OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

Despite these warnings, Woodrow Wilson signed the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. A few years later he wrote: 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. -Woodrow Wilson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), founder of the House of Rothschild.

The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. -Abraham Lincoln

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

Frederic Bastiat: The Law "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."

John Maynard Keynes: The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1920, page 235ff "Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency. . . Lenin was certainly right. 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 can diagnose."

Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816 “I sincerely believe ... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1920, page 240 "If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer."

John Maynard Keynes: The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1920, page 235ff "Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency. . . Lenin was certainly right. 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 can diagnose."

Robert H. Hemphill, former credit manager, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta."This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash, or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defect remedied very soon."

Sir Josiah Stamp, former President, Bank of England: "Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money and control credit, and with a flick of a pen they will create enough to buy it back."

Rt. Hon. Reginald McKenna, former Chancellor of Exchequer, England "Those who create and issue money and credit direct the policies of government and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people."

Wm. Jennings Bryan "Money power denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes."

Andrew Jackson: To delegation of bankers discussing the Bank Renewal Bill, 1832 "You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out

The FED is a private company and will never work in the public interest. However ending the FED does not solve the problem. The crisis can only be solved if the root causes are recognised. These are usury (interest on money) and credit (the creation of money out of nothing).

If someone brought a 1/10 oz gold coin to the bank in the year 1 AD, and the money remained there until the year 2000 AD, collecting a yearly interest of 4%, the amount of gold in the account would have been 3.6 * 10^31 kilograms of gold. This is 1.9 * 10^27 cubic metres of gold weighing 317 times the complete mass of the Earth. This example demonstrates that interest on money is unsustainable and leads to crisis.

Credit and interest on money make it possible for an economy to grow above potential during a boom phase. In the boom phase investors add leverage using credit which further intensifies the boom, creating shortages of materials and labour resulting in rising prices. Interest on money entices banks to lend money to leveraged investors. Credit makes it possible to create money out of thin air, which enables the banks to fuel the boom. When the cycle turns into bust, investors start to deleverage, which intensifies the bust, creating surplusses of materials and labour resulting in falling prices. What most economists do not see, is that credit and interest on money are the root causes of economic booms and busts.

It is possible to end the depression in a few months, to have constant economic growth at maximum potential without crisis, unemployment and government intervention. You can read more about it here:

http://www.naturalmoney.org/introduction.html