Thread: IF WE DON'T LEARN FROM HISTORY...

IF WE DON'T LEARN FROM HISTORY...
PART 1 of 2



By Marilyn Barnewall

November 28, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

To whom should we listen about banking, the stock market, the economy? There are so many differing analyses right now, it is difficult to know.

One opinion is that Wall Street is sitting on $50 plus trillion in leveraged assets and the United States government has a $5 to $6 trillion gross domestic product (GDP). There is, this opinion says, no way to avoid a total meltdown.

Today I read an analysis by Stratfor, whose opinion I respect tremendously. Stratfor says we must focus on the political realities, not the economy. Using this strategy, Stratfor had been correct in predicting many things Wall Street, the Treasury, the Fed, and economists around the world have missed. Stratfor says we will have an ugly, painful recession, but the “fall of the housing markets will be trumped by the size of the American economy.â€

I have this in my collection of quotes and history items,

Congressman McFadden's Speech
On the Federal Reserve Corporation

Quotations from several speeches made on the Floor of the House of Representatives by the Honorable Louis T. McFadden of Pennsylvania. Mr. McFadden, due to his having served as Chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee for more than 10 years, was the best posted man on these matters in America and was in a position to speak with authority of the vast ramifications of this gigantic private credit monopoly. As Representative of a State which was among the first to declare its freedom from foreign money tyrants it is fitting that Pennsylvania, the cradle of liberty, be again given the credit for producing a son that was not afraid to hurl defiance in the face of the money-bund. Whereas Mr. McFadden was elected to the high office on both the Democratic and Republican tickets, there can be no accusation of partisanship lodged against him. Because these speeches are set out in full in the Congressional Record, they carry weight that no amount of condemnation on the part of private individuals could hope to carry.

The Federal Reserve-A Corrupt Institution

"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, hereinafter called the Fed. The Fed has cheated the Government of these United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the Nation's debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Fed has cost enough money to pay the National debt several times over.

"This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of these 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 Fed and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.

"Some people who think that the Federal Reserve Banks United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lender. 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 legislatures; there are those who maintain International propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us into granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime.

"These twelve private credit monopolies were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this Country by the bankers who came here from Europe and repaid us our hospitality by undermining our American institutions. Those bankers took money out of this Country to finance Japan in a war against Russia. They created a reign of terror in Russia with our money in order to help that war along. They instigated the separate peace between Germany and Russia, and thus drove a wedge between the allies in World War. They financed Trotsky's passage from New York to Russia so that he might assist in the destruction of the Russian Empire. They fomented and instigated the Russian Revolution, and placed a large fund of American dollars at Trotsky's disposal in one of their branch banks in Sweden so that through him Russian homes might be thoroughly broken up and Russian children flung far and wide from their natural protectors. They have since begun breaking up of American homes and the dispersal of American children. "Mr. Chairman, there should be no partisanship in matters concerning banking and currency affairs in this Country, and I do not speak with any.

"In 1912 the National Monetary Association, under the chairmanship of the late Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, made a report and presented a vicious bill called the National Reserve Association bill. This bill is usually spoken of as the Aldrich bill. Senator Aldrich did not write the Aldrich bill. He was the tool, if not the accomplice, of the European bankers who for nearly twenty years had been scheming to set up a central bank in this Country and who in 1912 has spent and were continuing to spend vast sums of money to accomplish their purpose.

"We were opposed to the Aldrich plan for a central bank. The men who rule the Democratic Party then promised the people that if they were returned to power there would be no central bank established here while they held the reigns of government. Thirteen months later that promise was broken, and the Wilson administration, under the tutelage of those sinister Wall Street figures who stood behind Colonel House, established here in our free Country the worm-eaten monarchical institution of the "King's Bank" to control us from the top downward, and from the cradle to the grave.

"The Federal Reserve Bank destroyed our old and characteristic way of doing business. It discriminated against our 1-name commercial paper, the finest in the world, and it set up the antiquated 2-name paper, which is the present curse of this Country and which wrecked every country which has ever given it scope; it fastened down upon the Country the very tyranny from which the framers of the Constitution sough to save us.

PRESIDENT JACKSON'S TIME

"One of the greatest battles for the preservation of this Republic was fought out here in Jackson's time; when the second Bank of the United States, founded on the same false principles of those which are here exemplified in the Fed was hurled out of existence. After that, in 1837, the Country was warned against the dangers that might ensue if the predatory interests after being cast out should come back in disguise and unite themselves to the Executive and through him acquire control of the Government. That is what the predatory interests did when they came back in the livery of hypocrisy and under false pretenses obtained the passage of the Fed.

"The danger that the Country was warned against came upon us and is shown in the long train of horrors attendant upon the affairs of the traitorous and dishonest Fed. Look around you when you leave this Chamber and you will see evidences of it in all sides. This is an era of misery and for the conditions that caused that misery, the Fed are fully liable. This is an era of financed crime and in the financing of crime the Fed does not play the part of a disinterested spectator.

"It has been said that the draughtsman who was employed to write the text of the Aldrich bill because that had been drawn up by lawyers, by acceptance bankers of European origin in New York. It was a copy, in general a translation of the statues of the Reichsbank and other European central banks. One-half million dollars was spent on the part of the propaganda organized by these bankers for the purpose of misleading public opinion and giving Congress the impression that there was an overwhelming popular demand for it and the kind of currency that goes with it, namely, an asset currency based on human debts and obligations. Dr. H. Parker Willis had been employed by Wall Street and propagandists, and when the Aldrich measure failed- he obtained employment with Carter Glass, to assist in drawing the banking bill for the Wilson administration. He appropriated the text of the Aldrich bill. There is no secret about it. The test of the Federal Reserve Act was tainted from the first.

"A few days before the bill came to a vote, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, wrote to Senator John W. Weeks as follows:


New York City, December 17, 1913
My Dear Senator Weeks:

Throughout my public life I have supported all measures designed to take the Government out of the banking business. This bill puts the Government into the banking business as never before in our history. The powers vested in the Federal Reserve Board seen to me highly dangerous especially where there is political control of the Board. I should be sorry to hold stock in a bank subject to such dominations. The bill as it stands seems to me to open the way to a vast inflation of the currency. I had hoped to support this bill, but I cannot vote for it cause it seems to me to contain features and to rest upon principles in the highest degree menacing to our prosperity, to stability in business, and to the general welfare of the people of the United States. Very Truly Yours, Henry Cabot Lodge.


"In eighteen years that have passed since Senator Lodge wrote that letter of warning all of his predictions have come true. The Government is in the banking business as never before. Against its will it has been made the backer of horse thieves and card sharps, bootlegger's smugglers, speculators, and swindlers in all parts of the world. Through the Fed the riffraff of every country is operating on the public credit of the United States Government.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

"Meanwhile and on account of it, we ourselves are in the midst of the greatest depression we have ever known. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, our Country has been ravaged and laid waste by the evil practices of the Fed and the interests which control them. At no time in our history, has the general welfare of the people been at a lower level or the minds of the people so full of despair.

"Recently in one of our States, 60,000 dwelling houses and farms were brought under the hammer in a single day. 71,000 houses and farms in Oakland County, Michigan, were sold and their erstwhile owners dispossessed. The people who have thus been driven out are the wastage of the Fed. They are the victims of the Fed. Their children are the new slaves of the auction blocks in the revival of the institution of human slavery.

The Scheme of the Fed

"In 1913, before the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, Mr. Alexander Lassen made the following statement: "The whole scheme of the Fed with its commercial paper is an impractical, cumbersome machinery- is simply a cover to secure the privilege of issuing money, and to evade payment of as much tax upon circulation as possible and then control the issue and maintain, instead of reducing interest rates. It will prove to the advantage of the few and the detriment of the people. It will mean continued shortage of actual money and further extension of credits, for when there is a shortage of money people have to borrow to their cost.' "A few days before the Fed passed, Senator Root denounced the Fed as an outrage on our liberties. He predicted: 'Long before we wake up from our dream of prosperity through an inflated currency, our gold- which alone could have kept us from catastrophe- will have vanished and no rate of interest will tempt it to return.'

"If ever a prophecy came true, that one did.

"The Fed became law the day before Christmas Eve, in the year 1913, and shortly afterwards, the German International bankers, Kuhn, Loeb and Co. sent one of their partners here to run it.

"The Fed Note is essentially unsound. It is the worst currency and the most dangerous that this Country has ever known. When the proponents of the act saw that the Democratic doctrine would not permit them to let the proposed banks issue the new currency as bank notes, they should have stopped at that. They should not have foisted that kind of currency, namely, an asset currency, on the United States Government. They should not have made the Government [liable on the private] debts of individuals and corporations, and, least of all, on the private debts of foreigners. "As Kemerer says: 'The Fed Notes, therefore, in form, have some of the qualities of Government paper money, but in substance, are almost a pure asset currency possessing a Government guarantee against which contingency the Government has made no provision whatever.'

"Hon. L.J.Hill, a former member of the House, said, and truly: "They are obligations of the Government for which the United States received nothing and for the payment of which at any time, it assumes the responsibility: looking to the Fed to recoup itself.'

"If this United States is to redeem the Fed Notes, when the General Public finds it costs to deliver this paper to the Fed, and if the Government has made no provisions for redeeming them, the first element of unsoundness is not far to seek.

"Before the Banking and Currency Committee, when the bill was under discussion Mr. Crozier of Cincinnati said: 'The imperial power of elasticity of the public currency is wielded exclusively by the central corporations owned by the banks. This is a life and death power over all local banks and all business. It can be used to create or destroy prosperity, to ward off or cause stringencies and panics. By making money artificially scarce, interest rates throughout the Country can be arbitrarily raised and the bank tax on all business and cost of living increased for the profit of the banks owning these regional central banks, and without the slightest benefit to the people. The 12 Corporations together cover y and monopolize and use for private gain- every dollar of the public currency and all public revenue of the United States. Not a dollar can be put into circulation among the people by their Government, without the consent of and on terms fixed by these 12 private money trusts.'

"In defiance of this and all other warnings, the proponents of the Fed created the 12 private credit corporations and gave them an absolute monopoly of the currency of these United States- not of the Fed Notes alone- but of all other currency! The Fed Act providing ways and means by which the gold and general currency in the hands of the American people could be obtained by the Fed in exchange for Fed Notes- which are not money- but mere promises to pay.

"Since the evil day when this was done, the initial monopoly has been extended by vicious amendments to the Fed and by the unlawful and treasonable practices of the Fed.

Money for the Scottish Distillers

"Mr. Chairman, if a Scottish distiller wishes to send a cargo of Scotch whiskey to these United States, he can draw his bill against the purchasing bootlegger in dollars and after the bootlegger has accepted it by writing his name across the face of it, the Scotch distiller can send that bill to the nefarious open discount market in New York City where the Fed will buy it and use it as collateral for a new issue of Fed Notes. Thus the Government of these United States pay the Scotch distiller for the whiskey before it is shipped, and if it is lost on the way, or if the Coast Guard seizes it and destroys it, the Fed simply write off the loss and the government never recovers the money that was paid to the Scotch distiller.

"While we are attempting to enforce prohibition here, the Fed are in the distillery business in Europe and paying bootlegger bills with public credit of these United States. "Mr. Chairman, by the same process, they compel our Government to pay the German brewer for his beer. Why should the Fed be permitted to finance the brewing industry in Germany either in this way or as they do by compelling small and fearful United States Banks to take stock in the Isenbeck Brewery and in the German Bank for brewing industries? "Mr. Chairman, if Dynamit Nobel of Germany, wishes to sell dynamite in Japan to use in Manchuria or elsewhere, it can drew its bill against the Japanese customers in dollars and send that bill to the nefarious open discount market in New York City where the Fed will buy it and use it as collateral for a new issue of Fed Notes- while at the same time the Fed will be helping Dynamit Nobel by stuffing its stock into the United States banking system.

"Why should we send our representatives to the disarmament conference at Geneva- while the Fed is making our Government pay Japanese debts to German Munitions makers?

"Mr. Chairman, if a German wishes to raise a crop of beans and sell them to a Japanese customer, he can draw a bill against his prospective Japanese customer in dollars and have it purchased by the Fed and get the money out of this Country at the expense of the American people before he has even planted the beans in the ground. "Mr. Chairman, if a German in Germany wishes to export goods to South America, or any other Country, he can draw his bill against his customers and send it to these United States and get the money out of this Country before he ships, or even manufactures the goods.

"Mr. Chairman, why should the currency of these United States be issued on the strength of German Beer? Why should it be issued on the crop of unplanted beans to be grown in Chili for Japanese consumption? Why should these United States be compelled to issue many billions of dollars every year to pay the debts of one foreigner to another foreigner? "Was it for this that our National Bank depositors had their money taken out of our banks and shipped abroad? Was it for this that they had to lose it? Why should the public credit of these United States and likewise money belonging to our National Bank depositors be used to support foreign brewers, narcotic drug vendors, whiskey distillers, wig makes, human hair merchants, Chilean bean growers, to finance the munition factories of Germany and Soviet Russia?

THE UNITED STATES HAS BEEN RANSACKED

"The United States has been ransacked and pillaged. Our structures have been gutted and only the walls are left standing. While being perpetrated, everything the world would rake up to sell us was brought in here at our expense by the Fed until our markets were swamped with unneeded and unwanted imported goods priced far above their value and make to equal the dollar volume of our honest exports, and to kill or reduce our favorite balance of trade. As Agents of the foreign central banks the Fed try by every means in their power to reduce our favorable balance of trade. They act for their foreign principal and they accept fees from foreigners for acting against the best interests of these United States. Naturally there has been great competition among among foreigners for the favors of the Fed.

"What we need to do is to send the reserves of our National Banks home to the people who earned and produced them and who still own them and to the banks which were compelled to surrender them to predatory interests.

"Mr. Chairman, there is nothing like the Fed pool of confiscated bank deposits in the world. It is a public trough of American wealth in which the foreigners claim rights, equal to or greater than Americans. The Fed are the agents of the foreign central banks. They use our bank depositors' money for the benefit of their foreign principals. They barter the public credit of the United States Government and hire it our to foreigners at a profit to themselves.

"All this is done at the expense of the United States Government, and at a sickening loss to the American people. Only our great wealth enabled us to stand the drain of it as long as we did.

"We need to destroy the Fed wherein our national reserves are impounded for the benefit of the foreigners. "We need to save America for Americans.

SPURIOUS SECURITIES

"Mr. Chairman, when you hold a $10.00 Fed Note in your hand, you are holding apiece of paper which sooner or later is going to cost the United States Government $10.00 in gold (unless the Government is obliged to go off the gold standard). It is based on limburger cheese (reported to be in foreign warehouses) or in cans purported to contain peas (but may contain salt water instead), or horse meat, illicit drugs, bootleggers fancies, rags and bones from Soviet Russia (of which these United States imported over a million dollars worth last year), on wines whiskey, natural gas, goat and dog fur, garlic on the string, and Bombay ducks.

"If you like to have paper money- which is secured by such commodities- you have it in Fed Note. If you desire to obtain the thing of value upon which this paper currency is based, that is, the limburger cheese, the whiskey, the illicit drugs, or any of the other staples- you will have a very hard time finding them.

"Many of these worshipful commodities are in foreign Countries. Are you going to Germany to inspect her warehouses to see if the specified things of value are there? I think more, I do not think that you would find them there if you did go.

"On April 27, 1932, the Fed outfit sent $750,000 belonging to American bank depositors in gold to Germany. A week later another $300,000 in gold was shipped to Germany. About the middle of May $12,000,000 in gold was shipped to Germany by the Fed. Almost every week there is a shipment of gold to Germany. These shipments are not made for profit on the exchange since the German marks are blow parity with the dollar.

"Mr. Chairman, I believe that the National Bank depositors of these United States have a right to know what the Fed are doing with their money. There are millions of National Bank depositors in the Country who do not know that a percentage of every dollar they deposit in a Member Bank of the Fed goes automatically to American Agents of the foreign banks and that all their deposits can be paid away to foreigners without their knowledge or consent by the crooked machinery of the Fed and the questionable practices of the Fed.

[Ed. Note- Problem with next paragraph in original] "Mr. Chairman, the American people should be told the truth by their servants in office. In 1930, we had over a half billion dollars outstanding daily to finance foreign goods stored in or shipped between several billion dollars. What goods are these on which the Fed yearly pledge several billions of dollars. In its yearly total, this item amounts to several billions of dollars of the public credit of these United States?

"What goods are those which are hidden in European and Asiatic stores have not been seen by any officer of our Government but which are being financed on the public credit of the United States Government? What goods are those upon which the 17 United States Government is being obligated by the Fed to issue Fed Notes to the extent of several billions of dollars a year?

The Bankers' Acceptance Racket

"The Fed have been International Banks from the beginning, with these United States as their enforced banker and supplier of currency. But it is none the less extraordinary to see these these twelve private credit monopolies, buying the debts of foreigners against foreigners, in all parts of the world and asking the Government of these United States for new issues of Fed notes in exchange for them. "The magnitude of the acceptance racket as it has been developed by the Fed, their foreign correspondents, and the predatory European born bankers, who set up the Fed here and taught your own, by and of pirates, how to loot the people: I say the magnitude of this racket is estimated to be in the neighborhood of 9,000,000,000 per year. In the past ten years it is said to have amounted to $90,000,000,000.00. In my opinion it has amounted to several times that much. coupled to this you have to the extent of billions of dollars, the gambling in the United States securities, which takes place in the same open discount market- a gambling on which the Fed is now spending $100,000,000.00 per week.

"Fed Notes are taken from the U.S. Government in unlimited quantities. Is is strange that the burden of supplying these immense sums of money to the gambling fraternity has at last proved too heavy for the American people to endure? Would it not be a national [calamity to] again bind down this burden on the backs of the American people and by means of a long rawhide whip of the credit masters, compel them to enter another seventeen years of slavery?

"They are trying to do that now. They are trying to take $100,000,000.00 of the public credit of the United States every week, in addition to all their other seizures and they are sending that money to the nefarious open market in a desperate gamble to reestablish their graft as a going concern.

"They are putting the United States Government in debt to the extent of $100,000,000 a week, and with the money they are buying our Government securities for themselves and their foreign principals. Our people are disgusted with the experiences of the Fed. The Fed is not producing a loaf of bread, a yard of cloth, a bushel of corn, or a pile of cordwood by its check-kiting operations in the money market.

"Mr. Speaker, on the 13th of January of this year I addressed the House on the subject of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. In the course of my remarks I made the following statement: In 1928 the member banks of the Fed borrowed $60,598,690,000. from the Fed on their fifteen-day promissory notes. Think of it. Sixty billion dollars payable on demand in gold in the course of one single year. The actual amount of such obligations called for six times as much monetary gold as there is in the world. Such transactions represent a grant in the course of one single years of about $7,000,000 to every member of the Fed.

"Is it any wonder that American labor which ultimately pays the cost of all banking operations of this Country has at last proved unequal to the task of supplying this huge total of cash and credit for the benefit of the stock market manipulators and foreign swindlers? "In 1933 the Fed presented the staggering amount of $60,598,690,000 to its member banks at the expense of the wage earners and tax payers of these United States. In 1929, the year of the stock market crash, the Fed advanced $58,000,000,000 to member banks.

"In 1930 while the speculating banks were getting out of the stock market at the expense of the general public, the Fed advanced them $13,022,782,000. This shows that when the banks were gambling on the public credit of these United States as represented by the Fed currency they were subsidized to any amount they required by the Fed. When the swindle began to fall, the bankers knew it in advance and withdrew from the market. They got out with whole skins- and left the people of these United States to pay the piper. "My friend from Kansas, Mr. McGugin, has stated that he thought the Fed lent money on rediscounting. So they do, but they lend comparatively little that way. The real discounting that they do has been called a mere penny in the slot business. It is too slow for genuine high flyers. They discourage it. They prefer to subsidize their favorite banks by making them $60,000,000,000 advances and they prefer to acquire assistance in the notorious open discount market in New York, where they can use it to control the price of stocks and bonds on the exchanges.

"For every dollar they advanced on discounts in 1928, they lent $33.00 to their favorite banks for whom they do a business of several billion dollars income tax on their profits to these United States.

The John Law Swindle

"This is the John Law swindle over again. The theft of Teapot Dome was trifling compared to it. What King ever robbed his subject to such an extent as the Fed has robbed us? Is it any wonder that there have been lately ninety cases of starvation in one of the New York hospitals? Is there any wonder that the children are being abandoned?

"The government and the people of these United States have been swindled by swindlers deluxe to whom the acquisition of American or a parcel of Fed Notes presented no more difficulty than the drawing up of a worthless acceptance in a Country not subject to the laws of these United States, by sharpers not subject to the jurisdiction of these United States, sharpers with strong banking "fence" on this side of the water, a "fence" acting as a receiver of a worthless paper coming from abroad, endorsing it and getting the currency out of the Fed for it as quickly as possible exchanging that currency for gold and in turn transmitting the gold to its foreign confederates.

Ivar Kreuger, the Match King!

"Such were the exploits of Ivar Krueger, Mr. Hoover's friend, and his rotten Wall Street bakers. Every dollar of the billions Kreuger and his gang drew out of this Country on acceptances was drawn from the government and the people of the United States through the Fed. The credit of the United States Government was peddled to him by the Fed for their own private gain. That is what the Fed has been doing for many years.

"They have been peddling the credit of this Government and the [signature of this] Government to the swindlers and speculators of all nations. That is what happens when a Country forsakes its Constitution and gives its sovereignty over the public currency to private interests. Give them the flag and they will sell it.

"The nature of Kreuger's organized swindle and the bankrupt condition of Kreuger's combine was known here last June when Hoover sought to exempt Krueger's loan to Germany of $125,000,000 from the operation of the Hoover Moratorium. The bankrupt condition of Krueger's swindle was known her last summer when $30,000,000 was taken from the American taxpayers by certain bankers in New York for the ostensible purpose of permitting Krueger to make a loan to Colombia. Colombia never saw that money.

"The nature of Krueger's swindle was known here in January when he visited his friend, Mr. Hoover, at the White House. It was known here in March before he went to Paris and committed suicide.

"Mr. Chairman, I think the people of the United States are entitled to know how many billions of dollars were placed at the disposal of Krueger and his gigantic combine by the Fed, and to know how much of our Government currency was issued and lost in the financing of that great swindle in the years during which the Fed took care of Krueger's requirements.

"A few days ago, the President of the United States with a white face and shaking hands, went before the Senate of behalf of the moneyed interests and asked the Senate to levy a tax on the people so that foreigners might know that these United States would pay its debt to them.

"Most Americans thought it was the other way around. What does these United States owe foreigners? When and by whom was the debt incurred? It was incurred by the Fed, when they peddled the signature of the Government to foreigners- for a Price. It is what the United States Government has to pay to redeem the obligations of the Fed.

Thieves Go Scot Free

"Are you going to let these thieves get off scot free? Is there one law for the looter who drives up to the door of the United States Treasury in his limousine and another for the United States Veterans who are sleeping on the floor of a dilapidated house on the outskirts of Washington?

"The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is here asking for a large loan from the people, and the wage earners and the taxpayers of these United States. It is begging for a handout from the Government. It is standing, cap in hand, at the door of the R.F.C. where all the jackals have gathered to the feast. It is asking for money that was raised from the people by taxation and wants this money of the poor for the benefit of Kuhn, Loeb and Co., the German International Bankers.

"Is there one law for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and another for the hungry veterans it threw off its freight cars the other day? Is there one law for sleek and prosperous swindlers who call themselves bankers and another law for the soldiers who defended the flag? "The R.F.C. is taking over these worthless securities from the Investment Trusts with United States Treasury money at the expense of the American taxpayer and the wage earner.

"It will take twenty years to redeem our Government. Twenty years of penal servitude to pay off the gambling debts of the traitorous Fed and to vast flood of American wages and savings, bank deposits, and the United States Government credit which the Fed exported out of this country to their foreign principals.

"The Fed lately conducted an anti-hoarding campaign here. They they took that extra money which they had persuaded the American people to put into the banks- they sent it to Europe- along with the rest. In the last several months, they have sent $1,300,000,000 in gold to their foreign employers, their foreign masters, and every dollar of that gold belonged to the people of these United States and was unlawfully taken from them.

Fiat Money

"Mr. Chairman, within the limits of the time allowed me, I cannot enter into a particularized discussion of the Fed. I have singled out the Fed currency for a few remarks because there has lately been some talk here of "fiat money". What kind of money is being pumped into the open discount market and through it into foreign channels and stock exchanges? Mr. Mills of the Treasury has spoken here of his horror of the printing presses and his horror of dishonest money. He has no horror of dishonest money. If he had, he would be no party to the present gambling of the Fed in the nefarious open discount market of New York, a market in which the sellers are represented by 10 discount corporations owned and organized by the very banks which own and control the Fed.

"Fiat money, indeed!

"What Mr. Mills is fighting for is the preservation, whole and entire, of the banker's monopoly of all the currency of the United States Government.

"Mr. Chairman, last December, I introduced a resolution here asking for an examination and an audit of the Fed and all related matters. If the House sees fit to make such an investigation, the people of these United States will obtain information of great value. This is a Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Consequently, nothing should be concealed from the people. The man who deceives the people is a traitor to these United States.

"The man who knows or suspects that a crime has been committed and who conceals and covers up that crime is an accessory to it. Mr. Speaker, it is a monstrous thing for this great nation of people to have its destinies presided over by a traitorous government board acting in secret concert with international usurers.

"Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers- but the truth is- the Fed has usurped the Government. It controls everything here and it controls all of our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will.

"No man and no body of men is more entrenched in power than the arrogant credit monopoly which operated the Fed. What National Government has permitted the Fed to steal from the people should now be restored to the people. The people have a valid claim against the Fed. If that claim is enforced the Americans will not need to stand in the bread line, or to suffer and die of starvation in the streets. Women will be saved, families will be kept together, and American children will not be dispersed and abandoned.

"Here is a Fed Note. Immense numbers of the notes are now held abroad. I am told that they amount to upwards of a billion dollars. They constitute a claim against our Government and likewise a claim against our peoples' money to the extent of $1,300,000,000 which has within the last few months been shipped abroad to redeem Fed Notes and to pay other gambling debts of the traitorous Fed. The greater part of our money stock has been shipped to other lands.

"Why should we promise to pay the debts of foreigners to foreigners? Why should the Fed be permitted to finance our competitors in all parts of the world? Do you know why the tariff was raised? It was raised to shut out the flood of Fed Goods pouring in here from every quarter of the globe- cheap goods, produced by cheaply paid foreign labor, on unlimited supplies of money and credit sent out of this Country by the dishonest and unscrupulous Fed.

"The Fed are spending $100,000,000 a week buying government securities in the open market and are making a great bid for foreign business. They are trying to make rates so attractive that the human hair merchants and the distillers and other business entities in foreign land will come her and hire more of the public credit of the United States Government to pay the Fed outfit for getting it for them.

World Enslavement Planned

"Mr. Chairman, when the Fed was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world system was being set up here which would make the savings of the American school teacher available to a narcotic-drug vendor in Acapulco. They did not perceive that these United States was to be lowered to the position of a coolie country which has nothing but raw material and heart, that Russia was destined to supply the man power and that this country was to supply the financial power to an "international superstate". A superstate controlled by international bankers, and international industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure?

"The people of these United States are being greatly wronged. They have been driven from their employments. They have been dispossessed from their homes. They have been evicted from their rented quarters. They have lost their children. They have been left to suffer and die for lack of shelter, food, clothing and medicine.

"The wealth of these United States and the working capital have been taken away from them and has either been locked in the vaults of certain banks and the great corporations or exported to foreign countries for the benefit of the foreign customers of these banks and corporations. So far as the people of the United States are concerned, the cupboard is bare.

"It is true that the warehouses and coal yards and grain elevators are full, but these are padlocked, and the great banks and corporations hold the keys.

"The sack of these United States by the Fed is the greatest crime in history.

"Mr. Chairman, a serious situation confronts the House of Representatives today. We are trustees of the people and the rights of the people are being taken away from them. Through the Fed the people are losing the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution. Their property has been taken from them without due process of law. Mr. Chairman, common decency requires us to examine the public accounts of the Government and see what crimes against the public welfare have been committed.

"What is needed here is a return to the Constitution of these United States.

"The old struggle that was fought out here in Jackson's time must be fought our over again. The independent United States Treasury should be reestablished and the Government should keep its own money under lock and key in the building the people provided for that purpose.

"Asset currency, the devise of the swindler, should be done away with. The Fed should be abolished and the State boundaries should be respected. Bank reserves should be kept within the boundaries of the States whose people own them, and this reserve money of the people should be protected so that the International Bankers and acceptance bankers and discount dealers cannot draw it away from them.

"The Fed should be repealed, and the Fed Banks, having violated their charters, should be liquidated immediately. Faithless Government officials who have violated their oaths of office should be impeached and brought to trial.

"Unless this is done by us, I predict, that the American people, outraged, pillaged, insulted and betrayed as they are in their own land, will rise in their wrath, and will sweep the money changers out of the temple.

"Mr. Chairman, the United States is bankrupt: It has been bankrupted by the corrupt and dishonest Fed. It has repudiated its debts to its own citizens. Its chief foreign creditor is Great Britain, and a British bailiff has been at the White House and the British Agents are in the United States Treasury making inventory arranging terms of liquidations!

Great Britain, Partner in Blackmail

"Mr. Chairman, the Fed has offered to collect the British claims in full from the American public by trickery and corruption, if Great Britain will help to conceal its crimes. The British are shielding their agents, the Fed, because they do not wish that system of robbery to be destroyed here. They wish it to continue for their benefit! By means of it, Great Britain has become the financial mistress of the world. She has regained the position she occupied before the World War.

"For several years she has been a silent partner in the business of the Fed. Under threat of blackmail, or by their bribery, or by their native treachery to the people of the United States, the officials in charge of the Fed unwisely gave Great Britain immense gold loans running into hundreds of millions of dollars. They did this against the law! Those gold loans were not single transactions. They gave Great Britain a borrowing power in the United States of billions. She squeezed billions out of this Country by means of her control of the Fed.

"As soon as the Hoover Moratorium was announced, Great Britain moved to consolidate her gains. After the treacherous signing away of American rights at the 7-power conference at London in July, 1931, which put the Fed under the control of the Bank of International Settlements, Great Britain began to tighten the hangman's noose around the neck of the United States.

"She abandoned the gold standard and embarked on a campaign of buying up the claims of foreigners against the Fed in all parts of the world. She has now sent her bailiff, Ramsey MacDonald, here to get her war debt to this country canceled. But she has a club in her hands! She has title to the gambling debts which the corrupt and dishonest Fed incurred abroad.

"Ramsey MacDonald, the labor party deserter, has come here to compel the President to sign on the dotted line, and that is what Roosevelt is about to do! Roosevelt will endeavor to conceal the nature of his action from the American people. But he will obey the International Bankers and transfer the war debt that Great Britain should pay to the American people, to the shoulders of the American taxpayers.

"Mr. Chairman, the bank holiday in the several States was brought about by the corrupt and dishonest Fed. These institutions manipulated money and credit, and caused the States to order bank holidays.

"These holidays were frame-ups! "They were dress rehearsals for the national bank holiday which Franklin D. Roosevelt promised Sir Ramsey MacDonald that he would declare.

"There was no national emergency here when Franklin D. Roosevelt took office excepting the bankruptcy of the Fed- a bankruptcy which has been going on under cover for several years and which has been concealed from the people so that the people would continue to permit their bank deposits and their bank reserves and their gold and the funds of the United States Treasury to be impounded in these bankrupt institutions.

"Under cover, the predatory International Bankers have been stealthily transferring the burden of the Fed debts to the people's Treasury and to the people themselves. They the farms and the homes of the United States to pay for their thievery! That is the only national emergency that there has been here since the depression began.

"The week before the bank holiday ws declared in New York State, the deposits in the New York savings banks were greater than the withdrawals. There were no runs on New York Banks. There was no need of a bank holiday in New York, or of a national holiday.

Roosevelt and the International Bankers

"Roosevelt did what the International Bankers ordered him to do!

"Do not deceive yourself, Mr. Chairman, or permit yourself to be deceived by others into the belief that Roosevelt's dictatorship is in any way intended to benefit the people of the United States: he is preparing to sign on the dotted line! "He is preparing to cancel the war debts by fraud!

"He is preparing to internationalize this Country and to destroy our Constitution itself in order to keep the Fed intact as a money institution for foreigners. "Mr. Chairman, I see no reason why citizens of the United States should be terrorized into surrendering their property to the International Bankers who own and control the Fed. The statement that gold would be taken from its lawful owners if they did not voluntarily surrender it, to private interests, show that there is an anarchist in our Government.

"The statement that it is necessary for the people to give their gold- the only real money- to the banks in order to protect the currency, is a statement of calculated dishonesty!

"By his unlawful usurpation of power on the night of March 5, 1933, and by his proclamation, which in my opinion was in violation of the Constitution of the United States, Roosevelt divorced the currency of the United States from gold, and the United States currency is no longer protected by gold. It is therefore sheer dishonesty to say that the people's gold is needed to protect the currency.

"Roosevelt ordered the people to give their gold to private interests- that is, to banks, and he took control of the banks so that all the gold and gold values in them, or given into them, might be handed over to the predatory International Bankers who own and control the Fed.

"Roosevelt cast his lot with the usurers. "He agreed to save the corrupt and dishonest at the expense of the people of the United States.

"He took advantage of the people's confusion and weariness and spread the dragnet over the United States to capture everything of value that was left in it. He made a great haul for the International Bankers.

"The Prime Minister of England came here for money! He came here to collect cash!

"He came here with Fed Currency and other claims against the Fed which England had bought up in all parts of the world. And he has presented them for redemption in gold.

"Mr. Chairman, I am in favor of compelling the Fed to pay their own debts. I see no reason why the general public should be forced to pay the gambling debts of the International Bankers.

Roosevelt Seizes the Gold

"By his action in closing the banks of the United States, Roosevelt seized the gold value of forty billions or more of bank deposits in the United States banks. Those deposits were deposits of gold values. By his action he has rendered them payable to the depositors in paper only, if payable at all, and the paper money he proposes to pay out to bank depositors and to the people generally in lieu of their hard earned gold values in itself, and being based on nothing into which the people can convert it the said paper money is of negligible value altogether.

"It is the money of slaves, not of free men. If the people of the United States permit it to be imposed upon them at the will of their credit masters, the next step in their downward progress will be their acceptance of orders on company stores for what they eat and wear. Their case will be similar to that of starving coal miners. They, too, will be paid with orders on Company stores for food and clothing, both of indifferent quality and be forced to live in Company-owned houses from which they may be evicted at the drop of a hat. More of them will be forced into conscript labor camps under supervision.

"At noon on the 4th of March, 1933, FDR with his hand on the Bible, took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the U.S. At midnight on the 5th of March, 1933, he confiscated the property of American citizens. He took the currency of the United States standard of value. He repudiated the internal debt of the Government to its own citizens. He destroyed the value of the American dollar. He released, or endeavored to release, the Fed from their contractual liability to redeem Fed currency in gold or lawful money on a parity with gold. He depreciated the value of the national currency.

"The people of the U.S. are now using unredeemable paper slips for money. The Treasury cannot redeem that paper in gold or silver. The gold and silver of the Treasury has unlawfully been given to the corrupt and dishonest Fed. And the Administration has since had the effrontery to raid the country for more gold for the private interests by telling our patriotic citizens that their gold is needed to protect the currency.

"It is not being used to protect the currency! It is being used to protect the corrupt and dishonest Fed. "The directors of these institutions have committed criminal offense against the United States Government, including the offense of making false entries on their books, and the still more serious offense of unlawfully abstracting funds from the United States Treasury! "Roosevelt's gold raid is intended to help them out of the pit they dug for themselves when they gambled away the wealth and savings of the American people.

Dictatorship

"The International Bankers set up a dictatorship here because they wanted a dictator who would protect them. They wanted a dictator who would protect them. They wanted a dictator who would issue a proclamation giving the Fed an absolute and unconditional release from their special currency in gold, or lawful money of any Fed Bank.

"Has Roosevelt relieved any other class of debtors in this country from the necessity of paying their debts? Has he made a proclamation telling the farmers that they need not pay their mortgages? Has he made a proclamation to the effect that mothers of starving children need not pay their milk bills? Has he made a proclamation relieving householders from the necessity of paying rent?

Roosevelt's Two Kinds of Laws

"Not he! He has issued one kind of proclamation only, and that is a proclamation to relieve international bankers and the foreign debtors of the United States Government.

"Mr. Chairman, the gold in the banks of this country belongs to the American people who have paper money contracts for it in the form of national currency. If the Fed cannot keep their contracts with United States citizens to redeem their paper money in gold, or lawful money, then the Fed must be taken over by the United States Government and their officers must be put on trial.

"There must be a day of reckoning. If the Fed have looted the Treasury so that the Treasury cannot redeem the United States currency for which it is liable in gold, then the Fed must be driven out of the Treasury.

"Mr. Chairman, a gold certificate is a warehouse receipt for gold in the Treasury, and the man who has a gold certificate is the actual owner of a corresponding amount of gold stacked in the Treasury subject to his order.

"Now comes Roosevelt who seeks to render the money of the United States worthless by unlawfully declaring that it may No Longer be converted into gold at the will of the holder.

"Roosevelt's next haul for the International Bankers was the reduction in the pay of all Federal employees.

"Next in order are the veterans of all wars, many of whom are aged and inform, and other sick and disabled. These men had their lives adjusted for them by acts of Congress determining the amounts of the pensions, and, while it is meant that every citizen should sacrifice himself for the good of the United States, I see no reason why those poor people, these aged Civil War Veterans and war widows and half-starved veterans of the World War, should be compelled to give up their pensions for the financial benefit of the International vultures who have looted the Treasury, bankrupted the country and traitorously delivered the United States to a foreign foe.

"There are many ways of raising revenue that are better than that barbaric act of injustice.

"Why not collect from the Fed the amount they owe the U.S. Treasury in interest on all the Fed currency they have taken from the Government? That would put billions of dollars into the U.S. Treasury.

"If FDR is as honest as he pretends to be, he will have that done immediately. And in addition, why not compel the Fed to disclose their profits and to pay the Government its share?

"Until this is done, it is rank dishonesty to talk of maintaining the credit of the U.S. Government. "My own salary as a member of Congress has been reduced, and while I am willing to give my part of it that has been taken away from me to the U.S. Government, I regret that the U.S. has suffered itself to be brought so low by the vultures and crooks who are operating the roulette wheels and faro tables in the Fed, that is now obliged to throw itself on the mercy of its legislators and charwomen, its clerks, and it poor pensioners and to take money out of our pockets to make good the defalcations of the International Bankers who were placed in control of the Treasury and given the monopoly of U.S. Currency by the misbegotten Fed. "I am well aware that the International Bankers who drive up to the door of the United States Treasury in their limousines, look down with scorn upon members of Congress because we work for so little, while they draw millions a year. The difference is that we earn, or try to earn, what we get- and they steal the greater part of their takings.

Enemies of the People They Rob

"I do not like to see vivisections performed on human beings. I do not like to see the American people used for experimental purposes by the credit masters of the United States. They predicted among themselves that they would be able to produce a condition here in which American citizens would be completely humbled and left starving and penniless in the streets.

"The fact that they made that assertion while they were fomenting their conspiracy against the United States that they like to see a human being, especially an American, stumbling from hunger when he walks. "Something should be done about it, they say. Five-cent meals, or something! "But FDR will not permit the House of Representatives to investigate the condition of the Fed. FDR will not do that. He has certain International Bankers to serve. They not look to him as the man Higher Up who will protect them from the just wrath of an outraged people.

"The International Bankers have always hated our pensioners. A man with a small pension is a ward of the Government. He is not dependent upon them for a salary or wages. They cannot control him. They do not like him. It gave them great pleasure, therefore, to slash the veterans.

"But FDR will never do anything to embarrass his financial supporters. He will cover up the crimes of the Fed.

"Before he was elected, Mr. Roosevelt advocated a return to the earlier practices of the Fed, thus admitting its corruptness. The Democratic platform advocated a change in the personnel of the Fed. These were campaign bait. As a prominent Democrat lately remarked to me; "There is no new deal. The same old crowd is in control."

"The claims of foreign creditors of the Fed have no validity in law. The foreign creditors were the receivers- and the willing receivers- of stolen goods! They have received through their banking fences immense amounts of currency, and that currency was unlawfully taken from the United States Treasury by the Fed.

"England discovered the irregularities of the Fed quite early in its operations and through fear, apparently, the Fed have for years suffered themselves to be blackmailed and dragooning England to share in the business of the Fed. "The Fed have unlawfully taken many millions of dollars of the public credit of the United States and have given it to foreign sellers on the security of the Debt paper of foreign buyers in purely foreign transactions, and when the foreign buyers refused to meet their obligations and the Fed saw no honest way of getting the stolen goods back into their possession, they decided by control of the executive to make the American people pay their losses!

Conspiracy of War Debts

"They likewise entered into a conspiracy to deprive the people of the U.S. of their title to the war debts and not being able to do that in the way they intended, they are now engaged in an effort to debase the American dollar so that foreign governments will have their debts to this country cut in two, and then by means of other vicious underhanded arrangements, they propose to remit the remainder.

"So far as the U.S. is concerned, the gambling counters have no legal standing. The U.S. Treasury cannot be compelled to make good the gambling ventures of the corrupt and dishonest Fed. Still less should the bank deposits of the U.S. be used for that purpose. Still less should the national currency have been made irredeemable in gold so that the gold which was massed and stored to redeem the currency for American citizens may be used to pay the gambling debts of the Fed for England's benefit. "The American people should have their gold in their own possession where it cannot be held under secret agreement for any foreign control bank, or world bank, or foreign nation. Our own citizens have the prior claim to it. The paper [money men] have in their possession deserves redemption far more than U.S. currency and credit which was stolen from the U.S. Treasury and bootlegged abroad.

"Why should the foreigners be made preferred creditors of the bankrupt U.S.? Why should the U.S. be treated as bankrupt at all? This Government has immense sums due it from the Fed. The directors of these institutions are men of great wealth. Why should the guilty escape the consequences of their misdeeds? Why should the people of these U.S. surrender the value of their gold bank deposits to pay off the gambling debts of these bankers? Why should Roosevelt promise foreigners that the U.S. will play the part of a good neighbor, 'meeting its obligations'?

"Let the Fed meet their own obligations.

"Every member of the Fed should be compelled to disgorge, and every acceptance banker and every discount corporation which has made illegal profits by means of public credit unlawfully bootlegged out of the U.S. Treasury and hired out by the crooks and vultures of the Fed should be compelled to disgorge.

Federal Reserve Pays No Taxes

"Gambling debts due to foreign receivers of stolen goods should not be paid by sacrificing our title to our war debts, the assets of the U.S. Treasury- which belong to all the people of the U.S. and which it is our duty to preserve inviolate in the people's treasury.

"The U.S. Treasury cannot be made liable for them. The Fed currency must be redeemed by the Fed banks or else these Fed banks must be liquidated.

"We know from assertions made here by the Hon. John N. Garner, Vice-President of the U.S. that there is a condition in the [United States such] would cause American citizens, if they knew what it was, to lose all confidence in their government.

"That is a condition that Roosevelt will not have investigated. He has brought with him from Wall Street, James Warburg, the son of Paul M. Warburg. Mr. Warburg, alien born, and the son of an alien who did not become naturalized here until several years after this Warburg's birth, is a son of a former partner of Kuhn, Loeb and Co., a grandson of another partner, a nephew of a former partner, and a nephew of a present partner.

"He holds no office in our Government, but I am told that he is in daily attendance at the Treasury, and that he has private quarters there! In other words, Mr. Chairman, Kuhn, Loeb and Company now has control and occupy the U.S. Treasury.

Preferred Treatment for Foreigners

"The text of the Executive order which seems to place an embargo on shipments of gold permits the Secretary of the Treasury, a former director of the corrupt, to issue licenses at his discretion for the export of gold coin, or bullion, earmarked or held in trust for a recognized foreign government or foreign central bank for international settlement. Now, Mr. Chairman, if gold held in trust for those foreign institutions may be sent to them, I see no reason why gold held in trust for American as evidenced by their gold certificates and other currency issued by the U.S. Government should not be paid to them. "I think that American citizens should be entitled to treatment at least as good as that which the person is extending to foreign governments, foreign central banks, and the bank of International Settlements. I think a veteran of the world war, with a $20.00 gold certificate, is at least as much entitled to receive his own gold for it, as any international banker in the city of New York or London.

"By the terms of this executive order, gold may be exported if it is actually required, for the fulfillment of any contract entered into prior to the date of this order by an applicant who, in obedience to the executive order of April 5, 1933, has delivered gold coin, gold bullion, or gold certificates. "This means that gold may be exported to pay the obligations abroad of the Fed which were incurred prior to the date of the order, namely, April 20, 1933.

"If a European Bank should send 100,000,000 dollars in Fed currency to a bank in this country for redemption, that bank could easily ship gold to Europe in exchange for that currency. Such Fed currency would represent "contracts" entered into prior to the date of the order. If the Bank of International Settlements or any other foreign bank holding any of the present gambling debt paper of the Fed should draw a draft for the settlement of such obligation, gold would be shopped to them because the debt contract would have been entered into prior to the date of order.

Here's a recent article I read on the topic of the economy and money

In a Free Market, Money Doesn't Grow on Trees
Written by Charles Scaliger
Thursday, 13 November 2008 00:47

Supporters of big government have been blaming the current economic crisis on the free market. We shoot down five of their anti-free-market fallacies and show where the fault really lies.

"Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man," economist and journalist Henry Hazlitt once pointed out. "The inherent difficulties of the subject ... are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine — the special pleading of selfish interests." In the introduction to his epigrammatic classic, Economics in One Lesson, Hazlitt explained that special interests and their kept economists have always been skillful at sowing public confusion over sound economic principles: "The group that would benefit by [bad economic] policies, having ... a direct interest in them, will argue for them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible."

Not much has changed since Hazlitt first made those observations more than six decades ago, except that public confusion over free-market economics is deeper than ever and the free market is considerably more hamstrung by government interference than it has ever been previously.

The financial crisis that has engulfed the world in recent months has given more ammunition to the enemies of liberty, especially the rhetorical and political saboteurs whose aim it is to eradicate economic freedom with full-blown socialism. Their arguments — that the markets need "fixing," that private-sector greed is responsible for the mess, and that freedom, at least where the markets are concerned, simply does not work — are the same warmed-over fallacies that Hazlitt (and others before and since, like Bastiat and Rothbard) devoted his life to refuting. The truth is that the current financial crisis has been created not by the free market but by government interference in the operation of the free market.

But in times of crisis, anti-free-market fallacies have a way of reappearing and capturing the fancy of a public weary of bad news and desperate for anything that will restore market sanity and, more importantly, return their vanished wealth. Hazlitt and other champions of freedom and free markets understood that the enemies of freedom can be counted on to exploit every opportunity to spread their falsehoods, so they worked tirelessly to help the common man to understand and appreciate the virtues of free-market capitalism. In that same spirit, we presume to offer a timely treatment of some of the most conspicuous anti-free-market fallacies, to remind the reader of the virtues of economic freedom and of the root causes and cure for the financial and economic meltdown.

FALLACY #1: The free market does not work perfectly because unfettered capitalism is too disorderly. Government is needed to impose limits on speculative excess, prevent price fluctuations from becoming too severe, and in general to exercise benign control over a lawless domain of human activity.

Answer: "Order" is a popular synonym for government, especially among those who believe no problem is too big or too complex to be solved by the creative application of government force. But is "order" more important than liberty? Other freedoms — the freedoms of speech and of religion spring immediately to mind — are also sometimes conducive to social disorder. A monolithic state religion and rigid censorship of controversial speech are likely to impose more "order" than their absence (and were once defended on precisely those grounds), but Americans are still willing to accept the risks and the disorderliness that inevitably arise from these freedoms. The benefits associated with freedom of religion and speech are rightly held to greatly outweigh the risks — this despite the fact that religious freedom has sparked numerous wars, and printed and spoken words have been responsible for epochal upheavals in human affairs.

But in truth, although a planned economy may be more "orderly," at least in the abstract, it is immeasurably less productive than the free market. No cadre of central planners, no matter how enlightened, can possibly make better market decisions than individual consumers with their countless millions of choices, great and small, made every day in a free-market economy. It is those choices in the aggregate that create the great web of supply and demand, with its constant fluctuations depending on a myriad of factors beyond the control of any government agency. When demand for a given product declines, so too will its supply, over time, and other products to satisfy human needs and tastes will arise to take its place. When a given producer overestimates public desire for his product and produces more than he can sell at a hoped-for price, the price will go down.

The free market, in other words, is a spontaneous extended order that, left largely to its own devices, will regulate itself, as consumers and producers decide for themselves what things shall be produced, at what price, and in what quantities. This applies not only to consumer goods like groceries and clothing, but also to stocks, bonds, other financial instruments, real estate, and even money itself — which is, after all, just another consumer good, albeit one with a very important purpose.

The idea that government can do one better on the free market is ludicrous. It is tantamount to saying that the government knows better than this writer, or the reader, or the man on the next barber stool, what economic choices to make for himself. The free market is the ultimate democracy and (unlike pure political democracy) works better than any possible alternative, occasional uncertainties notwithstanding.

FALLACY #2: Free markets do not work because of human greed. Accordingly, government is needed to keep man's predatory instincts in check.

Answer: We agree that the government has a responsibility to enforce contracts and punish fraud. But men should be as free as possible to enter into contractual agreements and to take responsibility for the risks associated with them. Caveat emptor — let the buyer beware — is hackneyed but still spot-on. Men should have legal recourse when others steal, lie, defraud, or refuse to fulfill the terms of a contract. But men have no moral right to enlist the power of the state to bail them out of bankruptcy or otherwise intervene whenever they do not wish to suffer the consequences of bad business decisions.

Certainly wealthy men can be greedy, but there is no better restraint on "corporate greed" than the freedom to fail. When failed businesses of any size are bailed out with taxpayer monies, when dominant corporations receive special treatment, government, not the private sector, is encouraging what is known in economics as "moral hazard," the tendency to take greater risks and be less provident with capital resources than would otherwise be the case — in other words, to get greedy.

Thus the free market tends to punish greedy behavior, while government interference encourages and even rewards it. And lest we forget, the wealthy capitalist with all his money cannot compel men one iota to do his bidding — unlike government, with its armies, prisons, and police forces. Which of the two is therefore the more deserving of popular vigilance?

FALLACY #3: Economies grow when people open their wallets and spend, and stagnate when consumers are reluctant to spend. Therefore, governments and central banks need to encourage people to keep spending, to keep the economy moving.

Answer: This peculiar economic fetish flies in the face of everything our parents ever taught us about money. Remember "a penny saved is a penny earned"? How many of us were encouraged by our parents to spend as much of our allowance or earnings as we could, rather than save money, because spending is better for our personal economic health? What is prudent conduct for families and individuals — savings and thrift as against spending — is no different for nations or the economy as a whole. Just as individuals cannot spend themselves into prosperity, so too excessive spending — by governments, corporations, or any other large-scale economic entity — will lead to ruination in the long run. Savings, not spending, is the basis of any nation's or individual's wealth, yet our government and captains of finance almost universally disparage savings and believe that only consumption can keep our economy healthy.

What is the origin of such a patently nonsensical belief? In large part, it has arisen from the way in which money is created in the modern world. With the demise of the gold standard worldwide, all money in circulation today is created by the Federal Reserve and other central banks throughout the world. Although the issuance of "fiat" paper money amounts to printing notes on paper not backed by gold or anything else, the way that this is accomplished in practice is a little more subtle. Central banks, including the Federal Reserve, pump new money into the economy by issuing debt, which expands the amount of money available in bank reserves and ultimately creates a demand for more money in circulation. But the viability of the entire system depends crucially on the willingness of corporations and consumers to take on debt. If the public should become too thrifty, relying on savings rather than credit, the ability of the banks to expand the money supply would be severely impaired. To avoid this, the Federal Reserve and other central banks routinely lower interest rates far below natural market values, to entice individuals and corporations to keep borrowing and spending, rather than to save. The infamous real-estate bubble was created by just such an artifice, in which credit became so cheap that millions of Americans were gulled into taking on multiple mortgages and acquiring extravagant houses far beyond what their means would permit in a marketplace not distorted by unnaturally low interest rates.

This pernicious practice of lowering interest rates to enable the government and central banks to print money at will has been carried on for so long that large numbers of people have allowed themselves to be persuaded that, after all, spending and debt make much more sense than dull, old-fashioned living within their means and saving money. Add to that the fact that the dollar has lost most of its value over the last several generations, and saving money whose value will disappear over time looks very unappealing.

FALLACY #4: The Federal Reserve may have its faults, but it plays an important role in stimulating economic growth by prudently expanding the money supply.

Answer: This fallacy rests on the confusion of money with wealth. Printing new money does not — indeed cannot — make us richer as a whole. All it does is increase the amount of money relative to other goods and services, causing prices to rise over time. This process — the expansion of the money supply by central banks acting in cahoots with government — is called inflation (not to be confused with rising prices, which are the effects, not the cause, of inflation).

Put otherwise, if you have a very rare baseball card, of which only a handful remain, you have a collectible of considerable value. But if someone somewhere finds an entire box full of such baseball cards hidden in an attic and sells them at an auction, the value of your card will drop, because it will no longer be as scarce. In similar fashion, the value of the dollar is diluted as more and more come into circulation through the process of inflation. This is why prices have risen steadily year after year, eroding the value of the dollar and of savings.

When bogus money is pumped into the economy by the Federal Reserve, people come to believe that growth is occurring. Cheap credit, the concomitant of a loose-money policy, encourages feverish borrowing and spending, and a boom follows. Of course, at some real level far removed from the inflationary cloud-cuckoo land, real growth is taking place, as more and more goods are produced, land is developed, and payrolls increase. But this growth is far removed from the wild-eyed expectations of a public intoxicated with easy money. Sooner or later, reality rears its ugly head, and, as surely as the hangover after the bender, the bust follows.

Of course, the temptation is great to try to avoid the bust by pumping even more easy money into the economy. But the bust cannot be avoided forever — and the greater the bender the worse the hangover will be.

If wealth could be created through money creation, then every American could be made an instant "millionaire" by mailing him a check for a million or a billion dollars. The federal government could then go to the Federal Reserve to borrow the money it needs to back those checks, and the Fed could create the money out of thin air — just as it does now, albeit on a smaller scale. But how much food would a million dollars then buy?

Quite aside from economic concerns, inflation is also a moral evil, not only because it is based on a lie, but because its effects are felt differentially. When new money is first introduced into the economy, the primary beneficiaries — those at the top of the economic food chain, like big banks, major investment firms, and corporations that conduct business directly with the government — perceive it as a benefit, because prices have not yet risen to reflect the appearance of the new money. They are like the members of a hypothetical counterfeiting ring who enrich themselves by printing money and then spending it on themselves. They are happy, and the merchants with whom they transact their business are happy, because the new money, having just been introduced into the money supply, has not yet caused prices generally to rise.

But in the longer run, the new money in circulation will cause consumers to bid up prices, to the general and long-term detriment of the economy. Inflation thus enriches a few, who have access to new fiat money before anyone else, at the expense of all the rest, who only become aware of inflation after prices at the supermarket and the gas pump rise and the value of their savings deteriorates.

Even more reprehensibly, inflation is in fact a kind of tax, but withal a much less honest one than property or income taxes. Governments always prefer to print money for revenue rather than raise it through taxation whenever they can get away with it because the nature of inflation is so hard for many people to recognize. People pay the tax exacted by inflation in the form of a depreciating dollar and devalued savings rather than in a direct levy, but the effect is the same.

Because of its deceptive nature, inflation is the preferred means of funding wars and unpopular big-government programs. It is no accident that, since the advent of modern central banking, the scale and expense of military spending and warfare have increased many fold. So too has our federal government expanded to gargantuan proportions since the Federal Reserve first fired up its printing presses. The modern welfare/warfare state with all of its injustices depends crucially on inflation and deficit spending for its lifeblood. If the money spigots at the Federal Reserve were someday turned off, as a few lonely voices like Congressman Ron Paul have been advocating, much of the outsized federal government would wither on the vine as taxpayers and their servile representatives in Congress balked at footing the entire bill by direct taxation.

FALLACY #5: Say what you will, the government still needs to step in from time to time to rescue a corporation or an industry too important to our national economy to be allowed to fail. This requires general sacrifice, but it is better than allowing the collapse of an indispensable corporation or industry to bring down the entire economy.

Answer: The failure of a corporation, even a large bank or financial company, will not bring down an entire economy. What happens in the free market when a large, inefficient corporation fails is that its assets are acquired by more efficient producers. This happened recently with the assets of Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia, and Washington Mutual. When governments undertake to prop up or bail out inefficient corporations on the basis of specious arguments like the "too large to fail" canard, it is simply subsidizing inefficient producers at the expense of efficient ones (and saddling taxpayers with the tab). The idea that failed large corporations leave gaping rifts in economic productivity is absurd; their assets are simply purchased by other players and put back into productive work. When an airline fails, it does not junk its airplanes and other valuable assets, but instead sells them to a willing buyer, and its best employees are typically retained under the new management.

Variants of the "critical industry" or "too big to fail" argument commit the cardinal fallacy of false economics, the failure to trace the consequence of a particular policy to its general and long-term effects, not merely its targeted short-term effects. Without doubt, individual corporations — their boards of directors, shareholders, and employees — benefit in the short term from a government bailout. Book assets are propped up, jobs are kept secure, and company morale is boosted. Given enough time, some corporations, like Lee Iacocca's Chrysler, may even right themselves and return to profitability. But the question that special interests lobbying on behalf of such government interference never consider is the general effect on the rest of the economy. Special interests are, after all, special; they are not paid, nor is it in their short-term best interest, to consider the "big picture." Yet good economics, as Hazlitt pointed out, "consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups." And as prudent citizens and taxpayers, we ought to do likewise.

The hard truth is that government bailouts benefit none but the special interests thus rewarded, and possibly the politicians who reap the kickbacks. The money used for bailouts comes, directly or indirectly, from the taxpayer, money that would otherwise be used for more productive purposes in the free market. More efficient competitors and would-be purchasers of the inefficient corporation's assets are at a disadvantage; they are in effect being penalized for their frugality and efficiency to the same extent that the beneficiary of the bailout is being rewarded for its profligacy and inefficiency. And of course, the immense sums often involved in government bailouts, like the $700 billion dollar abomination recently passed by a supine Congress, will become the taxpayers' liability for generations to come.

Freedom Works

To claim that the free market "doesn't work," as choristers in the media, in Washington, and on Wall Street have been crying for months, is to cast doubt on the viability of freedom in the first place. For the past couple of centuries — a vanishingly brief interlude in the total sweep of human history — the light of freedom has spread, in varying degrees, throughout much of the world. Only a few generations ago, the greater part of the world accepted such articles of political faith as the divine right of monarchs, chattel slavery, a state religious monopoly, and state censorship. Near-absolute curtailment of liberties — economic, political, social, and spiritual — has been the rule, not the exception, even among comparatively enlightened societies in ages past.

The fledgling United States of America were the freest and most perfect republics the world had yet seen. But early America was not merely the embodiment of political freedom. The Founding Fathers were keenly aware that freedom also must extend to the all-important realm of economic activity. Most of them (Alexander Hamilton being a notable exception) championed a free market with a minimum of state interference. The writings of Turgot, Adam Smith, and other lesser-known free-market economists were familiar in early America. In economic matters as in other spheres of human activity, it was widely believed that freedom to choose would prompt citizens to solve problems and improve their condition far more effectively than government coercion could hope to accomplish.

So deeply and widely held were such convictions that, during America's first great financial and economic crisis, the Panic of 1819 (which lasted roughly two years), arguments against government interference in economic affairs were set forth so robustly and vigorously in many states that proposals for state-funded relief of bankrupt individuals and corporations were roundly rejected by legislatures, and schemes to engage in inflationary activity were regarded with narrow suspicion. Although relief measures found support in some quarters, the arguments of Virginia state representative William Selden, as summarized by economist Murray Rothbard in his history of the Panic of 1819, were typical of the prevailing sentiment:

Selden stressed the importance of personal responsibility for contracts and actions; the debtor should "pay the consequence of his own folly of imprudence." In short, freedom of contract must be maintained; "Leave men alone to make their own contracts, and leave contracts alone when they are made."

From such statesmanlike sentiments, modern America has gone very far astray. Many of us, and nearly all of our political leadership, have come to believe in the illusion of prosperity through government force, carried out by micromanagement of the economy and manipulation of the money supply. But true prosperity — wealth — is not to be attained by printing money, nor a robust economy by central planning in any degree of intrusion.

Ah, but we must do something to save our faltering economy, the socialists say. Indeed, we must do something. But it is the height of stupidity to think that we can "rescue" the economy by doing more of what caused our economic downturn in the first place — more government spending, more creating money out of thin air, more artificially low interest rates, and more debt. The key to restoring the economy to good health is to stop harming it, and that means that we must stop creating money out of thin air (which means reinstituting the gold standard), allow market forces to set interest rates, and limit government to its proper constitutional size.

Contrary to the pleading of her many enemies, freedom does work, as the miraculous success of the United States of America and other comparatively free nations bears eloquent witness.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/e ... enu-44/508