America's brightest historical minds speak to you about monetary reform. Part 2

My previous article discusses money and credit creation and the trillion dollars/year benefit of monetary reform. Here is the discussion of this topic from sourced historical quotes from many of our brightest minds, part 2 of 2, beginning with New York City mayor John Hylan and ending with Congresspersons Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

John F. Hylan was Mayor of New York City from 1918 to 1925. The following 12 revealing paragraphs were reported by the New York Times on Dec. 10, 1922. New York has long been the US banking and financial headquarters, with the mayor’s office about a half-mile from the New York Stock Exchange. HYLAN ADDS PINCHOT TO PRESIDENCY LIST; FORESEES A REVOLT. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F07EED6153AEF33A25753C1A9649D946395D6CF

"What each party wants is a man whose sympathies are with the people and not with gold, a candidate with a proven progressive record. If the international bankers and the food profiteers control both parties, there undoubtedly will be a third party, but it strikes me that they won’t be able to.

One of the most astounding facts about our American life is that the wealth and property of the country and the control of the machinery of government are in the hands of less than 2 per cent of the inhabitants. That is to say, a small group of excessively wealthy individuals, members of the Republican and Democratic Parties alike, have, through the exercise of powerful, sinister and, too often, unlawful influence, usurped the government and seized public property on such a wholesale scale that they have become the virtual dictators of the destinies of more than 110,000,000 people (the US population at the time). That is a situation which, to my mind, constitutes the greatest menace to the safety of our republic.

A small group of international bankers and money lenders, public utility exploiters and tariff beneficiaries have actually dictated nominations for offices up to the Presidency. They have placed the slickest, cleverest, and most cunning manipulators in official positions, even in the minor posts, where they could be of service when called upon by the invisible power which, utterly devoid of all humanity, seeks but to wallow in riches.

This invisible power, whose black and menacing form hovers over every fireside in the land, stealthily and secretly reaches out and seizes in its filthy paws our vaunted institutions of free government with the same ruthlessness and relentlessness as the grim specter of death pursues its numberless victims.

So absolute is the power of America’s secret dynastic rulers that they have, without hindrance, written the very platforms and pledges of political parties, and because of substantial contributions to campaign chests they have arrogated to themselves the right to dictate the governmental policies of the administration elected to office regardless of party.

Woe to the public officials who dare to resent their dictatorship! If there be such public officials who will not submit to their imperious dictation, then the flood-gates of lying press propaganda are released, sweeping the unhappy public servant to an earthly as well as political grave, or compelling him to compromise with his conscience and become their subservient tool to the end of his term.

I say to you in all candor that either alternative might have been my lot, and that I might not now be Mayor of the City of New York if one of the greatest, most useful of citizens and, through his publications, the most powerful individual in the United States, William Randolph Hearst, had not enabled me, through the columns of his newspapers in greater New York to present my side of the city administration’s case to the people and thus offset the deluge of mendacious misstatements in the opposition press.

It has also become increasingly obvious that these wealth lords are able, in many instances, to place their own hand-picked Judges upon the Bench, thus insuring decisions in favor of organized corporate greed at the price of human life; while the instances of promotion of such Judges in recent years has been an open secret to us all. This is said with all due respect to the courts and with a genuine appreciation of the exemplary conduct and superior attainments of our judiciary as a body.

…The wealth lords of America are already busily engaged in attempts to insure their control of the nominees of the Republican and Democratic Parties in 1924. They will endeavor at that time to place in nomination at both conventions candidates whom they can control. If this can be accomplished, the election will be of small interest to them, for the people will have to elect one or the other of their candidates.

It would seem the part of wisdom for the people in every State in the Union to watch carefully the maneuvers of corrupt big business and to organize themselves thoroughly to ensure the nomination of men in both the major parties of fighting personalities and progressive tendencies. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties must adopt progressive platforms attuned to the needs of the times and select men who will carry out such platforms if they expect to receive the support of the people generally. Only in this way may we ever hope to be liberated from the economic serfdom and human slavery to which we have been so long subjugated.

I cannot escape the feeling that the most recent movement inspired by the worst kind of bigotry is another attempt engineered by the ruling minority or money lenders of America to create dissension among the different creeds and races of our people, thus diverting attention from their own sinister machinations.

The regrettable feature of this unwholesome situation is that there are some among us who are unwittingly mislead into fellowship with such pernicious organizations. Even a few clergymen who are supposed to extol before the world the virtues of charity and forgiveness and to stand out as living exemplars of these humane doctrines have been found susceptible to the clink of dirty gold which such membership places upon their palms.”
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“Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. The Federal Reserve Board, a Government board, has cheated the Government of the United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board has cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States, has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.

Some people think the Federal Reserve banks are United States Government institutions. They are not Government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders. In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man's throat to get a dollar out of his pocket; there are those who send money into States to buy votes to control our legislation; and there are those who maintain international propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us and of wheedling us into the granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime.” – Rep. Louis McFadden, June 10, 1932. Source: Congressional Record, June 1932, pg 12595-12603. McFadden was the president of the Pennsylvania Bankers' Association (1914-15) and president of the First National Bank of Canton, Pennsylvania (1916-25). He had been Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee for over 10 years when he made this speech denouncing the Federal Reserve System.

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“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson — and I am not wholly excepting the Administration of W.W. (Woodrow Wilson). The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States — only on a far bigger and broader basis.” - Franklin Roosevelt, letter to Col. Edward Mandell House (21 November 1933); as quoted in F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928-1945, edited by Elliott Roosevelt (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950), pg. 373.

“If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. 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.” - Robert H. Hemphill, Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 1934 foreword to 100% Money, by Irving Fisher. Fisher was a Yale economist whose proposal for monetary reform lost to Keynes’ deficit spending plan during the Great Depression.

"The depression was the calculated 'shearing' of the public by the World Money powers, triggered by the planned sudden shortage of supply of call money in the New York money market....The One World Government leaders and their ever close bankers have now acquired full control of the money and credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank."

- Curtis Dall (FDR's son-in-law), My Exploited Father-in-Law, 1967. pages 34-43: http://www.scribd.com/doc/7882835/My-Exploited-Father-in-Law . Dall was a graduate of Princeton, manager at Lehman Brothers, Partner at Merrill Lynch, and Vice Presidential nominee for the Constitution Party in 1960.

“When our Federal Government, that has the exclusive power to create money, creates that money and then goes into the open market and borrows it and pays interest for the use of its own money, it occurs to me that that is going too far. I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money... The Constitution of the United States does not give the banks the power to create money. The Constitution says that Congress shall have the power to create money, but now, under our system, we will sell bonds to commercial banks and obtain credit from those banks. I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with this Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue. I make that statement after years of study.” - Wright Patman, Representative in the U.S. Congress from 1929 to his death on March 7, 1976, and chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency for 40 years. For 20 of those years, he introduced legislation to repeal the Federal Reserve Banking Act of 1913. Quote from excerpts from September 29, 1941, as reported in the Congressional Record of the House of Representatives (pages 7582-7583).

"The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power political, monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical. What the Trilateral Commission intends is to create a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nationstates involved. As managers and creators of the system, they will rule the future." - U.S. Senator and 1964 Republican candidate for President Barry Goldwater in his l964 book: With No Apologies (Morrow, 1979), page 280.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds' central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups." - Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966, p. 324. Quigley was a professor at Princeton, Harvard, and Georgetown. Bill Clinton acknowledged Quigley by name in his 1992 Acceptance Speech as the Democratic Party nominee for President. A recorded interview of Quigley: http://www.infowars.com/?p=2757 .

The following nine paragraphs are from Jerry Voorhis’ 1973 book, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon. Voorhis was a Yale grad and member of Congress from 1937-1947. He was defeated by Nixon’s first Congressional election when Nixon linked Voorhis to communism from one campaign contribution.

“But what actually happens when our government engages in deficit financing? The obvious way the government can get more buying power into the people's hands is by itself putting more money into the stream of commerce than it takes out in taxes. The tragedy of the situation is that, up to date, the only way our government has enabled itself to spend more money than it takes in has been by forcing this sovereign nation to borrow its own credit from private sources.

This has been true, despite the fact that if deficit financing accomplishes its purpose at all it will increase production and trade, enhance tax revenues, and broaden the base of government credit.

To the extent that government bonds are sold for cash to individuals or to institutional purchasers other than banks the government is taking out of circulation approximately as many dollars as it will put back in when it spends the money.

To accomplish its purpose, deficit financing must result in the creation of new money, and the use of it to increase mass buying power. Only if this happens will there be any stimulation of idle plants to go back into production, or more employment.

Under these circumstances what ought to happen is that the credit of this great nation should be drawn upon directly by the government-not that it should go more deeply into debt.

For the credit of this or any nation is squarely based upon and derived from the production of wealth by the nation plus the power of the government to tax. A nation like the United States thus possesses an almost unlimited amount of credit. Otherwise it could not possibly have persuaded investors to buy $480 billion of government securities.

By whatever percentage it can be anticipated that production and hence potential tax revenues will increase as a result of deficit spending, by that same amount the credit of the nation and its government will be increased. This same percentage of the volume of money previously in circulation should appear on the books of the Treasury as a credit entry to be drawn upon just like tax revenues. To do that would be nothing more than rational and proper bookkeeping. It would also be morally right bookkeeping. And it would make some sense of Mr. Nixon's "full employment budget" idea.

But this is not what happens at all. Instead the sovereign government of the United States goes hat in hand to the private banking system and asks it to create the new money that the economy needs. The government gives-the word is used advisedly-it gives to the banking system, including the Federal Reserve banks, government bonds, the debt of all the people. Interest-bearing bonds, that is, bonds bearing as high an interest rate under today's regime as the banks decide to demand. Else they won't buy the bonds. The banks "buy" the bonds with newly created demand deposit entries on their books-nothing more. It is fountain-pen money and considerably more inflationary than would be the same amount of dollar bills created by the government. The deposits the banks create with which to own the people's debt are backed by nothing except the bonds themselves! In other words, they are backed by the credit of the American people.

What the government has "borrowed" from the banks, what the people must for years pay interest on, is nothing more nor less than the credit of the nation, which obviously the nation possessed in the first place or the bonds themselves would be no good!”

“The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know.” – Harry Truman, as quoted in Plain Speaking : An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman (1974) by Merle Miller, p. 26.

“The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”

– John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it came, where it went (1975), p.29. Galbraith wrote five best-selling books on economics (best-selling to the public), was President of the American Economic Association, economics professor at Harvard, and advisor to four US Presidents.

"Much discussion of money involves a heavy overlay of priestly incantation. Some of this is deliberate. Those who talk of money and teach about it and make their living by it gain prestige, esteem and pecuniary return, as does a doctor or a witch doctor, from cultivating the belief that they are in a privileged association with the occult — that they have insights that are not available to the ordinary person. Though professionally rewarding and on occasion personally profitable, this too is a well established form of fraud. There is nothing about money that cannot be understood by the person of reasonable curiosity, diligence and intelligence.... The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is the one in which complexity is used to disguise the truth, not to reveal it. Most things in life — automobiles, mistresses, cancer — are important principally to those who have them. Money, in contrast, is equally important to those who have it and to those who don't. Both, accordingly, have a concern for understanding it. Both should proceed in the full confidence that they can."

– John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it came, where it went - 1975, p15.

“As you know, I am entirely sympathetic with the objectives of your Monetary Reform Act…You deserve a great deal of credit for carrying through so thoroughly on your own conception…I am impressed by your persistence and attention to detail.” – Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute in his letter to the producer of The Money Masters (undated) – www.themoneymasters.com .

“Government-issued fiat money, on the other hand, is not a sovereign debt but a sovereign credit instrument, backed by government acceptance of it for payment of taxes….Credit drives the economy, not debt. Debt is the mirror reflection of credit. Even the most accurate mirror does violence to the symmetry of its reflection. Why does a mirror turn an image right to left and not upside down as the lens of a camera does? The scientific answer is that a mirror image transforms front to back rather than left to right as commonly assumed. Yet we often accept this aberrant mirror distortion as uncolored truth and we unthinkingly consider the distorted reflection in the mirror as a perfect representation. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? The answer is: your backside.
If fiat money is not sovereign debt, then the entire financial architecture of fiat money capitalism is subject to reordering, just as physics was subject to reordering when man’s world view changed with the realization that the earth is not stationary nor is it the center of the universe.”

- Henry C.K. Liu, professor of urban and regional development at UCLA, Harvard, and Columbia University in The Coming Trade War: Part II: Dollar Hegemony Against Sovereign Credit. AToL, 6-24, 2005.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich speaking to the House floor to abolish the Federal Reserve and enact monetary reform: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pVV4n2lKHk .

“It's (Federal Reserve) an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we'd be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value…Since the Fed has been in existence, the dollar has lost about 97% of its value. You're supposed to encourage savings, but if something loses its value, why save dollars? There's no encouragement whatsoever.” – Congressman Ron Paul, CNBC debate with Faiz Shakir, March 20, 2008: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k94VWPjUQSM )

LA County Nonpartisan Examiner