickly run out of currency, unless more and more people borrow more and more currency to keep currency in circulation!
Multiply the above examples by hundreds of millions of times since 1913, and you can see why America has fallen from a prosperous debt-free nation to the most debt-ridden country in the world. Practically every home, farm, and business is heavily mortgaged to the bankers. Practically all our cars, furniture, and clothes are purchased with borrowed currency. The interest to the bankers on personal, state, and federal debt totals more than 25% of the combined earnings of the working population!
THE COST TO THE BANKERS? PRACTICALLY NOTHING
In the tens of millions of transactions made each year like those shown here, relatively few bank notes change hands, nor is it necessary that they do. 95% of all "cash" transactions in the U.S. are by check. Checks are thus effectively also currency. The banker creates the so-called "loan" by writing a check or deposit slip, not against actual money, but against your promise to pay back the loan. The only cost to the bank is the paper, ink, and a few dollars in salaries and office costs for each transaction. It is "check-kiting" on an enormous scale! The profits are enormous as shown below.
THE COST TO YOU? PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING
In 1910 the U.S. federal debt was $1,147,000,000 - $12 per citizen. State and local debts were practically non-existent, and government was small and not oppressive.
By 1920, after only six years of the Federal Reserve handling our currency, the federal debt had jumped to $24 billion - $228 per citizen. The Federal Government began to grow like an invisible cancer in its early stages.
By 1968 the federal debt had jumped to $347 billion - $1,717 per citizen. Ten years later, by 1978 it had doubled again to $763 billion - $3,500 per citizen. That is a debt of $17,500 for every family of five in America. Federal debt has been growing faster and faster since. And the Federal Government has become a debilitating cancer rapidly sapping and weakening its victim.
Today in 1992 the federal debt is over $4 trillion. (And they "cook the books" on the low side to come up with that figure - see Chapter Nine.) The $4 trillion national debt amounts to $16,000 per citizen, or $80,000 per family of five. And if that debt were calculated in terms of working or tax-paying families, it would be considerably higher. The Federal Government has become a bloated, out-of-control parasite, a terminal cancer. The economy seems so weak that even after many months of blowing up the currency supply, signs of recovery have to be searched for. The entire system may be on the brink of complete collapse.
The above figures do not include state, municipal, school district, business, or personal debts, which total an additional $3 trillion. Total debt in America is thus over $7 trillion - $28,000 per citizen - $120,000 per family of five. This is more than twice the assessed value of all the land and buildings in America. Effectively all of America has been signed over to the bankers. They can take America and we would still owe them another America! Of course, it is to their advantage not to take actual title to the property, so we will not realize that we really own nothing. Instead they leave us with "ownership" so we will willingly continue to work and pay ever higher tributes to the bankers.
What we really have is national bankruptcy. Let me repeat the words of Senator John Danforth:
"I have never seen more senators express discontent with their jobs. ... I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country. Deep down in our hearts, we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. ... We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected."
THE INEXORABLE TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE BANKERS
To grasp the fact that periodic withdrawal of currency through interest payments to the bankers will inexorably transfer all wealth in the nation to the receivers of interest, imagine yourself in a poker or dice game. Everyone has to buy chips (the medium of exchange) from a "banker" who does not risk chips in the game, but watches the table and every hour reaches in and takes 10% to 15% of all the chips on the table. As the game progresses, the number of chips in the possession of each player will go up and down with his or her "luck." However, the total number of chips available to play the game (carry on business and trade) will decrease steadily, while the "banker's" mountain of chips just grows and grows.
The game will get low on chips, and some players will run out. If they want to continue to play, they must buy or borrow more chips from the "banker." The "banker" will sell (lend) the player more chips only if the player signs a "mortgage" agreeing to give the "banker" some real property (car, home, farm, business, etc.). If the payments should go into default, the banker takes the property. The payments must be made on time, whether the player wins (makes a profit) or not.
It is easy to see that no matter how skillfully the players play, eventually the "banker" will end up with all of his chips back. Except for the very best or "luckiest" players, the rest, if they stay in the game long enough, will end up owing to the "banker" their cars, their homes, their farms, their businesses, and perhaps even their watches, rings, and the shirts off their backs!
Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920s, and the second richest man in Britain at the time, said:
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them in power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits."
Our real-life situation is much worse than any poker game. In a poker game no one is forced to go into debt, and anyone can quit at any time and keep whatever he or she still has. But in real life, even if we borrow little ourselves from the bankers, the local, state, and federal governments borrow billions in our name, squander it, then confiscate our earnings from us and pay it to the bankers with interest. We are forced to play their game, and it seems we can only leave the game by dying. We pay as long as we live, and our children pay after we die. If we cannot pay, the same government sends the police to take our property and give it to the bankers. The bankers risk nothing (at least, the Federal Reserve bankers) in the game; they just collect their percentage and "win it all." In Las Vegas all the games are "rigged" to pay the house (owner) a percentage. They rake in millions. The Federal Reserve bankers' "game" is similarly rigged, and it pays off in billions.
In recent years bankers have added more "cards" to their game. "Credit" cards are promoted as a convenience and a great boon to trade. Actually, they are ingenious devices by which bankers collect %2 to 5% of every retail sale from the seller and 18% or more interest from buyers. A real stacked deck!
POLITICIANS AND BANKERS IN THE SAME LEAGUE
Democrat, Republican, and Independent voters have wondered why politicians always spend more tax currency than they collect. The reason should now be clear. When you study our "debt-currency" system, you soon realize that the politicians are not the agents of the people. They are the agents of the Federal Reserve bankers, for whom they plan ways to place the people further in debt. Let me again quote the words of Senator John Danforth:
"I have never seen more senators express discontent with their jobs. ... I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country. Deep down in our hearts, we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. ... We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected."
Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution states, "The Congress shall have power... to coin money, regulate the value thereof... " But what have our politicians done? In 1913 they traitorously gave the U.S. Treasury to the Federal Reserve bankers - lock, stock, and barrel! Someone recently asked, "What's the difference between Kindergarten and Congress?" Answer: "One has adult supervision!" Actually, we shouldn't criticize Congress, after all, we have the best Congress money can buy. Chapter Ten examines Congress in more detail.
FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM AUDIT
The Federal Reserve has never been audited by the government. In 1975 a bill H. R. 4316, to require Federal Reserve audits, was introduced in Congress. Due to pressure from the currency-controllers, it was rejected. No audit of the Federal Reserve has ever been done.
MOUNTING DEBTS AND WARS
We, as a people are now ruled by a "banker-owned system" that has usurped the mantle of government, disguised itself as our legitimate government, and set about to pauperize and control the people. It is now a centralized, all-powerful apparatus whose main purposes are spending the people's currency, promoting war, and propagandizing to perpetuate itself in power. Our two large political parties (the "Demopublicans" also called "Republicrats") have become its servants, the various departments of government its spending agencies, and the Internal Revenue Service its collection agency.
Unknown to the people, our "banker-owned system" operates in close cooperation with similar apparatuses in other nations, also disguised as "governments." Some, we are told, are friends. Others, we are told, are enemies. "Enemies" are built up through international manipulations and used to frighten the American people into going billions of dollars more into debt to the bankers for "military preparedness," "foreign aid to stop communism," "minority rights," etc. Citizens, deliberately confused by brainwashing propaganda, watch helplessly while our politicians give our food, goods, and gold to banker-controlled alien governments under the guise of "better relations," "easing tensions," or "humanitarian aide." Our banker-controlled government takes our finest and bravest sons and sends them into foreign wars, where tens of thousands are murdered and hundreds of thousands are crippled. Other thousands are morally corrupted and addicted to drugs. When the "war" is over we have gained nothing, but we are scores of billions more in debt to the bankers - which was the real reason for the war in the first place!
MORE THAN JUST ECONOMIC RAPE
The profits from these massive debts have been used to erect a complete and almost hidden economic and political colossus over our nation. Our "banker-owned system" keeps telling us they are trying to do us good, when in truth they work to harm and injure the people. These would-be despots know it is easier to control and rob an ignorant, poorly-educated, and confused people than it is an informed population, so they deliberately degrade our educational systems. For the same reason they secretly favor drug use, alcohol, racial conflict, and crime in general. Their "war on drugs," as an example, only produces more drug use and a host of related crimes. Everything which debilitates the minds and bodies of the people is secretly encouraged, as it makes the people less able to oppose them, or even to understand what is being done to them. The system wants mediocre, unthinking, helpless "sheople."
Family, morals, and all that is honorable is being swept away, while our "banker-owned system" builds their new subservient man, the foundation of their "new world order." Our new rulers are trying to change our whole political, social, and racial order, but they will not change the debt-currency economic system by which they rob and rule. Our people have become tenants and "debt-slaves" to the bankers and their agents in the land our fathers conquered. It is conquest through the most gigantic fraud and swindle in the history of humankind. And we remind you again: The key to their wealth and power over us is their monopolistic ability to "create" currency out of nothing and to lend it to us at interest. If Congress had not allowed them to do that, they never would have gained secret control over our nation.
CONTROLLED NEWS AND INFORMATION
This currency-lender conspiracy ("consPIRACY") is as old as Babylon. Even in America it dates far back before 1913. Actually, 1913 was the year in which the way opened for complete economic conquest of our people. The conspiracy is old enough to America so that the system's agents have been for many years in positions such as newspaper publishers, editors, columnists, church ministers, university presidents, professors, textbook authors, attorneys, accountants, labor union leaders, movie makers, radio and TV commentators, politicians from school board members to U.S. Presidents, and many others.
These agents control the information available to our people. They manipulate public opinion, elect who they will locally and nationally, and never expose the crooked currency system. They promote school bonds, municipal bonds, expensive and detrimental farm programs, "urban renewal," "foreign aid," and many other schemes which will put the people more in debt to the bankers. Thoughtful citizens wonder why billions are spent on one program and billions on another which may duplicate or even nullify it, such as paying some farmers not to raise crops, while at the same time building dams or canals to irrigate more farm land. Crazy or stupid? Neither. The goal is more debt. Thousands of government-sponsored ways to waste "money" are perpetrated continually. Most make no sense, but they are never exposed for what they really are: builders of billions for the bankers and debts for the people.
So-called "economic experts" write syndicated columns in hundreds of newspapers, craftily designed to prevent the people from learning the simple truth about our debt-currency system. Commentators on radio and TV, educators, and politicians blame the people as wasteful, lazy, or spendthrift, and blame the workers and consumers for the increase in debts and the inflation of prices, when they really know that the basic cause is the debt-currency system itself. Our people are drowned in charges and counter-charges designed to confuse them and keep them from understanding the evil currency system that so silently robs the workers, farmers, and business people of the fruit of their labor. And, increasingly, the system is being used to rob us of our rights and freedoms, supposedly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
In his book Inventing Reality, Michael Parenti wrote:
"Ten business and financial corporations control the three major television and radio networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), 34 subsidiary television stations, 201 cable TV systems, 62 radio stations, 20 record companies, 59 magazines, 58 newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, 41 book publishers and various motion picture companies like Columbia Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox. Three quarters of the major stockholders of ABC, CBS and NBC are banks, such as Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guaranty Trust, Citibank, and Bank of America.
The overall pattern is one of increasing concentration of ownership and earnings. According to a 1982 Los Angeles Times survey, independent daily newspapers are being gobbled up by the chains at the rate of fifty or sixty a year. Ten newspaper chains earn over half of all newspaper revenue in this country. Five media conglomerates share 95 percent of the record and tapes market with Warner and CBS alone controlling 65 percent of the market. Eight Hollywood studios account for 89 percent of U.S. feature film rentals. Three television networks earn over two-thirds of total U.S. television revenues. Seven paperback publishers dominate the mass market for books...
While having an abundance of numbers and giving an appearance of diversity, the mass media actually are highly centralized outlets that proffer a remarkably homogenized fare. News services for dailies throughout the entire nation are provided by the Associated Press and United Press International (which may soon merge with AP or go under), The New York Times-Washington Post wire services, and several foreign wire services like Reuters. The ideological viewpoint of these news conduits are pretty much the same, marked by prefabricated standardization of news which is constricting and frightening."
In his book The Media Monopoly, Ben H. Bagdikian writes:
"The power to control information is a major lever in the control of society. Giving citizens a choice in ideas and information is as important as giving them a choice in politics. If a nation has narrowly controlled information it will soon have narrowly controlled politics."
When a few informed and concerned people or organizations who know the truth begin to expose the bankers and their agents, or try to stop any of their mad schemes, the messengers are ridiculed and smeared as "right-wing extremists," "super-patriots," "bigots," "racists," "fascists," or "anti-semites." Any name is used to discredit them, and to stop other people from listening. Books and articles such as you are now reading are kept out of schools, freedomries, and book stores.
Some, who are especially vocal in their exposure of the treason committed against our people, are harassed by government agencies such as the IRS, FDA, EPA, OSHA, and others, causing them financial loss or bankruptcy. Sometimes their businesses and homes are violently raided at gunpoint, and their money, currency, equipment, and records confiscated, so it is very difficult, if at all possible to continue their business. In Chapter One the National Commodity and Barter Association was mentioned as an example of such raids. But the most striking case has been that of Ezra Pound, which is covered below.
Using these methods, the Federal Reserve bankers and their agents have been completely successful in preventing most Americans from learning the things you are reading in this report. However, in spite of their control of information, they realize that more and more citizens are learning the truth. Therefore, to prevent retaliation and armed resistance to their plunder of America, they plan to register all firearms and eventually disarm all citizens. They want to eliminate all guns not in the hands of their government police or army. Our wise Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment to the Constitution so that the people could protect themselves against the government.
Love of life, interest in your freedom, compassion for humanity, concern for your children, and the safety of all you have worked for should make you deeply interested in this, America's greatest problem. Our generation has not suffered under the bankers' yoke as the coming generations will. Usury and taxes will continue to take a larger and larger part of the earnings of the people and put them deeper into the pockets of the bankers and their agents. Increasing "government" regulations will prevent citizen protest and opposition to their control. Is it possible that your grandchildren will own neither car nor home, but will live in "government-owned" apartments and ride to work in "government-owned" buses, and be allowed to keep just enough of their earnings to buy a minimum of food and clothing, while their rulers wallow in luxury? In Asia and Eastern Europe this used to be called communism. In America it is called democracy or capitalism.
Horace Greeley stated, "While boasting of our noble deeds, we are careful to conceal the ugly fact that by an iniquitous currency system we have nationalized a system of oppression which, though more refined, is not less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery."
THE CASE OF EZRA POUND
Ezra Pound was a poet, one of America's greatest - if not the greatest. He played a major role in the development of writers and poets, such as E.E. Cummings, T.S. Elliot, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and William Carlos Williams. He also studied politics, economics, banking, and monetary theory. He disapproved of war. During World War II, he hid a number of Jews from the Nazi exterminators; if discovered the penalty would have been death. He broadcast a series of talks on Italian radio aimed at Americans. He had wanted America to stay out of the war, and he said some uncomplimentary things about President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He also stated some of his political and monetary ideas. He was accused of being a traitor. At the end of the war he was imprisoned in an American concentration camp near Pisa, Italy for six months without trial. Then he was transferred to America where he was declared insane and imprisoned in a mental hospital in Washington D.C. for thirteen years. After which the treason charges, for which he had never stood trial, were dropped, and he was released. He returned to Italy, where he lived until his death in 1972.
The reason he was not tried seems to be that his prosecutors didn't have a case that would hold up in court and/or they were afraid that he would repeat in court what he had said over the radio in Italy. Wendell Muncie, M.D., one of the psychiatrists involved in his "sanity hearing," said that Pound's insanity consisted of three factors: his passion for the U.S. Constitution, his espousal of the Confucian ethic, and his desire for world peace. No formal diagnosis of Pound's supposed "insanity" has been found. His captors in Washington openly admitted that Pound was a political prisoner. A Congressional investigation started in 1957 and completed in 1958 exposed the inadequacy of the case against Pound and led to his release.
Here are some extracts from Pound's radio talks:
  • "I think an alliance with Stalin's Russia is rotten." (January 29, 1942)
  • "Liberty is not a right but a duty." (March 8, 1942)
  • "Sovereignty inheres in the right to issue money. And the American sovereignty belongs by right to the people, and their representatives in Congress have the right to issue money and to determine the value thereof. And 120 million, 120 million suckers have lamentably failed to insist on the observation of this quite decided law. ... Now the point at which embezzlement of the nation's funds on the part of her officers becomes treason can probably be decided only by jurists, and not by hand-picked judges who support illegality." (April 9, 1942)
  • Quotes read by Pound: 1. "'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.' -- Thomas Jefferson.
    2. 'I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy.' -- Abraham Lincoln.
    3. '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; it denounces as public enemies all who question its methods, or throw light upon its crimes.' -- William Jennings Bryan." (July 26, 1942)
  • Back to Pound's own words: "Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt." (March 25, 1943)
  • "The phase of the usury system which we are trying to analyze is more or less Patterson's perception that the Bank of England could have benefit of all the interest on all the money that it creates out of nothing. ... Now the American citizen can, of course, appeal to his constitution, which states that Congress shall have power to coin money or regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin. Such appeal is perhaps quixotic." (March 30, 1943)
  • "That text is known to them that have the patience to read it, possibly one one-hundredth of one percent of the denizens. They forget it, all save a few Western states. I think somebody in Dakota once read it. The Constitution." June 30, 1943)
THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND ILLEGAL
Although there has never been a court case that challenged the legality of the Federal Reserve System, there was a challenge to the National Recovery Act or NRA, which was ruled unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court - Schechter Poultry v. U.S., 29 U.S. 495, 55 U.S. 837.842 (1935) - ruled that, "Congress may not abdicate or transfer to others its legitimate functions." Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution states, "The Congress shall have power... to coin money, regulate the value thereof... " By passing the Federal Reserve Act, Congress abdicated and transferred to the Federal Reserve bankers its constitutionally legitimate function of issuing and controlling money. If the Supreme Court ruling on the NRA is applied to the Federal Reserve System, the unconstitutionality and illegality of the Fed becomes obvious.
TELL THE PEOPLE
America will not shake off her illegal banker-controlled dictatorship as long as the people are ignorant of the hidden controllers. International bankers, who control most of the governments of the nations and most sources of information, seem to have us completely in their grasp. They are afraid of only one thing: an awakened citizenry armed with the truth. An ignorant citizen is the banker-government's best "client." An informed citizen is the banker-government's worst nightmare.
Robert H. Hemphill, Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Georgia, said:
"This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash, or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defect remedied very soon."
PRIVATE BANKING
In California a very private "non-bank" has been operating successfully for fifteen years. It caters for accounts in gold or Federal Reserve Notes. It is completely private and doesn't report to anyone. It pays interest on both gold and Federal Reserve Note balances. Ideally, we need to establish a network of private banks throughout the country, and eventually throughout the rest of the world. See Chapter Twelve.
Contents - Preface - Introduction - Bibliography - HomeChapter: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12

Missouri Welcomes Gun Manufacturers to Missouri with Land and Legislation

Activist Post

A cooperative project is underway to bring firearms and accessories manufacturers and distributors to the Howell County Ozarks region of Missouri. The project was initiated by a listener of the Americas Voice Now radio program who volunteered to put up one of three parcels of land to any manufacturer or distributor who would move to the region.

The parcels of land are available to any gun or firearm accessory manufacturer or distributor who will move to one of the parcels bringing jobs and economic benefits to the area. Missouri is a leader in the nation as a state dedicated to the principles of the Second Amendment. The State House of Representatives just gave first round approval to a tax incentive bill (HB630) aimed to providing tax credits to relocating gun manufacturers.

The “Move To Missouri” project has a list of endorsements that is impressive.

The project was initially put together by the landowner John Negri, America’s Voice Now radio program host Michael Evans and Larry Pratt, President of GOA (Gun Owners of America). They enlisted some big guns in the state to support the project including, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, Missouri State Representative Shawn Rhoads, State Senator Mike Cunningham, SCOCOG (South Central Ozarks Council of Governments) and other interested parties.

Lt. Governor Peter Kinder said, “Missouri has a well-earned reputation as a ‘gun-friendly’ state. I am proud to represent a state that values the Constitution and stands against the federal government’s attempts to infringe upon our 2nd and 10th Amendment rights. Through the efforts of Larry Pratt, Michael Evans and business leaders in the West Plains area, Missouri can send a clear message to out-of-state gun makers who face burdensome regulations, high taxes and restrictions on their products. That message is, ‘Move to Missouri.’”



The Missouri legislature is also on the cusp of passing the Second Amendment Preservation Act, (HB436 and SB325) which nullifies all federal oversight related to firearms in the state. The act declares the General Assembly’s position on the authority of the federal government and declares as invalid certain federal gun laws, prohibiting the enforcement of such laws. The state has made national headlines here and here in recent weeks with their no holds barred approach to declaring their Tenth Amendment rights to simply nullify federal laws that are extra-Constitutional.

Interested parties, firearms manufacturers, accessory makers and distributors can contact Michael Evans at mevans@AmericasVoiceNow.org or call 417-372-0686 for more information or to obtain a package outlining the parcels available and their respective benefits and features.

You can download the entire press package in .pdf form here: Press MediaPak


This press release first appeared at America's Voice Now

Read other articles and press releases by Activist Post Here

11 Reasons Why The Federal Reserve Should Be Abolished

Michael Snyder
Activist Post

If the American people truly understood how the Federal Reserve system works and what it has done to us, they would be screaming for it to be abolished immediately.  It is a system that was designed by international bankers for the benefit of international bankers, and it is systematically impoverishing the American people.  The Federal Reserve system is the primary reason why our currency has declined in value by well over 95 percent and our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger over the past 100 years.  The Fed creates our "booms" and our "busts", and they have done an absolutely miserable job of managing our economy.

But why do we need a bunch of unelected private bankers to manage our economy and print our money for us in the first place?  Wouldn't our economy function much more efficiently if we allowed the free market to set interest rates?  And according to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress is the one that is supposed to have the authority to "coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures".

So why is the Federal Reserve doing it?  Sadly, this is the way it works all over the globe today.  In fact, all 187 nations that belong to the IMF have a central bank.  But the truth is that there are much better alternatives.  We just need to get people educated.

The following are 11 reasons why the Federal Reserve should be abolished...

#1 The Greatest Period Of Economic Growth In The History Of The United States Happened When There Was No Central Bank

Did you know that the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was between the Civil War and 1913?  And guess what?  That was a period when there was no central bank in the United States at all.  The following is from Wikipedia...

The Gilded Age saw the greatest period of economic growth in American history. After the short-lived panic of 1873, the economy recovered with the advent of hard money policies and industrialization. From 1869 to 1879, the US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for real GDP and 4.5% for real GDP per capita, despite the panic of 1873.  The economy repeated this period of growth in the 1880s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3.8%, while the GDP was also doubled.
So if our greatest period of economic prosperity was during a time when there was no Federal Reserve, then why shouldn't we try such a system again?


#2 The Federal Reserve Is Systematically Destroying The Value Of The U.S. Dollar

The United States never had a persistent, ongoing problem with inflation until the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

If you do not believe this, just check out the inflation chart in this article.

The Federal Reserve systematically penalizes those that try to save their money.  Inflation is a tax, and the value of each one of our dollars goes down a little bit more every single day.

But over time, it really adds up.  In fact, the value of the U.S. dollar has fallen by 83 percent since 1970.

Anyone that goes to the grocery store on a regular basis knows how painful inflation can be.  The following is a list that shows how prices for many of the things that we buy on a regular basis absolutely skyrocketed between 2002 and 2012...

Eggs: 73%
Coffee: 90%
Peanut Butter: 40%
Milk: 26%
A Loaf Of White Bread: 39%
Spaghetti And Macaroni: 44%
Orange Juice: 46%
Red Delicious Apples: 43%
Beer: 25%
Wine: 60%
Electricity: 42%
Margarine: 143%
Tomatoes: 22%
Turkey: 56%
Ground Beef: 61%
Chocolate Chip Cookies: 39%
Gasoline: 158%

Even the price of water has absolutely soared in recent years.  According to USA Today, water bills have actually tripled over the past 12 years in some areas of the country.

So how can the Federal Reserve get away with claiming that we are in a "low inflation" environment?
Well, what Ben Bernanke never tells you is that the way that the government calculates inflation has changed more than 20 times since 1978.

The truth is that the real rate of inflation is somewhere between five and ten percent right now, but you will never hear about this on the mainstream news.

#3 The Federal Reserve Is A Perpetual Debt Machine

The Federal Reserve system was designed to be a trap.  The intent of the bankers was to trap the U.S. government in an endless debt spiral from which it could never possibly escape.

But most Americans don't understand this.  In fact, most Americans don't even understand where money comes from.

If you don't believe this, just go out on the street and ask regular people where money comes from.  The responses will be something like this...

"Duh - I don't know.  I've got to get home to watch American Idol."

This is why it is so important to get people educated.  I think that most Americans would be horrified to learn that the creation of more money in our system also involves the creation of more debt.

The following is a summary of money creation that comes from one of my previous articles...
When the U.S. government decides that it wants to spend another billion dollars that it does not have, it does not print up a billion dollars.
Rather, the U.S. government creates a bunch of U.S. Treasury bonds (debt) and takes them over to the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve creates a billion dollars out of thin air and exchanges them for the U.S. Treasury bonds.
So what does the Federal Reserve do with those Treasury bonds?  I went on to explain what happens...
The U.S. Treasury bonds that the Federal Reserve receives in exchange for the money it has created out of nothing are auctioned off through the Federal Reserve system.

But wait.
There is a problem.
Because the U.S. government must pay interest on the Treasury bonds, the amount of debt that has been created by this transaction is greater than the amount of money that has been created.
So where will the U.S. government get the money to pay that debt?
Well, the theory is that we can get money to circulate through the economy really, really fast and tax it at a high enough rate that the government will be able to collect enough taxes to pay the debt.
But that never actually happens, does it?
And the creators of the Federal Reserve understood this as well.  They understood that the U.S. government would not have enough money to both run the government and service the national debt.  They knew that the U.S. government would have to keep borrowing even more money in an attempt to keep up with the game.
Men like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford could not understand why we would adopt such a foolish system.  For example, Thomas Edison was once quoted in the New York Times as saying the following...
That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt.
Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 — that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovelful of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work. That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our great bond issues the interest is always greater than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost, on that account. Under the present system of doing business we simply add 120 to 150 per cent, to the stated cost.
But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good.
Unfortunately, today most Americans don't even understand how the system works.  They just assume that we have the best system in the entire world.

Sadly, the reality is that the system is working just as the international bankers that designed it had hoped.  The United States has the largest national debt in the history of the world, and we are stealing more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day in a desperate attempt to keep the debt spiral going.

#4 The Federal Reserve Is A Centrally-Planned Financial System That Is The Antithesis Of What A Free Market System Should Be

Why do we need someone to centrally-plan our financial system?

Isn't that the kind of thing they do in communist China?

Why do we need someone to tell us what interest rates are going to be?

Why do we need someone to determine what "the target rate of inflation" should be?

If we actually had a free market system, the free market would be the one "managing" our economy.
But instead, we have become so accustomed to central planning that any alternatives seem to be absolutely unthinkable.

For example, CNBC cannot possibly imagine a world where the Fed (or some similar institution) was not running things...
But suppose the law were taken off the books? The Fed's job—in simple terms—is to manage the nation's money supply and achieve the sometimes-conflicting tasks of full employment, stable prices while fighting inflation or deflation. 
How would the U.S. economy then function? Something has to take its place, right?
Global markets would also need some sort of economic direction from the U.S. The Fed manages the dollar — and as the world's leading currency, a void left by a Fed-less America could throw those markets into chaos with uncertainty about who's managing U.S. interest rates and the American economy.
I've got an idea - let's let the free market "manage" U.S. interest rates and the American economy.
I know, it's a crazy idea, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it just might work beautifully.

#5 The Federal Reserve Creates Bubbles And Busts

Do you remember the Dotcom bubble?

Or what about the housing bubble?

By dramatically distorting interest rates and financial behavior, the Federal Reserve creates economic bubbles and the corresponding economic busts.

And guess what?

Now it is happening again.

When will the American people decide that they have had enough?

If you can believe it, there have been 10 different economic recessions since 1950.  And of course the Federal Reserve even admits that it helped create the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Perhaps it is time to try something different.

#6 The Federal Reserve Is Privately Owned

It has been said that the Federal Reserve is about as "federal" as Federal Express is.

Most Americans still believe that the Federal Reserve is a "federal agency", but that is simply not true.  The following comes from factcheck.org...
The stockholders in the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks are the privately owned banks that fall under the Federal Reserve System. These include all national banks (chartered by the federal government) and those state-chartered banks that wish to join and meet certain requirements. About 38 percent of the nation’s more than 8,000 banks are members of the system, and thus own the Fed banks.
And even the Federal Reserve itself has argued that it is "not an agency" of the federal government in court.

So why is there still so much confusion about this?

We should not be allowing a private entity that is owned and dominated by the banks to make decisions that dramatically affect the daily lives of all the rest of us.

#7 The Federal Reserve Greatly Favors The "Too Big To Fail" Banks

Since the Federal Reserve is owned by the banks, should we be surprised that it serves the interests of the banks?

In particular, the Fed has been extremely good to the "too big to fail" banks.

Over the past several decades, those banks have grown tremendously in both size and power.

Back in 1970, the five largest U.S. banks held 17 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.

Today, the five largest U.S. banks hold 52 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.

#8 The Federal Reserve Gives Secret Bailouts To Their Friends

The Federal Reserve is the only institution in America that can print money out of thin air and loan it to their friends any time they want to.

For example, did you know that the Federal Reserve made 16 trillion dollars in secret loans to their friends during the last financial crisis?

The following list is taken directly from page 131 of a GAO audit report, and it shows which banks received secret loans from the Fed...

Citigroup - $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion
Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion
Bank of America - $1.344 trillion
Barclays PLC - $868 billion
Bear Sterns - $853 billion
Goldman Sachs - $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion
JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion
Deutsche Bank - $354 billion
UBS - $287 billion
Credit Suisse - $262 billion
Lehman Brothers - $183 billion
Bank of Scotland - $181 billion
BNP Paribas - $175 billion
Wells Fargo - $159 billion
Dexia - $159 billion
Wachovia - $142 billion
Dresdner Bank - $135 billion
Societe Generale - $124 billion
"All Other Borrowers" - $2.639 trillion

If you will notice, a number of the banks listed above are foreign banks.

Why is the Fed allowed to print money out of thin air and lend it to foreign banks?

#9 The Federal Reserve Is Paying Banks Not To Lend Money

Did you know that the Federal Reserve is actually paying U.S. banks not to lend money?

That doesn't make sense.  Our economy is based on credit, and small businesses desperately need loans in order to operate.

But the Fed has decided to pay banks not to risk their money.  Section 128 of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 allows the Federal Reserve to pay interest on "excess reserves" that U.S. banks park at the Fed.

So the big banks can just send their cash to the Fed and watch the money come rolling in risk-free.

As the chart below demonstrates, the banks have taken great advantage of this tremendous deal...


#10 The Federal Reserve Has An Astounding Track Record Of Failure

Over the past ten years, the Federal Reserve has been an abysmal failure when it comes to running the economy.

But despite a track record of failure that would make the Chicago Cubs look like a roaring success, Barack Obama actually decided to nominate Ben Bernanke for a second term as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

What a mistake.

Just check out some of the things that Bernanke said prior to the last financial crisis.  The following is an extended excerpt from an article that I published previously...

*****
In 2005, Bernanke said that we shouldn't worry because housing prices had never declined on a nationwide basis before and he said that he believed that the U.S. would continue to experience close to "full employment"....
We’ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don’t think it’s gonna drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though.
In 2005, Bernanke also said that he believed that derivatives were perfectly safe and posed no danger to financial markets....
With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.
In 2006, Bernanke said that housing prices would probably keep rising....
Housing markets are cooling a bit. Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise.
In 2007, Bernanke insisted that there was not a problem with subprime mortgages....
At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained. In particular, mortgages to prime borrowers and fixed-rate mortgages to all classes of borrowers continue to perform well, with low rates of delinquency.
In 2008, Bernanke said that a recession was not coming....
The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.
A few months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed, Bernanke insisted that they were totally secure....
The GSEs are adequately capitalized. They are in no danger of failing.
*****

There are many, many more examples that could be listed, but hopefully you get the point.

And now it is happening again.  Bernanke is telling the American people that everything is going to be just fine and that no major problems are ahead.

Do you believe him this time?

#11 The Federal Reserve Is Unaccountable To The American People

What is the most important political issue to most Americans?

Survey after survey has shown that the American people care about the economy more than anything else.

So why do we allow an unelected, unaccountable entity that is privately-owned to make our economic decisions for us?

The Federal Reserve has become so powerful that it has been called "the fourth branch of government".  Every four years, presidential candidates argue about who will be best at managing the economy, but the truth is that it is the Fed that manages our economy.

We are told that the "independence" of the Federal Reserve is absolutely critical, but don't the American people deserve to have a say in the running of the economy?

Our system is broken.  It is a system that will continue to create more bubbles and more debt until the entire thing finally collapses for good.

Thomas Jefferson once stated that if he could add just one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a ban on all government borrowing....
I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.
But instead of banning government borrowing, we have allowed ourselves to become enslaved to a system where government borrowing actually creates our money.

We do not need to have a central bank.  There are much better alternatives.  We just need to get people educated.

Please share this article with as many people as you possibly can.  These are things that every American should know about the Fed, and we need to educate the American people about the Federal Reserve while there is still time.

This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog.  Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.