The Federal Reserve: A Primer
If you are curious to learn more about how the world really works, learning about central banking is a great place to start. If you have a sense that you're not getting the full picture from the media and your government, then step out of the establishment paradigm and begin your journey.
You'll begin to see the false dichotomy of left and right political issues. You'll come to see the fascist, controlled, and manipulated nature of the entire world economy. You'll start to see the nature of the deals and decisions that shape world events. You'll learn how the banking system at the highest levels has, for hundreds of years, supported and financed both sides of armed conflicts, even our supposed enemies. You'll discover other interesting facts like how Paul Krugman was encouraging Alan Greenspan to create a housing bubble in the early 2000's to take the place of the burst tech bubble that governments and central banks had created in the 90's.
By starting to uncover the myths of central banking it will be easy to start to see the intricacies of our entire economic and political system, and how the whole thing, down to the roots, is morally rotten. If you're a "conservative" who touts our free market system or if you're a "liberal" who rails against capitalism - well, you'll both soon realize you're fighting an imaginary battle. Money is one-half of every transaction, and once you find out how central banks create, control, manipulate, and use their monopoly money power for nefarious ends, you'll soon see we have no such thing as free market capitalism. So to the misunderstanding masses, there are evils in our economic system, and they are brought to you and made possible by government-instituted coercive monopolies and regulations.
To those well-meaning, but confused, who worry about the "1%", worry not. If you're concerned about "inequality" (of wealth) your focus is misplaced. Inequality in and of itself is not a bad thing. People are born differently and achieve different levels of wealth. Those who work hard, come up with great ideas and bring value into the world should be respected for that. Where this goes wrong is when businessmen entwine themselves with the state apparatus - and then seek to gain favor, regulations, and other advantages over their competitors, which are then enforced by the gun of the state. And sadly, this is the standard operating procedure for modern business (since the state is there, willing and waiting to be bought off). Regulations are passed against business and finance, and cheered on by the people, who don't realize that it was business and finance at the highest levels pushing these regulations in the first place! Its state enforced (i.e. artificial) competitive advantage across the board. Someone always gains in good times and bad - and it's usually not the people or honest wealthy businessmen. During a downturn, you'll typically see the honest wealthy businessman have to cut back, and possibly lose money. On the other hand, it's easy to spot a state connected crony, and thus the difference between free markets and a state-capitalist system. The state-connected business, in troubled economic times, might get bailouts, even easier access to cheap credit, they could get appointed to important sounding government panels, and bonuses might even be paid out.
Rather than the 1%, it's the 0.001% we should be concerned about. These are the crony capitalists, string-pullers, and manipulators - the global oligarchs. And it is not really their inequality of wealth that is a problem; It is the inequality of power. These are people at world organizations, central banks, the largest most state-connected corporations, and of course, those at the top of government and military. Their entire system, which most people accept without question, represents total centralization, top-down control, one size fits all solutions, and arbitrary, uncontrollable power. These people are either power-hungry megalomaniacs or they suffer from the greatest delusion in the world - the pretense of knowledge; the presumption that they have it all figured out and know best how to run other peoples lives for them - while thinking they are doing good for the world.
I don't want to be ruled, whether by an elected "leader" or some shadowy super-banker. If you value independence, freedom, financial stability, and basic morality - then you should be interested in these topics. In fact, no matter what you value, whether you're a libertarian, republican, democrat, or socialist - this should interest you. A world run on cronyism benefits no one - except the cronies.
Below are a few resources to get started with. The first is a new documentary by journalist and researcher, James Corbett. James does great analysis on a variety of topics over at the Corbett Report.
After that are a couple talks by G. Edward Griffin. Griffin is probably the most well known Federal Reserve researcher. He literally wrote the book on the topic with the classic, "The Creature From Jekyll Island".
Below that you'll find some other great resources on these topics.
Leave a comment, ask a question, and check out our main page for more interesting content, or find us on Facebook at Grassroots Liberty.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IJeemTQ7Vk
- The Creature from Jekyll Island, A Second Look: G. Edward Griffin
- The Creature from Jekyll Island: G. Edward Griffin
- The Origins of the Fed: Murray Rothbard
- The American Dream Documentary
- America - Freedom to Fascism Documentary
- The Founding of the Federal Reserve: Murray Rothbard (video)
- For further reading, watching, and listening - search on mises.org and youtube.