The Creature from Jekyll Island

The title sounds like one of the dozens of cheesy Z thrillers we used to watch (and laugh at) in the local theater on rainy Saturday afternoons and maybe, in a strange way, it is. As everyone now knows, the Fed owns the US economy, something somewhat unsettling to yours truly given just how secretive and powerful the privately owned Fed is. To learn more about this potentate of America, read G. Edward Griffin's tome as it's a most interesting history lesson in high finance and death grip politics. Who knows, it may well be true the fox is guarding what's left in the hen house and nothing can be done about it. Check out another review from Powell's about this most unusual creature created on Christmas Day, 1913 by Woodrow Wilson, one year after he instituted the IRS.

Another book on the Fed is Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country by William Grieder. It too discusses the enormous power this entity has over all things financial.

"The Federal Reserve System was the crucial anomaly at the very core of representative democracy, an uncomfortable contradiction with the civic mythology of self-government. Yet the American system accepted the inconsistency. The community of elected politicians acquiesced to its power. The private economy responded to its direction. Private capital depended on it for protection. The governors of the Federal Reserve decided the largest questions of the political economy, including who shall prosper and who shall fail, yet their role remained opaque and mysterious. The Federal Reserve was shielded from scrutiny partly by its own official secrecy, but also by the curious ignorance of the American public."

Factoid: Andrew Jackson's greatest accomplishment according to Jackson..."I killed the bank."

Factoid II: Lincoln's Greenback Dollar..."The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers..... The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity."

Factoid III: The Fed now has that power.

Factoid IV: Is this a sound policy? Ron Paul thinks not and for good reason. Ditto Ralph Nader, Mike Whitney and some significant others.

Question: Should the Fed be abolished?
Answer: It's a thought.

Last but not least: Read about JFK vs. The Fed and Executive Order 11110.
Fascinating to be sure.