Thrive is an unconventional documentary that lifts the veil on what’s REALLY going on in our world by following the money upstream – uncovering the global consolidation of power in nearly every aspect of our lives. Weaving together breakthroughs in science, consciousness and activism, Thrive offers real solutions, empowering us with unprecedented and bold strategies for reclaiming our lives and our future.
The Secret of Oz
It is commonly known in economics academia that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baum in 1900 is loaded with powerful symbols of monetary reform which were the core of the Populist movement and the 1896 and 1900 presidental bids of Populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Oz is a virtual forest of monetary reform symbolism, done by someone extremely well versed in the Populist monetary reform goals of the period (Baum was a newspaperman and author) – goals which have never changed - they are still valid today, they are needed now more than then.
THE MONEY MASTERS is a 3 1/2 hour non-fiction, historical documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure. The modern political power structure has its roots in the hidden manipulation and accumulation of gold and other forms of money. The development of fractional reserve banking practices in the 17th century brought to a cunning sophistication the secret techniques initially used by goldsmiths fraudulently to accumulate wealth. With the formation of the privately-owned Bank of England in 1694, the yoke of economic slavery to a privately-owned “central” bank was first forced upon the backs of an entire nation, not removed but only made heavier with the passing of the three centuries to our day. Nation after nation has fallen prey to this cabal of international central bankers.
US: Giant rocket lifts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California carrying a secret spy satellite (the third of 6 that are planned). It is believed that the new satellite will be capable of reading car license plates.
DailyMail 2011 Jan 21 (Cached)
US: Congress has introduced a bill to repeal the ban on incandescent lights by 2012. Compact fluorescent lights save energy but they contain toxic mercury and are a potential health hazzard when broken.
Natural News 2011 Jan 21 (Cached)
Chinese President Hu, speaking in Chicago, says China is not a military threat and also denied that his country has a one-child policy. [Well, that settles that, doesn't it? Surely he wouldn't say anything that was untrue!]
DailyMail 2011 Jan 21 (Cached)
Australia: Global-warming myth makers claim that recent floods are the result of so-called “climate change”. Here is the historical proof that such claims are pure bunk. These charts show that floods of this magnitude are not unusual for that area and, in fact, were more common and severe in the 19th century.
WUWT Posted 2011 Jan 21 (Cached)
Spain: Government is pouring freshly created money into banks in hopes of warding off an international bailout. Billions of euros in previous bailouts have been ineffective. [As always, the influx of money out of nothing will create even more inflation for consumers.]
WSJ 2011 Jan 20 (Cached)
US: FDA is investigating a possible connection between flu vaccines and 36 seizures in young children that occurred within 24 hours of receiving the shots. [Don't expect much here. The FDA is more of a partner to Big Pharma than a regulator and likely will "find" that the problem was not the shots in general but a bad batch or some other temporary condition or that the number of adverse reactions is too small to worry about, so keep those kids coming for more. We shall see.]
Yahoo 2011 Jan 20 (Cached)
US: Supreme Court has denied hearing a case exposing corruption by lower-court federal judges. The proof against them is so clear that no one even tries to deny it. Yet, the Supreme Court has refused to hear the case, which has the effect of releasing them from conviction and, at the same time, condemning an innocent man.
Breitbart 2011 Jan 19 (Cached)
Goldman Sachs’ earnings fell by 53% in the 4th quarter and 37% overall in 2010 due to a reduction in bond trading and investment banking. (Investment banking involves acting as an agent for companies that need to raise capital from investors.) However, its own investing and lending segment showed a larger profit than last year. [This so-called profitable sector is the same one that was bailed out after suffering huge losses from high-risk loans. It's easy to show a profit when your losses are covered by taxpayers.]
Yahoo 2011 Jan 19 (Cached)
Goldman Sachs has 475 secret elite partners who stand to reap a windfall from 38 million stock options that were granted to them in 2008. [Options allow the holders to purchase stock at a stated price, usually very low, in anticipation of the stock being much more valuable at a future date. This method of compensation often is concealed from the public because it does not show up as salary or bonus. Among those to benefit are former Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Robert Rubin.]
NY Times 2011 Jan 19 (Cached)
Obamacare has been repealed in the House but, likely, will be sustained the Senate and/or the President, so this was largely a symbolic effort. Most Republicans want to reform parts of the law instead of abolishing it completely. [Neither the Right nor the Left in Congress has any intention of repealing Obamacare because they stand to collect an extra $345 billion a year with the new tax provisions. That's why we support State Nullification.]
Fox News 2011 Jan 19 (Cached)
US: 26 states have joined a lawsuit filed by Florida to challenge the constitutionality of Obamacare. [This is a good sign of public opposition but contains the seeds of its own defeat. The lawsuit says Obamacare is unconstitutional because it forces Americans to buy health insurance. However, if that provision is struck down, all the other provisions would remain, and funding would come from taxes and inflation instead of premiums. So this has the appearance of opposition but is without real effect. If the states are serious about abolishing Obamacare, they should simply nullify the whole thing under the 10th Amendment.]
Guardian 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)
Ireland’s central bank begins printing Euros [that's right, Euros] out of thin air to cover its debt. This will have an inflationary effect on the rest of the EU countries. [This seems strange, but appears to be not much different than having the money printed by the EU and then shipped to Ireland. It's all just an accounting trick anyway.]
Daily Bell 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)
US: An air traveler at the Baltimore-Washington Airport declined to accept a full-body scan but was forced to walk through the machine anyway. He believes it was a psychological move to show that opt-outs cannot claim a “victory” over their authority.
InfoWars 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)
Hawaii: Natural farming, using compost and earthworms, has doubled the yield of a small farm in just two years – and no pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizer are needed. There was a 30% decrease in water usage. [Even though most of us are not farmers, it is important that even city dwellers know that chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not necessary for our food supply.]
Staradvertiser 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)
Overpopulation time bomb is a myth, according to several recent scientific studies. The problem with global hunger is not that there is not enough food but that distribution is hampered by a holdback in technology.
The Independent 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)
City of Camden, New Jersey, lays off 17% of its employees, including police and firefighters, who warn that the city will become a “living hell.”. Public-safety workers and unions refused to take job-saving cuts, and the state is unable to bail out the city again (as it has for the past 2 generations).
Yahoo 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)
US: Department of Agriculture provides a $12 million secret bailout to Domino’s Pizza in a bizarre new partnership. The announced purpose is to promote “a cheesier pizza.” [How's that for the proper function of the state?]
Shatter Limits 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)
Chief climate scientist at NASA calls for Chinese-style dictatorship to fight global warming. He laments that the democratic process allows voters to obstruct the process. [Is anyone surprised? The global-warming myth is merely an excuse to establish a global dictatorship, and this fellow is just confirming it.]
Washington Times 2011 Jan 17 (Cached)
A study from the University of California found that all of the pregnant women in the test were contaminated with toxic chemicals, many of which have been banned in the US for decades. The source? Plastics, toys, personal-care products, and pesticide residue in food that is imported from other countries. Even though banned in the US, they can be imported with no problem. In addition, many toxic chemicals are still allowed in the US.
Natural News 2011 Jan 17 (Cached)
UK: A single mother, who was temporarily paralyzed by a fall, was told that her two-month-old baby (which was being well cared for by her sister) was to be put up for adoption by social services. The case workers claimed (with absolutely no evidence) that the mother may have been suicidal. The case has dragged on for 18 months after the mother’s total recovery. [This is only one case, but the details are painfully reminiscent of many similar cases that occur in every collectivist nation of the world where children are considered to be property of the state.]
Telegraph 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)
Here is a list of the top 10 prescription drugs linked to violent behavior, including homicide and suicide. Most are anti-depressants and attention deficit drugs. [Incidentally, these are some of the most highly prescribed drugs in history. Instead of outlawing guns, how about outlawing these killers?]
Time Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)
Here is an article that contains astonishing excerpts from Air Force documents describing how the HAARP installation in Alaska (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), may create weather modification as a weapon. [When they speak of nanotechnology and particles in the atmosphere, be aware that the most efficient method of putting them there is through aerosol spraying from aircraft. We call them chemtrails.]
PPJ Gazette Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)
See: What in the World Are They Spraying?
Montana is considering ‘Sheriffs First’ legislation requiring federal agencies like the IRS, FBI and ATF, to get written permission from local sheriffs to perform searches and seizures.
WND Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)
US Mint reports a buying frenzy of physical silver within the first 12 days of January 2011. Gold sales also have jumped. [Ironically, the spot price of silver and gold dropped significantly shortly after this announcement. It appears that those who manipulate the market are making a last-ditch effort to push the demand back down. They do this by selling bullion contracts (not the bullion itself). If buyers decide to demand physical delivery, the game is over, and the speculators who have done this will be wiped out.]
ZeroHedge Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)
US: Here is a list of the tax hikes that are in Obamacare. It is one of the largest tax increases in American history.
ATR.org Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)
US: Patriot Act that allows the government to conduct warrantless searches, monitor private computer records, tap phone calls, and prevent you from knowing you are being spied on, has wide support in Congress and is expected to be renewed this month with little or no debate or fanfare. [This will be a test of the sincerity of those Tea-Party Republicans who recently were elected on their promise to uphold the Constitution.]
Huffington Post 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)
Genetically modified chickens have been created that developers say will not transmit avian flu to other birds. [That's good news, but developers don't say what negative effects to human health may come from eating the meat from these chickens. This is part of the current trend whereby GMO companies are trying to get farmers to grow only foods that they have patented, and they always justify this practice as, somehow, providing a benefit to mankind.]
PopSci Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)
UK: Grandmother received swine flu vaccine and was told by her doctor that it would absolutely protect her from the flu. She did not have the flu at the time but died from swine flu two months later.
Natural News Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)
California applies to the federal government for bankruptcy protection. Currently, states are prohibited from declaring bankruptcy, but a new law to change that is being considered. [If states can declare bankruptcy, they will be able to re-negotiate impossible-to-sustain employee pension plans and health-care contracts, which is why unions oppose the measure. For taxpayers, it would be a great relief.]
LA Times 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)
US Fish and Wildlife has agreed (only after being sued) to stop planting GMO crops on refuges in 12 Northeastern states. More lawsuits to stop the practice in other regions are being pursued. [This article says that, while farming is allowed on refuges, most have been converted to GMO crops because those were the only seeds farmers could obtain. A peek into the future?]
PEER Posted 2011 Jan 15 (Cached)
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ANALYSIS
Reports and commentaries that look beyond the news to identify historical facts and trends that must be understood to place the news into perspective. This is our “think-tank” section that makes it possible to anticipate future events.
Texas: Activist confronts Austin Chief Sustainability Officer as she confirms that the UN’s Agenda 21 program, which she supports, calls for reducing the population by 85%. She laughs when the issue is raised and says she is not concerned about that aspect of the program. [This is only one official out of thousands just like her in positions of government authority around the country, but be assured that she represents the norm, not the exception. These people are dead serious.]
YouTube 2011 Jan 16
Goldnomics: the value difference between cash and gold bullion. [You probably know most of this, but it is a good idea to take a refresher course from time to time.]
YouTube Posted 2011 Jan 15
Mike Adams and Farmer Brad discuss the impact of the misnamed Food Safety Bill: Many small farmers will go out of business due to extensive paperwork and FDA regulations; food prices will increase; and more food will be imported from other countries. [Imported food bypasses most safety regulations, so Americans will be at greater risk than before. Incidentally, small farms have never been the source of major outbreaks.]
Natural News Posted 2011 Jan 15
This is an excellent animation that explains the illusion of the “American Dream” and fiat money. [Caution! Some of the historical information is not accurate. For example, the story that JFK was assassinated because of his stand against the Federal Reserve cannot be substantiated. In fact, Kennedy always was a friend of central banking (See The JFK Myth). Nevertheless, because of the high quality of this program and the fact that the general theme is correct, we recommend it highly.]
YouTube Posted 2011 Jan 15
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When the enemies of freedom cannot hide or deny the truth, their disinformation agents proclaim it boldly but mix it with questionable or offensive claims so people will recoil from the whole, like mixing garbage with groceries to stink up the bag and cause us to throw out the good with the bad. News items in this section may be in that category.
EU Times story on “toxic-oil spill rains” correctly spotlights damage from the Gulf-oil spill but makes claims that it cannot be substantiated, thus, undermining genuine concerns.
Rense.com Posted 2011 Jan 18 (Cached)
Thomas DiLorenzo
One can say without exaggeration that inflation is an indispensable means of militarism,” Ludwig von Mises wrote. “Without it, the repercussions of war on welfare become obvious much more quickly and penetratingly; war weariness would set in much earlier.”
This explains why American politicians have always resorted to the legalized counterfeiting of central banking to finance wars, the most expensive of all government programs. If citizens had a clearer picture of the true costs, they would be more inclined to oppose non-defensive intervention and to force all wars to hastier conclusions.
Government can finance war (and everything else) by only three methods: taxes, debt, and the printing of money. Taxes are the most visible and painful, followed by debt finance, which crowds out private borrowing, drives up interest rates, and imposes the double burden of principal and interest. Money creation, on the other hand, makes war seem costless to the average citizen. But of course there is no such thing as a free lunch.
As a general rule, the longer a war lasts, the more centrally planned and government-controlled the entire economy becomes. And it remains so to some degree after the war has ended. War is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne famously declared, and the growth of the state means a decline in liberty and prosperity.
As Robert Higgs wrote in Crisis and Leviathan, among the effects of World War I were “massive government collusion with organized special-interest groups; the de facto nationalization of the ocean shipping and railroad industries; the increased federal intrusion in labor markets, capital markets, communications, and agriculture; and enduring changes in constitutional doctrines regarding conscription and governmental suppression of free speech.”
Inflationary war finance inevitably leads to calls for price controls, which inflict even greater damage on the private enterprise system by generating shortages of goods and services, which are falsely blamed on capitalism. The state uses this excuse to grant itself even greater central-planning powers. Inflating the currency as a method of war finance is often a first step in the adoption of what is essentially economic fascism.
Paper and printing were invented in China, but American politicians were the first to use government paper money. It was adopted by the colonial government of Massachusetts in 1690. As Murray N. Rothbard wrote, the Massachusetts government was “accustomed to launching plunder expeditions against the prosperous French colony in Quebec.” The loot was typically used to pay mercenary soldiers, but when one of the expeditions failed and the soldiers threatened mutiny, the Massachusetts government printed 7,000 British pounds in paper notes to pay them. The government promised to redeem the paper money in gold or silver, but took 40 years to do so. Meanwhile, the public was so suspicious of the notes that they depreciated by 40 percent in the first year.
By 1740, every colony except for Virginia had followed Massachusetts’ lead in issuing fiat paper money. The results were dramatic inflation, boom-and-bust cycles, and depreciated currency.
During the Revolution, a form of centralized banking was adopted when the Continental Congress issued “the Continental” in 1775. Because it was not backed by anything of value, the Continental depreciated so severely that it was virtually worthless by 1781. “Not worth a Continental” became a popular slang.
Some of the states attempted to deal with the inflation caused by the massive printing of Continentals with price-control laws. The predictable effect: shortages so severe that George Washington’s army almost starved in a field in Pennsylvania. The situation became so desperate that the Continental Congress issued a resolution on June 4, 1778 urging all the states to abolish their price-control laws: “Whereas it hath been found by experience that limitations upon the prices of commodities are not only ineffectual for the purpose proposed, but likewise productive of very evil consequences – resolved, that it be recommended to the several states to repeal or suspend all laws limiting, regulating or restraining the Price of any Article.” Within three months, “the army was fairly well provided for as a direct result of this change in policy,” write Robert Schuettinger and Eamonn Butler in Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls: How Not to Fight Inflation.
Despite the economic calamities caused by America’s first foray into centralized control of the money supply, at the end of the Revolutionary War the nation’s first central bank – the Bank of North America – was created, with defense contractor/congressman Robert Morris implanted as its president. Centralized banking might have been ruinous for the general public, but political insiders like Morris profited handsomely. The bank was given a monopoly license to issue paper currency, and it used most of its newly created money for loans to the central government. In so doing, it inflated its currency so rapidly that within one year the market lost all confidence in the bank and it was privatized.
Alexander Hamilton was the real founding father of central banking, as the Federal Reserve Board declares in one of its publications. His Bank of the United States (BUS), established in 1791 after a momentous debate between Hamilton and Jefferson over its constitutionality, was partly intended to finance “sudden emergencies” like war, in Hamilton’s own words. He rejected Washington and Jefferson’s foreign policy of commercial relations with all nations, entangling alliances with none. Instead, he advocated a permanent military establishment complete with a large navy and standing army that would pursue “imperial glory.” As historian Clinton Rossiter explains, “Hamilton’s overriding purpose was to build the foundations of a new empire.”
Hamilton praised public debt as a “blessing” and complained to George Washington, “We need a government of more energy!” Jefferson, on the other hand, opposed both a large public debt and a national bank, arguing, “the perpetuation of debt, has drenched the earth with blood” – a reference to European monarchs’ endless wars of conquest funded by public debt.
Hamilton’s Bank of the United States ran up 72 percent inflation in its first five years and created such economic instability that its 20-year charter was not renewed by Congress in 1811.
Then came the senseless War of 1812. There was no central bank, but the federal government still devised a way to monetize the war debt. It encouraged the creation of dozens of private banks, then in 1814 declared a “suspension of specie payment.” That is, banks were not required to redeem their paper currency in gold or silver. Thus, under the direction of the U.S. Congress, banks were allowed to inflate their currencies at will for two-and-a-half years as a means of monetizing the war debt, thereby disguising the costs of the conflict to the public. Inflation during the war years averaged about 35 percent.
This was exacerbated when the BUS was resurrected in January 1817 and empowered to create a national paper currency, purchase public debt, and receive deposits of U.S. Treasury funds. Rothbard explained the politics in his History of Money and Banking in the United States:
The Second Bank of the United States was pushed through Congress … particularly by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander J. Dallas … a wealthy Philadelphia lawyer [and] close friend, counsel, and financial associate of Philadelphia merchant and banker Stephen Girard, reputedly one of the two wealthiest men in the country. … Girard was the largest stockholder of the First Bank of the United States, and during the War of 1812 Girard became a very heavy investor in the war debt of the federal government. … [A]s a way to unload his public debt, Girard began to agitate for a new Bank of the United States.
The Second Bank of the United States “launched a spectacular inflation of money and credit,” writes Rothbard, coupled with a great deal of fraud. It promptly created the “Panic of 1819,” the first real depression in American history. For the first time there was large-scale unemployment in cities such as Philadelphia, where employment in the manufacturing of handicrafts fell from 9,700 persons in 1815 to only 2,100 in 1819.
After nearly 20 years of inflation, fraud, political corruption, and boom-and-bust cycles caused by the Second Bank of the United States, President Andrew Jackson heroically vetoed the bill to recharter the Bank in 1834, and it went out of business. But the Hamiltonian nationalists did not. They would wage a political crusade for the next two decades as members of the Whig and Republican parties to inflict central banking on the nation once again.
They finally succeeded during the Lincoln administration with the Legal Tender Act of 1862, which empowered the secretary of the Treasury to issue paper “greenbacks” that were not redeemable in gold or silver. The National Currency Acts of 1863 and 1864 created a system of nationally chartered banks that could issue bank notes supplied to them by the new comptroller of the currency. The Acts also placed a 10 percent tax on competing state bank notes to drive them out of business and establish a federal monetary monopoly.
The predictable effect was massive inflation, with the greenback dollars so devalued that within one year they were worth only 35 cents in gold. All of the negative economic effects of inflation – devaluation of private wealth, unfair redistribution of income from creditors to debtors, and hindrance to rational economic calculation – damaged the Northern war effort, but not as much as that of the South. The North funded most of the war with public borrowing; the South funded most of its wartime expenditures by printing Confederate dollars. Consequently, inflation in the Confederacy averaged more than 2,200 percent per year.
The nationalization of the money supply created an engine of inflation – and a powerful lobbying force to advocate that it keep running. Northern manufacturers realized that during periods of inflation, domestic currency tends to depreciate faster than prices are rising. A falling dollar makes domestic goods cheaper and the price of imports higher. Henceforth, they became a powerful political force in favor of an even further centralization of banking. Meanwhile, the heavily indebted railroads realized that inflation cheapened their debts, so they allied with manufacturers as a permanent lobby for inflation.
These special interests joined the political coalition that created the Federal Reserve Board in 1913, which became an important source of finance for America’s disastrous participation in World War I four years later. The Fed did not just print greenbacks, as was the case during the Civil War. It printed enough money to purchase more than $4 billion in government bonds that were used to finance the war. The amount of money in circulation doubled between 1914 and 1920 – as did prices. This was an enormous hidden war tax on the American people: wealth was cut in half, along with real wages, and just about everything consumers purchased became more expensive.
The boom created by the Fed’s war financing inevitably caused a bust – the Depression of 1920, the first year of which was even worse than the first year of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Gross domestic product declined by 24 percent from 1920-21, while the number of unemployed Americans more than doubled, from 2.1 million to 4.9 million. The Great Depression of 1920 only lasted one year, however, thanks to President Warren Harding’s inspired policy of cutting both government spending and taxes dramatically.
In the wars that have followed, central-bank financing has inflicted essentially the same kind of damage on American society: inflation, economic chaos, reduced real wages, price controls and other government interventions, and ideological attacks on capitalism rather than the real culprit, the Fed.
Adam Smith recognized the advantage of financing wars with taxes rather than public debt when he wrote, “Wars would in general be more speedily concluded, and less wantonly undertaken. The people feeling, during the continuance of the war, the complete burden of it, would soon grow weary of it, and the government, in order to humor them, would not be under the necessity of carrying it on longer than it was necessary to do so.” Central-bank inflation renders the costs of war even more invisible than debt financing does and is therefore even more disastrous for the American public.
Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government
A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II“Government is the only agency that can take a valuable commodity like paper, slap some ink on it, and make it totally worthless”
Ludwig von Mises
“Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin. Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough money to buy it back again…Take this great power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. But if you want to continue to be slaves of the banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.”
Josiah Stamp Director of the Bank of England, 1928-1941
“It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
Henry Ford
“We in the Congress have a moral and constitutional obligation to protect the value of the dollar and to understand why it is so important to the economy that a central bank not be given the unbelievable power of inflating a currency at will and pretending that it knows how to fine-tune an economy through this counterfeit system of money.”
Ron Paul, M.D. and U.S. Congressman (R-Texas)
“If all bank loans were paid, there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation.We are absolutely without a permanent money system.”
Robert Hemphill, Federal Reserve Bank, Atlanta
“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
John Maynard Keynes
“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America rise, not from defects in the Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.”
John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1787
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, 1802
“The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay…If such a law is not abolished immediately, it will spread: multiply and develop into a system.”
Bastiat
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country.” “[The United States is] 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”.
Woodrow Wilson, referring to his signature enacting the Federal Reserve Board in 1913
“I was as secretive, indeed I was as furtive as any conspirator. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would have been wasted. If it were exposed, that our particular group [of wealthy bankers] had got together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congress”.
Frank A. Vanderlip, one of the members of the secret Jekyll Island meeting where the Federal Reserve was conceived in 1910
Inflating War: Central banking and militarism are intimately linked
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
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