Suzanne Phillips re: Stiglitz on the Private Banking System

Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001
Subject: Re: Stiglitz & how the private banking system devastates the Earth

Re: World Bank's former Chief Economist William Stiglitz who resigned his post in dissent of the bank's policies which cause economic devastation around the world. (Big Brother10-15-01) At the end of his interview journalist Greg Palast concluded "the solution to world poverty and crisis is simple: remove the bloodsuckers."

To do this, it's necessary to understand how the bloodsuckers obtained their power. Herewith a brief description of how a cleverly devised banking system robs the average person of the right to a decent life while providing enormous wealth for its corporate owners and stockholders:

Henry Ford, Sr., staunch member of the United States' business community, once said "If the people of the nation understood our banking and monetary system, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

How did such a system get started? How do they keep it going? In 1935 during the Great Depression, the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency questioned the role of money as a basic cause of nationwide bank failures. To explain the workings of our monetary system they called Robert Hemphill, a former credit manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Georgia. Hemphill told the august committee a fable - 'The Temple of the Thirteen Suns'.

The essence of this fable is that a rich man going on a journey wanted a way to pay expenses without having to haul his unwieldy supply of gold. The goldsmith agreed to store the gold at 10% interest and gave the traveler a receipt - an I.O.U. or letter of credit. After the traveler left, the goldsmith offered to lend this gold to any local merchant who would pledge all his possessions to him as security. In each case, the new borrower asked the goldsmith to keep the gold and give him a paper receipt. Thus the goldsmith still had all the gold - not to mention mortgages on the possessions of everyone who had borrowed from him! With each loan and payment of interest the goldsmith's fortune grew until he became the wealthier than everyone in town. Reflecting upon this state of affairs he said, "What a lead-pipe cinch! I can collect just as much usury on this phony money as on the real gold."

So began the banking business. Money is based on credit. To be used equitably, money must be issued and its value controlled by governments for the general welfare of the nation and its people.

There is no need for money to be created as interest-bearing notes. However, it's still being issued this way worldwide by private banks against the security of people's own personal wealth or the wealth of other nations. The 'money' you borrow from them is created 'out of thin air.' It's a piece of paper that indicates you have pledged your possessions in exchange for your promise to repay the lenders of this money - with interest!

The crucial point to understand is that the way money is created and issued determines the workings of the marketplace. Money issued at interest by private banks, such as the United States Federal Reserve Bank, brings with it an overwhelming debt which has devastating effects on its own people and around the world. In contrast, money issued by a government without interest would benefit everyone. Instead of creating artificial shortages and causing horrendous suffering, interest-free money would simply be a medium of exchange and could release the abundance of human production.

According to authors Fraser and Morse in Tomorrow's Money: "The money of modern civilization is credit.[which] represents real wealth (goods and services}. But -- all our credit-tokens have been issued at-interest or as debt-tokens. First we had goldsmiths issuing credit-at-interest money to individuals. Next we had private banks issuing credit-at-interest money to individuals and the State. Now we have a Credit-Cartel issuing credit-at-interest to the entire world. Today, our wealth - your credit, and mine and the Nation's - is monetized in this way." (1)

"In England the goldsmith's method of issuing money was legalized under the Bank Act of 1694. [British] William of Orange needed money and [the Rothschild family] offered King William their gold - $6,000,000 - at 8% if he would give them a charter for a bank. And Permit them to issue an equal amount in paper notes at interest to themselves!" (2)

What's the matter with private banks issuing the nation's money? "The interest system enables private corporations to regulate and control the Nation's money supply - for their benefit instead of Society's" (3) (Does this remind you of the 2001 scarce energy crisis in California which suddenly turned into a glut, or the way gasoline prices rise and fall at the will of the oil barons?)

Not only is the total debt from interest physically impossible to repay - especially if based on scarce precious metals - but "The
interest tribute increases our taxes, lowers our buying power, depresses and oppresses the Nation's production and business. The power and privilege to issue and regulate money are Sovereign Rights. They belong to the Nation - to us - and have been usurped and stolen from the people and the Nation to whom they rightfully belong." (4)

The American colonies' 1776 War of Independence against Britain was largely an effort to break free from the financial stranglehold placed upon them by the Bank of England. Space doesn't permit details of the struggle between Jefferson and Madison on the people's side vs. Alexander Hamilton representing a privileged group desiring to start a similar bank in the American colonies. Hamilton won and the private Bank of United States was chartered in 1791. "In all transactions, the Nation was to be jointly responsible with the bank -but was not - to receive any of the bank's profit's. Many other benefits accrued to enrich the bank and its stockholders, including a comprehensive tax exemption." (5)

Many government and other leaders in the U.S. have understood the power that money issuance gives to those who control it.

* In 1787 John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson "All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in the Constitution, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as down-right ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation."

* President Abraham Lincoln: "By Government creation of money, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest." Lincoln tried to change the system by having the Treasury Department issue "Greenbacks" which were non-interest bearing notes. He was assassinated in 1865.

* President James A. Garfield: "Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce."

Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution states "The Congress shall have power to borrow money on the credit of the United States...and to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin." But since the beginning of our country, bankers have been exercising de facto power in issuing the nation's money. In 1913, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act which consolidated the power to issue and regulate the nation's money and handed it over to the Federal Reserve Corporation, a consortium of private bankers. Understand that the Federal Reserve Bank is "federal" in name only.

* Congressman Charles A. Lindberg, Sr.: "This Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President [Wilson] signs this bill the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalized. The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill."

* Senator Louis T. McFadden (for 22 years Chairman of the U.S. Banking Currency Commission): "The Federal Reserve (privately owned banks) are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen."

The U.S. public, taught to believe that our money is based on gold, becomes alarmed when someone reports that gold is missing from the Treasury. This no longer matters. Our money hasn't been backed by gold since 1935 when the Roosevelt administration took us "off the gold standard". The paper money issued by the Federal Reserve Bank reads: 'THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE.'

* President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110 in 1963 giving the Treasury Department power to issue silver certificates as the base of U.S. money. Once sufficient silver certificates existed it would eliminate the demand for Federal Reserve notes. JFK was assassinated five months later. (See: <www.rense.com/politics4/jflandfed.htm>

Others who championed the return of money issuance to the government included Congressmen Jerry Voorhis of California and Wright Patman of Ohio. These men understood what Mayer Anselm Rothschild, patriarch of the banking House of Rothschild, stated so clearly: "Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws"

Workers around the world have vastly increased their productivity, yet their standard of living has fallen drastically. How many people work two jobs to pay back money created 'out of thin air' using their own personal credit? How many millions in this country die premature deaths because there's no money' for food and doctor's bills? How many people in the 'Third World' starve to death because their countries are burdened with enormous debts to international bankers? (In mid-2001, foreign debt owed to Western bankers was $3,000,000,000,000 - three trillion dollars!)

Human corruption has devastated the Earth to the point where many experts fear it's impossible to restore a healthy environment. A change in consciousness is absolutely necessary. We need to stop exploiting each other. We need to act in a kindly and beneficial way toward the Earth and each other. Returning the power of issuing each nation's money to its own government is one step that will ease financial burdens and stop massive genocide against our fellow beings.

Suzanne Phillips

(1) Tomorrow's Money by Felix J. Fraser and Elsa Peters Morse, New Age Publishing Co., 1948. (2) (3) (4) (5) Ibid.

Sources re U.S. History: Financial History of the United States by Davis Rich Dewey; The Financier and the Finances of the Revolution. Vol. I Wm. Graham Summer; A World In Debt by Freeman Tilden; History of Great American Fortunes by Gustavus Myers; Journal of Wm Maclay; Constitutional Money by Etta M. Russell; works by Charles Beard; The Formation of the Constitution by G. Bancroft; The Story of Our Money, Olive Cushing Dwinell.