The 99% Declaration » 16. Review and Reform of the Federal Reserve Banking System

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# 16. Review and Reform of the Federal Reserve Banking System

Grievances Add comments
Dec 082011

Review and Reform of the Federal Reserve Banking System. The immediate formation of a non-partisan commission, overseen by Congress, to audit and investigate the short-term and long-term economic risks and benefits in eliminating the Federal Reserve Bank and transferring all its functions to the United States Treasury Department and a truly independent, non-partisan, publicly owned central bank. It is widely believed that the housing bubble and collapse of financial markets in 2007- 2008, and trillion dollar bail-out was partially caused by the mismanagement, incompetence, and acquiescence of the Federal Reserve Bank.

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### 60 Responses to “16. Review and Reform of the Federal Reserve Banking System”

1. trazom24 says:
   2012/01/27 at 2:16 pm

   In light of the (recent?) decision to change the title of this grievance from “End the Federal Reserve” to “Reform and Review of the Federal Reserve”, I hereby bring to light the inherent contradiction in the list of grievances, namely this one and #8 – Debt Reduction.

   Any economist or someone who understands our “money-as-debt” monetary system today knows that since all money is debt, you cannot reduce the federal deficit without also ending the very debt-based monetary system which amassed said debt. Since the Federal Reserve functions only to promote the debt-based monetary system, NOT ending it renders moot this grievance.

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2. bchristie says:
   2012/01/20 at 12:10 pm

   This conversation is both important and frustrating. Too much of it is based on the cultural framework that has dominated our financial lives since the creation of the Fed and even before; that framework is the creation of the private central bankers, all the way back to the machinations of the Bank of England during and after the Revolutionary War, which stalled the cultural-economic completion of the American Revolution.

   We have to look beyond our current circumstance and stifling language if we are to overcome the deadlock resulting from trying to resolve the crisis by reference to terms that are part of the framework that created it.

   Two very important works do that. First, David Graeber’s Money: The First 5000 Years, a brilliant historical anthropology of credit, debt, and money, demonstrates that money can and has functioned as either debt or credit. It has functioned virtually and as physical objects. It has worked far better for the people in situations where it has functioned as credit. When it has worked as debt, the consequent concentration of wealth in a few hands and the accumulation of debt on the part of the population, the result has been either a “redemption” that cancelled debt, or an insurection followed by the cancellation of debt, so that an economy could function–this happened many throughout history. An extensive academic work, it is nevertheless well worth the struggle to read, and easy if you are a history buff.

   Another work I just ran across is by Kaoru Yamaguchi (UC Berkeley and Doshisha universities), a Japanese professor who has developed models of the current debt-based money system and an alternative credit-based public-money system using general system dynamics. The paper is titled, “An Economic Modeling of the American Monetary Act” and was presented at the 2010 American Monetary Institute Monetary Reform Conference. An updated version was written in 2011. Yamaguchi’s models demonstrate that: 1) the spiraling public debt produced by the private central bank controlled debt-money system is clearly unsustainable, and 2) the transitional model of converting to a credit-based public money system shows that such a conversion can be done smoothly and result in paying down the national debt and regaining public control of the economy while paying for needed public functions and infrastructure.

   We must think big and we must employ science in finding solutions. Simply arguing back and forth about various elements of the Fed won’t get us there. Yamaguchi’s work is the basis for Dennis Kucinich’s proposed legislation, HR 2990, The Need Act, that could: fund infrastructure repair, which would solve the unemployment crisis; and pay off the national debt as it comes due without causing inflation! Yes, this may sound too good to be true, but that’s because we still live in the debt-money culture of the Big Money Banks perpetuated by the corporate media and their congressional agents.

   “End the Fed” is an inadequate slogan too similar to Ron Paul’s magical thinking. We need a systematic analysis leading to a sovereign CREDIT system to replace our current sovereign debt accumulation where our “leaders” bail out giant financial speculators instead of using public money in the public interest.

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   - trazom24 says:
     2012/01/27 at 1:32 pm

     I agree with much of what you say, but I believe there’s one glaring contradiction in your analysis.

     You make a case (and my own research shows this as well), that a system where money functions as credit and not debt is much more advantageous to the people as it doesn’t steal life savings, lead to a spiraling out-of-control national debt, while also preserving sovereignty.

     However, on the other hand, your last paragraph makes reference to the “End the Fed” rhetoric that we hear and are hearing a great deal more of these days, and while I agree a lot of it is misplaced (namely due to general ignorance on monetary theory and more specifically debt), surely you must see that the Federal Reserve agency was born from a cabal of elite central bankers who wished to use debt as leverage over the world. Therefore, the Federal Reserve is nothing but debt. By logical extension, the only way to restore the United States’ monetary system to a credit based one, and not a debt-based one, is to first remove the edifice that stands against these efforts.

     Is this thinking not logical?

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     - bchristie says:
       2012/02/03 at 6:56 pm

       My reference to the “End the Fed” rhetoric was meant to highlight the need to moved beyond simple slogans of self-serving politicians such as those who invoke that slogan, never mentioning what they would replace it with or how, and to move to a very real and serious analysis based on the significant history (eg., David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years), and theory available but ignored because of the control of ‘public’ discourse by the agents [corp. media] of the heirs to the very ‘cabal’ you mention. Hence, no contradiction, and no disagreement with what you say in the the third paragraph of your reply to my comment.

       The problem for ‘the 99%’ is how to break out of the cultural trap of false choices foisted upon the entire population by financial elite propaganda so fully perpetuated by their government and media supplicants. Whether to ‘remove the edifice’ first or to transform it to what is needed, is to me more of a technical procedural question than one of policy disagreement. Whatever works, works for me.

       The real question is how to get to a place where such technical questions are even on the table, for if they are it means that we have won the struggle to implement change.

       What worries me about the 99 Declaration effort is that however all this is worked out in these discussions, etc., THEY are not about to act in the interests of the 99% when the present structure of power remains intact. I have to agree with Chris Hedges on that. But the how question remains unanswered.

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       - jackrcurtis says:
         2012/02/06 at 5:21 pm

         I think the idea was already put on the table in 1933 (when FDR took us off the gold-standard to “solve” the Great Depression) in the form of a Social Credit (Douglas’ name) Bill, which finally died in the House Banking Committee (along w its leader, suspiciously enough) in 1936. I agree with trazom24 that curing the Federal Reserve cancer requires radical surgery.

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3. tbssic says:
   2012/01/16 at 11:03 pm

   Section 2A. Monetary Policy Objectives

   The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.

   The FED has had 99 years to get it right….. Maybe if they practice for another 99 years they’ll get it right????

   The late Thomas A Edison explained the matter of issuing currency this way: “If our nation can issue a dollar bond (interest bearing) it can issue a dollar bill (interest-free). The element that makes the bond good makes a bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20 percent, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay: But one promise fattens the usurers (interest collectors) and the other helps the people.”

   It is well 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

   “A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated 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 world–no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.” — President Woodrow Wilson, after he signed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

   “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, 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.

   But,,,,, they could be wrong……

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   - jackrcurtis says:
     2012/01/19 at 9:01 pm

     I’m guessing that by “control” Jefferson means something like “have a monopoly on the printing-up, loaning out, & calling-in, of promissory notes (i.e. currency) at will, unhampered by the need to have those promissory notes actually promise anything”.

     Am I right? (or do I have to add that there must be a law requiring people to honor such a damn-fool thing?)

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   - jackrcurtis says:
     2012/01/19 at 9:10 pm

     I’m also a little confused by Edison’s remark that “money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20 percent”. How does he figure that?

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     - robdinsmore says:
       2012/01/19 at 11:09 pm

       That’s because it is all bullshit. This crap is all taken from conspiracy people behind a group of conspiracy crockumentaries that try to urge us to go back to the gold standard. Most of the quotes are completely made up or taken out of context.

       US currency is not a debt based currency. These people are so crazy the go so far as to claim that coins are real money and bills are fake and that the Fed controls the supply of money. It doesn’t directly do so. It tries to control the cost of borrowing money through setting the short term interest rates.

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       - trazom24 says:
         2012/01/27 at 1:07 pm

         All bullshit, ha Rob Dinsmore? US currency is not debt based? Hello? Every time the US government needs money it drafts a bond, bill, or note. It then sells that security in Treasury auctions. When nobody steps up to buy it guess who does? I don’t even have to say the words anymore.

         All US currency is born into debt. If you fail to see that you have no business commenting here other than asking questions.

         The Fed does so much more than just set interest rates.

         Do you even know what you’re talking about Rob?

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         - jackrcurtis says:
           2012/02/06 at 5:51 pm

           I guess he at least knows that in a system like ours everything is a conspiracy; the only conceivable question is: Which conspiracy is winning?

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     - trazom24 says:
       2012/01/27 at 1:23 pm

       Here’s an example that may help with the understanding jackrcurtis. A municipality needs money for a school improvement project. Say they need $10 million. Just creating $10 million in bills would solve the problem immediately (forget about the inflation for now). But that’s not how the monetary system today works. The federal government issues $10 million in credit instantly to the municipality, and also issues in return a $10 million bond which the community must pay back, usually over 30 years. The bond carries an interest rate of, say 3%. This means after 30 years the municipality will have paid back $22 million (3% compounded yearly for 30 years). So, the initial $10 million credit was repaid over 30 years at a cost of $22 million (or twice the cost plus 20%).

       Does that make sense?

       Don’t ask Rob though. This is all bullshit.

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4. blake says:
   2012/01/05 at 5:01 pm

   I believe we should leave the Fed as the central bank. Every industrialized country since the 12th century has had one. It’s not their banking operation that is the problem. The problem comes from their multiple roles of banking, regulatory over site and setting monetary policy. The Fed sets the prime interest rates and the retention rate, and then they decide who receive this rate through the Discount Window. Right now the Fed decides what the rules are, then they enforce the rules, and then they also play on the same field as everyone else. Then we wonder how the Fed makes so many mistakes.

   We need to separate the Fed functions. We can start by moving the Feds over site duties over to the Consumer Protection Agency. The next one isn’t as easy. Where to move monetary policy, it would be natural to think of placing that duty with the Treasury. This may give the Executive branch too much power. Another solution may be to set up a separate public commission to set monetary policy. This has the effect of putting each duty the current Fed into separate identities. Hopefully the Fed can do a better job of banking if it does not have too many things to juggle at once.

   As far monetary policy goes my biggest worry would be in avoiding the call to go back to the Gold Standard. Reinstating the Gold Standard would be disastrous to our economy. The first problem with the Gold Standard is that we do not have enough gold to cover the size of our economy today. The next problem with the Gold Standard is that even if had enough gold to back the dollar we would need an ever increasing amount of gold to grow the economy. This can be done in three ways. First by mining or buying gold, but there is a finite gold amount of gold to be mined in the first place. The next way is to inflate price gold artificially. With gold being a finite commodity price inflation would happen naturally. This would cause other commodities to inflate and general inflation to increase with it. The last method would be to simply take some else’s gold. Rome did it for centuries, but even they ran out of people rob around them.

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   - robdinsmore says:
     2012/01/19 at 11:14 pm

     Of the few posts I have read in this section, this is the only sane one and the only one that shows the poster at least has a clue what they Fed is, what it does, and what some of the real problems are.

     The Fed is a flawed government agency with inadequate oversight, it’s not a conspiracy.

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   - trazom24 says:
     2012/01/27 at 1:38 pm

     “Every industrialized country since the 12th century has had one”.

     That’s not exactly true. The United States became industrialized in the latter half of the nineteenth century and existed for another 20-25 years before the Federal Reserve, the nation’s 3rd central bank, came to be.

     Remarkably, America somehow had an industrial revolution even without a central bank. How could this be?

     You’re ignoring the largest function of the Federal Reserve right now, which is the lender of last resort. This can and will lead to disastrous inflation in the months and years ahead. Such is to be expected when we operate in a debt-based fractional reserve credit system.

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   - trazom24 says:
     2012/01/27 at 2:02 pm

     “As far monetary policy goes my biggest worry would be in avoiding the call to go back to the Gold Standard. Reinstating the Gold Standard would be disastrous to our economy. The first problem with the Gold Standard is that we do not have enough gold to cover the size of our economy today. The next problem with the Gold Standard is that even if had enough gold to back the dollar we would need an ever increasing amount of gold to grow the economy. This can be done in three ways. First by mining or buying gold, but there is a finite gold amount of gold to be mined in the first place. The next way is to inflate price gold artificially. With gold being a finite commodity price inflation would happen naturally. This would cause other commodities to inflate and general inflation to increase with it. The last method would be to simply take some else’s gold. Rome did it for centuries, but even they ran out of people rob around them.”

     Let’s look at some of these statements. First, there wouldn’t be enough gold to cover the size of our economy today. And keep in mind in my replies, I’m not saying we should be going back to a gold standard. You’re thinking in terms of fiat Federal Reserve notes, where thanks to inflation an ounce of gold today sells for over $1,700. But technically speaking, gold can be whatever value we wanted it to be. Assuming the US GDP to be $14 trillion, and there’s 300 million ounces of gold available, that translates to nearly $47,000 oz. gold. Seems crazy right? Well, one of the definitions of money is that it is must be a unit of account, and therefore it can be divisible into smaller units. There are 480 grains of gold in one oz. Therefore one little grain works out to be $98. Still seems pretty high right? Well there’s also silver which is much less valuable. Also, that $98 grain could be inserted into a coin made of other, less expensive metal. But the point is that it contains that one grain of gold. So you see, this argument is nonsensical because the solution is purely a scale of mathematics. You could also sew a grain of gold into paper money too if you wanted.

     Your second problem with the gold standard holds more weight, but the solution is to simply introduce other metals as substitutes or alternatives. For instance, the United States was on a bi-metal standard for 130 years after the revolution (silver and gold). It worked quite well. Sure it had its share of problems but there was tremendous stability, and after the 130 years a dollar still bought then what it did the 130 years prior. Good luck trying to buy an egg for a few pennies these days. Silver is often mined as a by-product of mining for other industrial metals, so it is in abundance. The other thing to note is that as an economy on a metal standard grows, the free market would enable more miners to mine and the extra gold or silver or whatever would then enter the money supply, thereby keeping up with demand.

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     - blake says:
       2012/01/27 at 10:59 pm

       “But technically speaking, gold can be whatever value we wanted it to be.” this to me is the biggest problem with any metal standard. If fractional reserve bank isn’t to be trusted because it leads to a “fiat monetary policy” then why don’t any commodity base systems that can be arbitrarily valued lead to the same problem. Any metal standard or bi-metal standard will not work because the commodities will inflate artificially due to monetary pressure and not to free market pressure. This artificial inflation will not be contained to just the commodities tied to the monetary system it will continue until it infects the rest of the commodities traded.

       I Know the Fed came into existent 90 years ago, but that doesn’t mean that we did not have a central bank. The central bank is the part of the Fed that needs to be saved. The FDIC and other over site functions should be separated from the Fed and moved elsewhere. A Separate publicly vetted committee should be setup for the setting of monetary policy. Monetary policy should only be set in the full view of the public since we are the ones who will have to live with the outcome.

       It’s my understanding that you wish to spend money into the economy directly by allowing municipal entity access to the Treasury’s printing press. You wish pay for infrastructure, debt, and general governmental expenses directly by merely printing it. Who gets to decide which parts of the government gets to use the printing press and which don’t. If inflation is what we are trying to avoid by reforming our monetary policies then how is printing money for every short fall suppose to help. If we were to change our monetary system to a commodity base reserve system with the government printing money anytime it falls short with its tax revenues it would become a system that is based on inflation and that leads to inflation and who only outcome is inflation.

       As far as the fractional reserve banking system what would you plan to replace it with? Without the fractional reserve banking system the interest rates would dramatically higher. One of the things that keep interest rate low is the bank’s ability make loans from fractional reserve money. Without access to that system banks would have no choice but to raise the interest they charge. With the nature of compound interest, low interest rates are far more important to the purchase of car, house, and education than the price itself. You see on $100,000 mortgage paid at even a moderate interest rate of 4 to 7% leads to total payment of about $500,000. That is $400,000 more than the mortgage was to start with. If you try the same $100,000 mortgage with a 10% or more interest rate this mortgage will cost you in total nearly a million dollars. So it is the low interest rate that makes the world affordable to the middle class and the actual price less so.

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5. jackrcurtis says:
   2012/01/03 at 3:42 am

   It seems we’re pretty much agreed that we should dispense w the Federal Reserve Note currency & establish a currency of our own w belongs to the people (except novadust , who thinks we sd do a thousand other wonderful things instead), & whose value is simply based on the value of the country (Christopher Carney, aka “trazom24″, fears the govt can’t be trusted to maintain that value, but the rest of us seem content to
   place our trust in Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” to do the job) & w presumably wd be printed by the govt, then distributed to the people, providing that the govt is actually in the hands of the people.

   Noting this last proviso to be missing from our list of grievances, I guess I’ll add it myself. (I suppose most folks, thanks to our wonderful educational system, think we already live in a democracy, & are, accordingly, unduly disenchanted with the idea.)

   P.S. The whole notion that a “reserve”, whether fractional or otherwise, wd have value, when that reserve is composed of nothing but the same paper that its supposed to be backing up, is incomprehensible to me. Better to make our country our reserve. Also, Jean Netherton’s notion that a fundamentally corrupt system can be made good thru “regulation” seems equally silly, as hopelessly roundabout. Wishful thinking will get us nowhere, I think.

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   - novadust says:
     2012/01/11 at 11:29 pm

     stiglitz: ” the reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.”

     thanx (i think) for the complement, but what i advocate is far less than a thousand things, and they would still need doing if we ended the fed or stopped using its notes. but if we did them we wouldn’t need to end the fed or change the money.

     i’m sorry to see you don’t comprehend how the reserve works. maybe you shouldn’t mess with it till you do.

     also, where did jean netherton say that?

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6. zarepheth says:
   2011/12/20 at 8:12 pm

   More specifically, turn into law the current House Rule 2990, recently introduced by Dennis Kucinich, as it was originally written. The American Monetary Institute, http://www.monetary.org, has spent many years, with many experts, examining and looking at ways to gracefully transition from Fractional Reserve Banking to publicly issued money. This act, the “NEED Act” would convert all our debt-based money into debt-free money – and do so with minimal economic distruption.

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   - novadust says:
     2011/12/21 at 3:58 am

     can’t be done. all money is debt.

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   - novadust says:
     2011/12/21 at 9:00 pm

     i really should say more.

     much as i admire dennis, i’m surprised he would back such an ill-advised plan. the NEED act would be highly disruptive. moving the fed into the treasury dept would politicize it and turn almost everything it did into political footballs. there’s no good reason to think his panel of experts would be more effective than the fed governors and open mkt committee. what he proposes is mostly to replace monetary policy with fiscal policy (such as creating money by spending it into existence rather than by lending). the treasury can’t spend without congressional authorization, so fine tuning would be impossible, and fine tuning is what monetary policy is all about. the idea that the plan would end inflation is pure wishful thinking.

     i agree with him that we need a lot of work on infrastructure, but that would be a fiscal solution, not a monetary one, and congress could do it without the NEED act.

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     - trazom24 says:
       2011/12/24 at 12:34 pm

       All money is not debt. All “official” monetary systems today are debt-based, but that’s not saying the same thing. Your caution is prudent – I don’t place much faith in our elected officials to police the money creation powers. In fact without a very detailed and comprehensive plan it would probably make things worse for a while. However, it is raising the awareness levels of the Fed and what they’ve done to this country and that is a good thing.

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       - novadust says:
         2012/01/11 at 10:57 pm

         yes, saying money is debt-based is not the same as saying money is debt.

         yes, raising awareness is good. ending the fed is not. it would indeed make things worse for a while. a long while. a very long while.

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7. Jean Netherton says:
   2011/12/18 at 3:18 pm

   drop 18 Ending the Fed
   forming another commission is not the answer. that wheel has been invented. at a later time, we could ourselves review the mounds of info already out there and come up with an alternative, but the Banking and Securities reform, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be my area of focus first.

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   - Christopher Carney says:
     2011/12/18 at 6:16 pm

     With all due respect, concentrating on banking and securities reform without reforming the monetary system (courtesy of ending the Fed) is like building a beautiful palace on top of quick sand. It will still be destroyed – it will just look a lot nicer going down.

     Not sure what you mean by that wheel has been invented. The Fed? The Federal Reserve and our monetary system is the source of most if not all the money corruption problems we have today, and I can prove it.

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     - novadust says:
       2011/12/20 at 3:36 pm

       ok. prove it.

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       - trazom24 says:
         2011/12/20 at 5:34 pm

         I can only prove it if you agree that the debt is the problem we face today.

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         - novadust says:
           2011/12/21 at 4:29 am

           debt’s not the only problem we face, but, for the sake of argument, i’m willing to agree. let’s see your proof.

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         - trazom24 says:
           2011/12/24 at 12:28 pm

           Ok. The US National debt in 1913 – $2.9 billion. The US National debt now – $15.1 trillion. An increase of 5000%. The US GDP in 1913 – $39.1 billion. Today it is somewhere around $13 trillion, for an increase of 3,300%. This doesn’t tell the whole story, but it begins to. The debt is now accelerating bar beyond the GDP, which has been stagnant more or less the last 3 years. The infinite growth model is coming to an end just as the debt levels are set to explode.

           More compelling. General prices between 1776 and 1913 (barring the several depressions and hyperinflations in between) – 0% change. General prices between 1913 and today – an increase of over 2,500%. In other words the dollar is now worth 4 cents in 1913 prices. This explains why $1 million in retirement savings is now no longer sufficient to live on.

           Your immediate rebuttal might be, but our wages grew that much right? They did, for many years, until the 1973 when the real median income for families started to fall (sorry I am not posting links to all this now). They have been falling ever since.

           If you take a look at at the GDP, national debt, and real income graphs you can see the danger I am talking about. The GDP is flat, the real income is falling, while the debt one is hyperbolic, especially viewed over the last 50 years. This has been in the making for a very long time and is the inevitable consequence of a debt-based monetary system.

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         - novadust says:
           2012/01/12 at 12:22 am

           [there's no reply button under your comment of 12/24 @ 12:28pm, which is what i'm replying to, so my reply might appear in the wrong place.]

           first, the growth of debt is not attributable to the existence of the fed. the graph shows clearly that it grew most in stressful times like war, depression, reagan’s acceleration of the cold war arms race, and the recent attempts to deal with the financial crisis.
           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Federal_Debt_1901-2010_.jpg

           2nd, how can you ignore the many inflations and deflations before 1913? creation of the fed ironed out the deflationary periods, tho not completely till after several amendments thru mid-20th century. inflation continued, deflation decreased then stopped, resulting in net inflation but greater stability.
           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Historical_Inflation_Ancient.svg

           yes, real income has been falling. it started when nixon tried to deal with the trade deficit by devaluing the dollar, which led directly to the energy crisis and contributed to the next oil shock and stagflation.

           i don’t see a hyperbola. i see an irregular upward trend that gets steeper when politicians do stupid things, which is why i don’t want to put monetary policy in their hands.

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       - trazom24 says:
         2011/12/20 at 7:14 pm

         This is Christopher Carney, btw. Not sure what happened but it appeared my existing account no longer works (deleted?), and I had to create a new account but it insists on using my username in place of my full name.

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         - karlie says:
           2011/12/20 at 7:16 pm

           We just changed commenting to require an account. Earlier it only required your email address. The account set-up uses your username. I may be able to change it to using full names and will add it to the items to research for future work on the site. Currently our main goal is getting working groups and Delegate Candidate profiles up for the site.

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     - zarepheth says:
       2011/12/20 at 8:24 pm

       I agree with Christopher Carney, “trazom24″, that we must end the Federal Reserve and Fractional Reserve Banking. The power to create money, whether as paper dollars or loans tracked on in a computer system, is to great to place into the hands of a few private individuals who have zero accountability to the rest of society. Either the power must be given to everyone or kept in the hands of public servents, who are truly accountable to the community.

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8. Brian Coon says:
   2011/12/17 at 5:49 pm

   How about thinking bigger than that,how about a different kind of government,a Democratic-Republic,no longer a strong central private government,who grants “titles”(title means they have more rights than the people)and promotes “nobility”(nobility means to keep above and separate from the people),our country was founded by people who hated the idea of nobility.
   P.S:How many of you have actually in person met a congressman or YOUR representative?

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   - Lyn Murray says:
     2011/12/18 at 1:16 pm

     In regards to you posting. . .I have met my Congressional Representative, Wally Herger. . .who USED to be for the little man, but now is pretty much worthless and only votes for the money.

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9. Christopher Carney says:
   2011/12/17 at 2:02 pm

   Robert Bows, thank you for your thoughtful post. We are very much in agreement here on this topic.

   I have been articulating for some time now that most if not all the grievances in the list can be traced back to our unsound, unfair monetary system. If we DO NOT reform the currency system so that it starts working for the people, I’m afraid the other grievances are going to be long-shots at best.

   Going back to a nation of publicly-controlled banks is one option. The United States had such a system at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth century, with a twist. These public banking institutions also competed with private banking institutions in a kind of free-for-all wild-west currency experiment. To help alleviate the confusion, the Federal Reserve Act was proposed and then drafted in 1913. Of course this was the official reason for its enactment. The real reason was to ensure private banker profitability by killing off the competition. There simply was too much money to be made. Then, by merging the private power to create money with the government power to backstop banking losses (ie bank runs) through agencies such as the FDIC, a quasi-government agency was born that enabled the banksters to create unlimited amounts of money, thereby privatizing profits, while at the same time placing all bailout costs on the public sector (socializing losses). It was a stroke of genius on their part. It was also the death sentence to the 99% since it would mean one day the official currency of the nation would end in full-blown hyperinflation, as every paper fiat currency ever devised has experienced.

   Back to your statement that in order for a sovereign currency to succeed we need election reform that enables more than two parties and also a decentralized media. I couldn’t agree more, but I see this as a circular logic exercise. If we first fix the currency system, the other two concerns would invariably work themselves out. They only exist BECAUSE of the co-optive power of money that can be used as influence in the political process. When you mention the two-party system and the media, I think we’re really discussing the same entity here. They are just two different arms controlled by the same corporate oligarchy. Remove the power to corrupt through money, and you solve the problem.

   The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 never should have been passed. That is why I want to see the act repealed and the Federal Reserve done away with. To advocate keeping them around while simply transferring their power back to Congress seems redundant. At the very least in order to accomplish what you suggest their objectives would have to be redefined so that they would no longer have the ability to do some of the more harmful things they’ve been doing such as setting interest rates, engaging in quantitative easing, buying mortgage-backed securities, etc. etc.

   Last, and this is the most important, reforming a monetary system so that sovereignty is returned to the people and the nation requires some restraint on the ability to make money. Silver-backed currency worked for almost 100 years after the American Revolution and it could work again. This restraint allowed the average American to see unprecedented growth in purchasing power right up until the start of the Industrial Revolution, when Congress started experimenting with a gold standard which had less than desirable effects. But having the silver backing, and more importantly, the tying of the currency to a physical quantity of silver (371.25 grains to be exact), economic prosperity ensued. Hence Article I Section 8 of the Constitution (about the weights and measures):

   “To Coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;”

   Of course all this does not go far enough. Over 90% of the money created today (mostly credit, digital and paper) is created through the fractional-reserve banking system. Thus, in order to return to a sound monetary system, we need to reform Central banking. A lending ratio of 10:1 (lending out 10 times the amount of money for every dollar in reserves) works when credit is reasonable or even a little tight and when the economy is booming. However, one can easily see how disastrous it can be when credit is being extended to the family dog (housing bust) and/or the economy is in recession. People are paying for this system now that the wheels have started coming off the infinite growth model, as they see the cost of their everyday needs such as food and gasoline continue to climb, even as wages remain stagnant and the overall banking system portends dangerous deflation ahead.

   For the reasons stated previously, it is my contention that we need to reform the Central banking system in addition to ending the Federal Reserve in order to effect a comprehensive overhaul of the monetary system and return the power of money back to the people.

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   - zarepheth says:
     2011/12/20 at 8:32 pm

     The few times our nation issued its own paper currency, during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, congress authorized a certain amount of money, printed that much money, and did not print a penny more.

     During the Revolutionary War, Great Britain hired a couple firms to send ships with printing presses to sit off the Atlantic coast and counterfeit the money. There was massive inflation, but the government managed to win the war without going into debt.

     During the Civil War, President Lincoln needed money to fund the northern states’ war effort. The banking industry demanded 25%-35% interest. Instead, he and congress issued paper money, “Greenbacks”. Though there was some inflation, the northern states experienced an enourmous amount of economic growth, despite funding a major war effort. There is speculation that President Lincoln was assisinated because he planned to continue using publicly issued, debt-free, money for future government operations, destroying the banking industry’s hold over the population.

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   - zarepheth says:
     2011/12/20 at 8:37 pm

     Oops – so the point I’m trying to make is that we don’t need a silver or gold backed currency. As long as the government demands its own currency for payment of taxes and maintains a money supply proportionate to the goods and services available in the economy, we won’t have inflation (or deflation). And that is the intrensic problem with gold or other commodities backing or limiting the money supply – they don’t grow and shrink with population and technology. The other problem is that whoever controls the currency limiting commodity also controls the currency – part of the reason the banking industry fought so hard to have a gold standard, until it proved too limiting even for them…

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     - trazom24 says:
       2011/12/24 at 11:56 am

       Yes sure, zarapheth. But do you trust the government to maintain a money supply proportionate to the goods and services in the economy? I don’t. I want to remove the propensity for human greed from the equation entirely. The only way to do that is to tie the money to a fixed supply of “something”. Silver worked well for almost 100 years in this country. It could work again. But there are other things that could work also.

       Your statement about gold and silver not growing with the economy needs to be re-evaluated. A growing economy will lead to greater demand for money, more mining and increased exploration of minerals/resources, and hence greater supplies of refined gold and silver. This is the free-market answer to your quandary.

       All we have to do is return to the Constitution. It is that simple. The only thing the government controls is the exact amount of silver/gold that goes into the US Treasury and therefore coins and the amount of paper receipts reflecting that amount. No conflict of interest, no motivation for corruption (well maybe some).

       The reason the gold standard was too limiting for the banks was because they couldn’t make money fast enough using speculation. Yes, gold prevents that. And any other monetary restraint that is limited in quantity.

       Until someone can show me how humans will control their profligate propensity for greed I will never trust anyone, not even the Treasury, to print a limited amount of debt-based notes. There must must a restraint tied to the physical limitations of the earth, but that can keep up with a growing economy.

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   - novadust says:
     2011/12/21 at 4:53 am

     “hyperinflation, as every paper fiat currency ever devised has experienced.”

     gee, i must’ve slept thru it.

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     - trazom24 says:
       2011/12/24 at 11:59 am

       Do you doubt me? I don’t really have to go into every historical example do I? Voltaire must have been smoking something then when he said

       “All paper currency returns to its intrinsic value – zero.”

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       - zarepheth says:
         2012/01/03 at 11:52 pm

         There is actually a good point to money having an intrinsic value of zero – namely that people will use it rather than sit on it!

         In order to manage the time difference between receipt of income and payment of expenses, money has to store value, but why should money store the same value for all eternity when everything else in the universe tends to lose value over time, or have costs associated with storage and safekeeping? Because we have made money’s “store of value” more important than its utility as a “medium of exchange” people and corporations sit on large amounts of money rather than spending it. The end result is high levels of unemployment. Further, this choice to make “store of value” more important than “medium of exchange” has confused most people about the nature of wealth and money. They are not the same, yet people treat them the same, contributing to our society’s economic problems.

         In The Natural Economic Order, Silvio Gesell proposed a monetary system where the money issuers charged a small monthly fee for the privilege of holding (hoarding, storing, saving) money. The intent was to force the holders of money to have the same urgency to use it as farmer with crops that have a limited lifetime, or mechants with food that has a limited lifetime, or others who have reasons to offload their inventory or belongings in a short period of time. By equalizing the time-pressure between buyer and seller, he reasoned that economic activity would increase and the economy improve. During the great depression of the 1930′s, the town of Worgl, Austria actually implemented Gesell’s ideas and enjoyed 18 months of economic prosperity before the nation’s banking monopoly had the courts shut them down. Before implementing the new money system within the town, they were suffering the same as everyone else in Europe. While using the new money system, the townspeople managed to pay off their taxes, loans, completed many public works, funded a welfare program and brought unemployment to zero. After the bank shut them down, the town’s economy returned to the same situation as the rest of europe with a quarter of the population unemployed and living in poverty. The transition between bad to good and good to bad was very short, about a month long. Properly implemented, such a system might truly stimulate our nation’s economy – in our own lifetimes!

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       - novadust says:
         2012/01/12 at 12:49 am

         christopher: voltaire also said “a witty saying proves nothing.”

         zarepheth: pressure people to spend faster? what about retired folk with little income they augment by dipping into savings? must they run out of money sooner so the rest of us can prosper?

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         - trazom24 says:
           2012/01/27 at 1:11 pm

           Good jest. But I didn’t believe my use of the witty saying proves I don’t know what I’m talking about.

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10. Christopher Aquino says:
    2011/12/11 at 1:00 am

    The Fed should have never been started. Private banks controlling the printing of currency. WTF???!!!

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    - novadust says:
      2011/12/19 at 6:10 am

      this is the mistaken belief that leads to the “end the fed” movement: equating ownership with control. the only power private banks have is the member banks elect their regional reserve banks’ boards of directors. the national board of governors is appointed by the president, confirmed by congress, and has a voting majority on the open market committee. the member banks must invest 3% of their capital in the reserve banks. they cannot sell or trade their stock or even use it as security for loans. they get a fixed annual dividend of 6% that is unaffected by their actions. the private banks have a voice, but only as a minority. they do not control anything.

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      - Christopher Carney says:
        2011/12/19 at 9:00 am

        So you want to keep the Federal Reserve in power? I don’t understand your point. Perhaps the poster you are replying to could have worded his question better, but his point is well taken. The private banks do not directly print the money. However, under fractional reserve banking they are directly responsible for the creation of credit (typically at a ratio of 10:1 to the amount they hold in “reserve”), and in order to pay off the credit/debt at a later date the money has to be printed eventually, and even more to pay off the interest.

        The private banks control over 90% of our money supply through fractional reserve lending. Yes, this is not directly under the Fed’s umbrella but the Fed uses this to their advantage. That is why I am advocating not only an end to the Fed but also serious reform to central banking.

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        - novadust says:
          2011/12/20 at 3:34 pm

          Fractional-reserve banking is the banking practice in which a bank lends out a portion of funds deposited and keeps the remaining fraction in reserve (as cash and other highly liquid assets), while simultaneously maintaining the obligation to redeem all deposits upon demand.

          what’s wrong with that? what’s the alternative? i don’t get YOUR point.

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          - trazom24 says:
            2011/12/20 at 5:32 pm

            What’s wrong with fractional reserve lending? How about creating money at 10 times the amount of money held in reserves, for starters. This leads to inflation. Do you like having the price of everything double every 20 years? Do you like the fact that gas, which used to cost 10 cents a gallon in 1965, now costs 35 times that?

            The second, less obvious, thing wrong with fractional reserve lending in a debt-based currency system is that not enough money exists in the system at any given time to pay back all loans PLUS interest. In fact, the money doesn’t yet exist to pay the interest – it must be created at a later date. This system works fine when the economy is humming along at 4-5% annually and people’s wages are keeping up with inflation. But how’s it working lately?

            Your statement “while simultaneously maintaining the obligation to redeem all deposits upon demand” is simply not true. The banks on average hold 1-2% of depositors’ money for redemption. It would therefore only take 1-2% of people asking for their money to clean out their reserves. Why isn’t it 10% since that’s the basis for our fractional reserve system you ask? That’s more complicated to answer but suffice it to say the banks have several more ways to cheat their depositors while holding the minimum amount in reserve as possible.

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          - novadust says:
            2011/12/21 at 2:11 pm

            i should’ve mentioned that the first paragraph of my previous comment was from google dictionary, so what you quoted was not my statement but part of the definition.

            now, gas didn’t cost 10 cents a gallon in 1965. it was more like 26-28 cents. most of the inflation since 1973 or so has nothing to do with fractional-reserve banking. it’s cost-push inflation due to rising oil prices, which is the result of greed and politics. it seems ironic to me that you actually believe gas prices are the effect rather than the cause. you sure you don’t have an oversimplified notion of economics? perhaps you need to bone up on how the energy crisis of the early ’70s kicked us out of demand-pull inflation and into cost-push.

            next, why would you expect enough money to exist “in the system at any given time to pay back all loans PLUS interest”? it doesn’t need to get paid back all at once. if i borrow money and start using it, i immediately don’t have enough to pay it all back at that time. isn’t the system the sum of its parts in a particular configuration? how is it different?

            next you say part of the definition is not true. well, if you think it’s false, then you and i are talking about 2 different things when we say “fractional reserve.” if you mean the fact that banks don’t keep enough in reserve somehow negates their obligation to redeem, then again we speak of different word meanings. to me they still have that obligation, whether or not they have the capability.

            maybe you’re right that the amount banks hold in reserve is too low to meet their obligations. if so, you should advocate raising the reserve requirement rather than throwing out the fed, the FDIC, and fractional-reserve banking, which is like throwing out the bathtub and all the pipes in the house with the bathwater.

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          - trazom24 says:
            2011/12/20 at 5:39 pm

            As for the alternative, it is something much much more trustworthy when dealing with the people’s money. I for one, do not feel confident banking in an institution when they are only able to redeem 1-2% of the people’s money.

            The extreme alternative is to not allow fractional reserve lending, but I think this goes too far. A more reasonable approach would be something like 25% perhaps, but also eliminating the FDIC which creates moral hazard by allowing the riskiest banks who make the most leveraged loans/bets to pay the same amount of money into the insurance fund as do the safer, less leveraged institutions. There’s literally pages of banking laws that would have to be repealed, but I would like to see my institution hold enough in reserve so that if a large percentage of depositors wanted their money back they could make good on the redemption.

            You have to realize where our present system is taking us. The day is coming when people will want their money out all at once. What do you think is going to happen?

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          - novadust says:
            2011/12/21 at 8:26 pm

            oh, ok, glad to see you don’t want to end fractional reserve, but i don’t want to get rid of FDIC either. without it my deposits wouldn’t be insured, plus it can move in, shut down a failing bank, and reorganize it or merge it with another bank. again, higher reserve requirements (and bigger insurance fees for riskier banks, as you suggest) might be worth considering.

            i really don’t think we’ll have a large-scale run on banks. i saw one once at a bank in philly in the ’70s. line of depositors nearly a block long. folk forgot their deposits were insured, so they panicked. no need for it. banks are still safer than mattresses.

            my preference is repeal gramm-leach-bliley. (when it was about to pass john dingle told the house it was bound to lead to massive bailouts. he even said it would create “too big to fail” institutions. that was in 1999.) the reasons the housing crisis persists are 2: so many foreclosures + it’s too difficult for would-be buyers to get mortgages. the reason for the latter is commercial banks can make more money trading in financial markets than by lending, especially with interest rates so low. they have little or no motive to lend.

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          - trazom24 says:
            2011/12/20 at 7:15 pm

            This is Christopher Carney, btw. Had to create a new account since somehow my old one no longer works.

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11. Robert Bows says:
    2011/12/10 at 12:43 pm

    There is a very big hole in the list of suggested grievances, which seems to be centered around the lack of recognition that virtually all the grievances are a result of a small group of financiers controlling the money creation process (central banks) of the world.

    Owning the central banks has allowed these financiers to take over all major corporations, governments, military and intelligence services, media, and voting processes: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed–the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html

    The solution to this is to create a network of publicly owned banks, beginning with the Fed (which, according to the Constitution, Art. 1, Sec. should be under the control of the Congress (legislative branch), not Treasury, which is an executive branch function. The Executive branch is responsible for submitting and overseeing the budget (Office of Management and Budget), for printing the actual currency (Bureau of Printing and Engraving), etc.

    Of course, given the current functionality–i.e., all three branches are controlled by the financiers–two other fixes are necessary to make this work: 1) verifiable elections and allowance for multiple parties; and 2) decentralized media (including the reformulation of PBS and NPR independent of the corporate state).

    Public banking has been around for a long time, though it has always been under attack by private bankers, because it is more efficient and performed in the public interest. Canada’s and Australia’s central banks were publicly owned until just after WWII, when the Breton Woods agreement made Federal Reserve Notes the world reserve currency, thus allowing the financiers to print as much money as they needed to buy up the planet. Today, the German landesbanks (essentially county banks) are public. They are under attack because the private banks can’t compete with them. Kiwibank (New Zealand) and the Japan Postal Bank are also public banks. These are also under attack, but I will leave the details for later.

    In the U.S., North Dakota is the only state that owns its own bank (since 1919), the Bank of North Dakota (BND). North Dakota has the lowest unemployment, highest budget surplus, lowest bank failures (zero in the past 10 years), and most community banks per capita in the U.S. The advantages of public banking are detailed at http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org.

    If the money creation process is not returned to the public, then all the other reforms that are proposed will never stand up, because the .00001% will use their license to print money to exert control over everything else. We should not be demanding an investigation of the Fed. Even the limited audit that was recently done reveals that the Fed operates solely in the interest of the “too big to fail” banks that own it: http://owsnews.org/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-the-wall-street-money-machine/

    What we should be demanding is that the illegal action of the Congress (the Federal Reserve Act of 1913), in delegating its Constitutional requirement to create money and regulate its value (Art. 1, Sec. 8), be rescinded, and that the means necessary to ensure that our sovereign currency be properly administered (verifiable voting and decentralized media) be part of this return to sovereignty.

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    - novadust says:
      2011/12/20 at 4:36 pm

      rep carter glass, coauthor of the fed reserve act, is the same glass as in glass-steagall 20 years later. he wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t for the 1%.

      try to rescind the fed reserve act? that would be like br’er rabbit punching the tar baby. i’d rather see energy used effectively.

      also, i think you read too much into the newsci article and at the same time miss its point. here’s a piece of it:

      Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.

      One thing won’t chime with some of the protesters’ claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. “Such structures are common in nature,” says Sugihara.

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      - trazom24 says:
        2011/12/20 at 5:49 pm

        Carter Glass’s involvement with the Federal Reserve Act did not come into play until he was elected Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency in 1913. He has no involvement with the original construction of the plan which took place secretly in 1910 on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia. The textbooks on this subject showed that much of Congress was fooled into passing this act since the true intent of the Act did not reveal itself for several more years (namely, charging taxpayers interest on the money the US government borrows from it, and then turning around and asking the taxpayers for a bailout when things soured). So, Glass was probably bamboozled like most everyone else.

        So what is your plan? Keep things the way they are? More debt, higher taxes, more poverty? How do we fix the problem created by debt-based currency?

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        - novadust says:
          2011/12/21 at 3:31 am

          that’s not what became law. the plan believed to have been secretly outlined on jekyll in november 1910 was known as the aldrich plan after sen nelson w aldrich (R-RI). it gave virtually full control of the system to private bankers, so folk in rural and western states opposed it, fearing it would get used by NYC financiers they called the “money trust,” which got investigated by rep arsene pujo’s (D-LA) subcommittee in 1912-13, after the dems took control of the house in 1911. the dem 1912 platform stated opposition to the aldrich bill and the money trust but supported laws to relieve financial panics, unemployment, and business depression. the resulting glass-owen currency bill (which became the FRA) took some ideas from the aldrich bill but made major changes, including keeping controlling interest out of the hands of private bankers by creating a public entity, the FRB. originally, the regional reserve banks were allowed to set their own discount rates. i don’t know when that changed. the FRA has been amended by congress 200 times. all this info and more is available in wikipedia’s FRA entry.

          don’t know what you mean about charging interest. if you lend money to the govt by buying a treasury instrument, the govt pays you interest. the bailout was loans, not something taken from taxpayers.

          getting rid of the fed because of what’s been happening lately would be like buying a new oven because you burned something in it. the fed has surely made mistakes at times, but they’re mainly human errors. i don’t think structural changes can negate the possibility. the causes of the crisis included the passage of gramm-leach-bliley, reagan’s and bush’s tax cuts for the rich, and war. (an incomplete list.)

          interesting that you say “debt-based currency.” all money is debt. it’s essentially a promissory note from the issuer, whether it’s backed by metal or fiat. in fact, gold and silver money are really the same as fiat money, because their value exists only in our minds. life and politics would be much easier if everyone recognized that.

          my solution is legislative and primarily fiscal: reinstate glass-steagall; freeze foreclosures; create a green infrastructure job corps to hire and train millions of unemployed workers to qualify them for a broad range of jobs and start them out installing alternative energy systems on federal property and doing environmental cleanups; let govt underwrite loans for solar and wind equipment and work out agreements for electric power companies to buy surplus generated energy; throw out the tax code; institute a truly progressive flat tax with a very high standard deduction [around $100k/family if done now] and a single rate set each year from CBO estimate of what’s needed to balance budget, pay down debt, or stimulate economy, as needed [with no loopholes but possible limited exception for muni interest, and same deduction and rate for corporations as for families]; make solvency of entitlement trust funds non-discretionary obligations of congress; end payroll taxes permanently; have public universal health care with private option, not the other way round. (i would not end the fed or the FDIC.)

          of course, it won’t happen without a tremendous organizing effort, so it might never be more than a pipe dream, but the progressive flat tax might win support, for starters.

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          - novadust says:
            2011/12/21 at 3:40 am

            oops! in my oven simile i meant if you burned something in the old one, of course.

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          - trazom24 says:
            2011/12/24 at 11:27 am

            You bring up a lot of interesting points. You seem to know a great deal of the history of the Federal Reserve so I won’t beat a dead horse. Let me instead try and answer some of your questions.

            As for charging taxpayers interest on the money the Federal Reserve borrows, what I mean is this. Whenever the US government needs money, it auctions off US Treasury notes, bonds and bills. These instruments are either bought at the auction by foreign investors/banks, or by the Federal Reserve as a last resort. Hence the term “lender of last resort”. Whomever buys it is not really the issue, because there is a nominal interest attached to each instrument that must be paid back in addition to the principal upon maturity of said instrument. The money does not yet exist to pay back the interest on this instrument when it is redeemed, as is the case in a debt-based monetary system. In order to pay the interest, more money must be created as outlined above, creating inflation. This inflation must be paid by everyone (aka the “taxpayer”) whenever they buy a good or pay for a service. Because they’re not really aware of how this works, I call it a hidden tax, but it’s a tax nonetheless.

            Furthermore, the income tax amendment was ratified the same year as the Federal Reserve Act, and I believe this not to be a coincident. I could make a case, but I won’t know, that the IRS was formed so that the taxpayers could be put on the hook for paying the extra cost associated with borrowing the money (as is how the US government funds its operations) as opposed to printing it directly and thus debt-free. Hopefully I explained this and the aforementioned well enough.

            Yes, all paper money today is debt-based. You really have to be careful with definitions here because it can get quite confusing. But not all money is debt-based. Gold and silver is not debt-based and I’ll explain why. For one, central banks hoard gold, and use it to pressure commodity prices and the value of the dollar. Why would they do this if gold has value only in people’s minds? Second, gold and silver have industrial uses, predominantly silver, so it has real value. Yes, the paper value fluctuates wildly from time to time, but it never goes to zero. All fiat paper currencies go to zero. That is a fact. Yes, silver and gold could be fiat – they were when we were on a silver standard a long time ago, and later a gold standard. Fiat simply is “by decree” as I’m sure you’re aware of, but interesting thing today is that gold and silver is no longer fiat (in fact gold is illegal as money thanks to FDR), but that hasn’t stopped gold from climbing as high as $1,800 oz. recently. So if gold isn’t real money then what is it?

            You are dead on about Glass-Steagall. You list way too many other things to comment on here to be able to give your considerations justice, but I agree with many of them. Just not the Fed and FDIC.

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