Kip Hamilton

(3/2012) Who knows the name of the private banking cartel that is responsible for running our country into the ground? Anyone?

If you will remember back in October, we mentioned a very "dynamic" year in our country’s history. Right around this single year, we elected our first Progressive President, Woodrow Wilson; the Income Tax was created by the 16th Amendment; the 17th Amendment forever changed the political landscape by directing that our Senators be elected by popular vote of the people, rather than the State Legislatures and, if all these weren’t enough to throw us off the tracks, the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank system was created by the passage of the Federal Reserve Act on December 23, 1913.

The "Fed" as it is often referred to today was created in response to a financial crisis that occurred in 1907 when the value of the New York Stock Exchange fell about 50% and there were numerous runs on banks and trust companies that resulted in many banks having to close for good. The "1907 Bankers’ Panic" as it is called, pointed out that had the US had a central bank, it might have provided some stability to the banking industry and lessened the impact of the crisis. There was a commission established by John D. Rockefeller’s father-in-law which resulted in the creation of the Federal Reserve System.

Although, it sounds as if it is a governmental agency, it is, in fact, a privately owned central bank. As such, unlike any "real" government agency, because the Fed is a private bank, it is not subject to Freedom of Information Act disclosures, so we actually know very few details about its business dealings over the past 100 years. What we do know about them is that they are partially owned by banks representing foreign countries. If you will recall, more and more people are calling for a full audit of the Fed just to see what they have been doing with OUR money.

The Fed’s original mandate from Congress was very simple: 1) Maximum employment 2) Stable prices and 3) Moderate long-term interest rates. So…. How do you think they’re doing?

Even though the Constitution dictates that our Congress is responsible for coining and regulating the value of the country’s money, as of 1913, they have totally abdicated that responsibility and turned the entire process over to the Fed.

The truth is that the Federal Reserve, instead of being the regulatory body that Congress had envisioned, has morphed into something much more dangerous. Our government today would be unable to create the MASSIVE debt that it does, without the enabling collusion of the Fed. If the government wants to spend money that it does not have all it has to do is print up some Treasury Bonds and give them to the Fed. In return, the Fed gives the Treasury "Federal Reserve Notes" (sound familiar? If not, check out the top of a dollar bill). Of course, this is all done electronically these days, so what’s a few extra zeros?

Where does the Fed get these Federal Reserve Notes to give back to the government? They just create them out of THIN AIR! They are not backed by anything of substance anymore…’used to be gold, but it’s hard to counterfeit gold, so they had to get away from that! Now they are just computer generated entries in a ledger.

And what does the Fed do with the Treasury Bonds it gets from the government? They sell them; many times to foreign interests and governments. In fiscal year 2011, we paid $454 Billion just on the interest alone on these bonds. How many roads and bridges and schools could have been repaired with that money? The main problem has become the politicians and/or the citizens have become addicted to the spending and show no signs of doing what is required to stop. The Fed has just made it too easy to spend money we don’t have. About six months after the creation of the Fed, our total debt was $2.9 Billion. Today it is over 5000 times greater!

Look what is happening to the prices we have to pay for things like milk and bread. Have you noticed how the prices just seem to be going up and up? Are there fewer cows? Of course not. It’s because the Fed is "printing" so much money to cover our debt. The more money you introduce into the supply, the less all of it is worth. The less the money is worth, the more of it it takes to purchase the same thing over time. That’s where the term "Inflation" comes from… the cost of goods is being artificially inflated because the currency is losing its value. You can see the same thing happening with oil, gas, gold, copper…pretty much any tangible item that has its own intrinsic value is going up in price because by creating so much new currency the Fed is causing our dollars to lose their value, so it takes more of them to buy the same amount of the goods. Tragically, the US Dollar has lost a staggering 96.2% of its purchasing power since 1900.

So where is our money going? A limited GAO audit of the Fed’s books recently indicated that the Fed made trillions of dollars in secret bailout loans to the big Wall Street banks during the last financial crisis. They even secretly loaned out hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign banks! Naturally, our watchdogs in the media have neglected to point this out.

According to the results of the limited Fed audit mentioned above, a total of $16.1 trillion in secret, unauthorized loans was made by the Federal Reserve between December 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010. The recipients included a cross-section of the US and international banks one could describe as "Too Big To Fail" (TBTF) such as the Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, etc. In essence, the Fed made loans with OUR money without Congressional approval to their banker buddies. How could they do such a thing? Who the heck is going to stop them? The government? Are you kidding me… we have the best government money can buy.

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