Who controls the money system?
All today's major money systems have been created and are maintained by networks of private banks under the umbrella of central banks (such as the Federal Reserve Bank, The Bank of England and the European Central Bank) which hide behind a smokescreen of pseudo public accountability and responsibility. Part of the reason it got this way was because of our original use of commodity money — commodities such as gold tend to be privately owned as most of the mining companies are private. When the system changed to fiat money, these wealthy and powerful money lenders (much more wealthy than governments) made sure they were a central part of the new equation by any means at their disposal. In the words of James Madison, "History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance."
A classic example of this deceit was the undemocratic manner in which President Woodrow Wilson railroaded through the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, bringing America in line with the European private banking systems. He was later to write: "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, 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 civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
All modern countries now have a system in which private banks lend to the governments the money they need. For this service they charge interest. This means that we have a debt-based money system as all our money is issued as the nation's debt to these banks. As with any private lender, the interest is maximised, siphoning huge amounts of wealth from ordinary citizens into the hands of a few fabulously rich men and women. After the interest has been paid, the system is set up to further squander the nation's wealth in tax-breaks for and huge subsidies to big business, including the arms and pharmaceutical industries. Is it any wonder that most nations, including the United States and the Third World, have spiraling debt, despite large increases in productivity over the past few decades? And this growing national debt, of course, further increases our tax burden as we are the ones who ultimately have to foot the bills for the interest. Even with all the trillions of dollars sloshing around the system, poverty even in First World countries has been increasing since the early 1970s, and that the value of wages has been dropping. We cannot continue as slaves to credit if we wish to live as free men and women.
To maintain control of the money supply and to further maximise profits, the banking system allows banks to lend out up to ten times their actual assets and then charge interest on this imaginary money. This piece of deception, called fractional reserve banking, allows the banking system to royally rip off the people with the interest it makes from this imaginary money. So your bank lends you 1000 dollars of which 900 are just figures on a computer screen. You work hard to repay the loan plus, say, 200 dollars in interest. The bank has therefore made 200 dollars out of effectively just its 100 dollar initial investment. Not a bad return — this scam is profitable! Fractional reserve banking serves three functions: as we have seen, it is outrageously profitable; it allows the private banks to cope with credit demand using only a tenth of their money, thus maintaining their position as the official money lenders; and it makes the money system much easier to manipulate.
Putting private banking institutions at the heart of today's national and international money systems is like having the head of the Mafia as the Chief of Police — there is a massive conflict of interests. These private banks do everything they can in order to maximise their own profits, regardless of the morality or ethics of their actions. The most successful technique the banks use to increase their assets and their power is to deliberately expand and contract the money supply. An increasing money supply encourages loans, and then by suddenly contracting it, you drive the people into defaulting on those loans, allowing you to help yourself to their land, their house and everything they own.
A good example of this is the Great Depression of the early 1930s in the United States. During the 20s, the Federal Reserve Bank substantially increased the money supply to create what has been described as "the roaring twenties". Using the stock market crash of 29 as a cover, it then rapidly contracted the money supply in the early 30s (the very opposite of what should have been done to remedy the situation). This forced many poor Americans, including thousands of small-time farmers, to default on their bank loans, allowing the banks to help themselves to these people's hard-earned property. The banks made a killing whilst the people starved. This was clearly not in the interest of the people but it was done anyway because private banks were (and still are) in control.
Thomas Jefferson saw this danger nearly two hundred years ago when he wrote: "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks...will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." This is exactly what has happened in throughout the world today and is the reason why we are all so steeped in debt — especially the Third World. We are all increasingly enslaved by the interest on our credit, allowing a few incredibly wealthy bankers to effectively rule the world, sparking a war here, a depression or famine over there to maximise profits.
