Bircherism and the Subversion of the Money Question
@Jargoeauxgne
“You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!” - William Jennings Bryan
In the late 1950's, a political activist group named the John Birch Society was formed. It was a group formed by a cluster of what Carroll Quigley would call “Super-patriots”, American businessmen who had become woke to Communist Infiltration of the highest levels of government, in light of the Reece Commission findings and the McCarthyist Episode. This was back in the days that 'Communist' was synonymous with 'Jew'; one did not bother to speak the redundancy of a 'Jewish Communist'. Their thesis was that the US Government was being primed for a political union with the Communist powers by the most wealthy American and quasi-American philanthropists, heirs to great fortunes, and political insiders. Accordingly their stated platform was an unconditional opposition to any kind of interventionist economic program and commitment to anti-communist politics abroad.
Were they right? No. Did they have good cause to believe this? The JBS was blindly poking and prodding its finger right in the eyes and mouth of the forces of International Finance, but failing to understand the nature of the conflict. It's legacy in the culture of 'conspiracy research' can't be understated, as most all of the accusations against global government are paired libertarianism and anti-communist politics; Alex Jones is Exhibit A. As the open record of history – by which we mean open or declassified government and corporate documents, correspondences and memoirs of the involved parties, and so on – shows, there was indeed smoke.
The works of Antony Sutton, Luis Marszalko, Carroll Quigley and others demonstrate that there was indeed a facilitation of Military-Technological (especially Atomic) transfer from the US to the USSR, carried out by associates of the Rockefeller family through affiliated tax-exempt foundations and corporations. Not only this but Renee Wormser's book documents those same foundations' role in providing for academics to espouse left-wing social doctrines, especially as they pertained to education, family structure and what we would call bourgeois morality. Wormser unfortunately concluded from his findings that the Rockefeller family were secretly radical socialists who wished to end the Free Enterprise System once and for all, rather than the truth, which is that they were facilitating a transvaluation of values while monitoring and redirecting American Leftism in a more suitable direction. There were indeed dozens of Atomic Spies scurrying about and wealthy Americans were indeed transferring the necessary technology for the production of ICBMs to Soviet Russia and they were indeed facilitating the spread social doctrines of entropy, state-dependence, and liberation at the most far-removed levels of academia. From this they drew the conclusion that America's Big Capitalists were secretly Communists and that the Jews were also Communists and so the enemy was Communism. And Soviet Russia was Communism. So we were being attacked by Communism. This is the origin-spring of the Traitor/Patriot political paradigm which is so irrelevant and ridiculous but so often presented by the career conspiracy-people.
The followers of the JBSers / McCarthyists / Super-patriots failed to understand the situation with adequate nuance: the truth being that at the highest levels of power, struggle is not between Nation-States and had not been for some time. States are mere instruments and the lines of the battlefield are not drawn geographically but economically, politically, and spiritually. What appeared to be Communist Infiltration was in fact a confluence of Anglo-American and Jewish elite, not necessarily devoted to the project of Communism but just their own power.
Whether or not the Super-Patriots were just using this to form their own power bloc, their own state-within-a-state is beside the question. Perhaps it was a red herring, all for show. A single organism accusing its left hand with its right hand or a genuine schism within the State. We're talking about the man on the street reading JBS literature. Suffice to say it roughly divided the public side of American politics into two camps: hardline anti-Communists (American Security Council) and Detente'ists (Council on Foreign Relations).
The John Birch Society's Cleon W. Skousen is responsible for much of America's Gadsden-Flag Ideology; he wrote the books The Naked Communist and The Naked Capitalist in which he borrowed from the findings of Carroll Quigley, regarding the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, CFR and RIIA, and then superimposed his own belief that they were all conspiring to implement global communism rather than their openly stated aim of implementing “The British Empire” (Capitalism, Liberalism, Materialism). To these works can be attributed the shallow and popular libertarian claims along the lines that Big Business “hates competition” and “loves regulation” because “regulation stifles competition”; “deregulation is a monopolist's worst nightmare”, and so on. Because the JBS was basically the only organization which was presenting the truth to the public about the American government being a front for the CFR/RIIA, the followers took everything else presented as the word of god. The thought process of a bircher goes like this: “JBS says Rockefeller runs everything. And evidently he does. They also say he hates Gold. Am I a banker shill or patriotic lover of gold?”
Someone skilled at government would make use of everything, his enemies included. Would not the most skilled governor have his enemies advocating for his own interests more zealously than was publicly appropriate or tasteful? The collapse of the America First movement of Christian mid-westerners – which did accurately identify problems and rationally present solutions – left Americans adrift in the Cold War social-engineering state, where their only options were the liars on TV or a strange group of business-radicals who seemed to be revealing the truth about everything.
G. Edward Griffin, a longtime member and officer of the JBS, released his book Creature from Jekyll Island in 1994, which was a critical history of the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, naming names and offering commentary on the economic implications of the bill. Eustace Mullins, however, protege and friend of Ezra Pound during his imprisonment, had also written a very similar book in 1952, using all of the same press clippings and same details. Both books named the various Rockefeller, Morgan and Warburg-associated personalities responsible for the passage of the bill and both labeled the Fed as an instrument of economic exploitation on behalf of the banks, but their interpretations of the how and why differed strongly.
In response to a criticism of gold as monetary standard, Griffin has this to say, from his book:
“The Rothschilds do not own all the gold or even close to it. Most of it is still in the ground, in the ocean, and in private hoards. Even if they did own all of it that presently is in the form of bars, that would just drive up the price and stimulate gold mining so that new supplies would quickly come into production – as now is happening around the world. When the price hits several thousands of dollars per ounce, it will be profitable to extract it from the oceans, and there is a limitless supply from that source. It’s just a question of the natural balance between supply and demand – without a committee of politicians and bankers drafting a magic formula and using coercion to redirect human resources. Bankers may hoard gold (because they understand its value more than most people) but they have always done everything possible to prevent a gold-backed currency. If they wanted it, they could have had it long ago, but (as you may have noticed) they always have worked against it. Why is that? It’s because they can acquire far more wealth by expanding the money supply at will and collecting interest on money created out of nothing than they can by having limits on their money supply and collecting interest on a much smaller amount of gold-backed loans. Bankers love to possess gold but they hate a gold-backed currency because that limits their money supply and, thereby, limits the volume of loans.
Any system other than precious metals is dependent on human decree and manipulation. It must inevitably end up no different than any other fiat money. I am familiar with the social-credit scheme and find it lacking in merit. It is a social engineer’s fantasy. It does not line up with human nature."
Starting with the question of Rothschild ownership of global gold supply, who can say how much they own, it's impossible to know for sure. Their adoring biographer Niall Ferguson openly presents that, by a relatively early point in the 19th century, they had such wealth and control over bond issues, that they had veto power over European foreign policy decisions: “Rothschild... without whom no power in Europe today seems able to make war” (1828, Prince Puckler-Muskau). Also presented by him, that the International Price of Gold was fixed daily at N.M. Rothschild and Sons in London. I only make reference to Ferguson on these points because if I referred to another author I would be accused of anti-semitism; only a philo-semite can reveal the truth publicly on these matters.
A curious footnote in Henry Carey's protectionist classic Harmony of Interests reveals an incident of some importance regarding the Rothschild's appetite for holding gold:
" The banker, however, as much a Jew as Rothschild, had a plan of his own. He immediately began selling the consols receivedfrom the latter, together with a similar amount in his own possession. The funds dropped; the Stock Exchange grew alarmed; other circumstances tended to depress it; the fatal price of 74 was reached; and the Christian banker had the satisfaction of outwitting the Hebrew loanmonger. But, if sometimes outwitted himself, there is little doubt he made others pay for it; and, on one occasion, it is reported that his finesse proved too great for the authorities of the Bank of England. Mr. Rothschild was in want of bullion, and went to the governor to procure on loan a portion of the superfluous store. His wishes were met; the terms were agreed on ; the period was named for its return ; and the affair finished for the time. The gold was used by the financier; his end was answered, and the day arrived on which he was to return the borrowed metal. Punctual to the time appointed, Mr. Rothschild entered; and those who reniemhei. his personal appearance may imagine the cunning twinkle of his small, quick eye, as, ushered into the presence of the governor, he handed the borrowed amount in bank notes. He was reminded of his agreement, and the necessity of bullion was urged. His reply was worthy of a commercial Talleyrand. ' Very well, gentlemen. Give me the notes. I dare say your cashier will honour them with gold from your vaults, and then I can return you bullion.' To such a speech, the only worthy reply was a scornful silence."
In case it's not clear from the quote, Rothschild, after being scammed by some other jewish banker, went to the Bank of England to borrow some gold bullion and, when repayment time came for the bullion, he handed the governors of the bank a gold receipt. In other words, he was keeping the gold and nobody was going to say anything about it. Is the story true? Perhaps. If it is true, it demonstrates that he understood that paper money was worthless and bullion alone was worth holding, otherwise he would have returned the bullion to the bank rather than handing a receipt of supposedly equal value.
Griffin claims without substance that they don't control 'even close' to all of the gold. I say this claim can be dismissed with equally little substance. Next he says that most of the gold is still in the ground. Anyone who understands the long history of money and precious metals knows that the low-hanging fruit of gold and silver were picked long ago. As Del Mar shows in his History of the Precious Metals, European gold and silver yields dried up a millennium ago and South American mines in precious metals were brought to one tenth of their original fruitfulness within two centuries. The great majority of mines have all been failures; mining prospectors have historically only lost money, as the veins which are detected by surveyors are rarely substantial enough to justify the initial investment. By the time the meagerness of the vein is discovered, it's already too late. Why then, have so many miners and mining companies tried their hand? It's a good question. The Auri Sacre Fames perhaps. The history of money and precious metals is the history of governments attempting to alleviate the scarcity of the metals. But Griffin tells us there's much more to be had.
Money obsessive Anthony Migchels asks Griffin “We are supposed to go Gold because its volume cannot be increased. But if we need more we can dig it up?” Good question. Which is it: gold is good because it is scarce? Or gold can't be manipulated because it's abundant? They're mutually exclusive, one must be picked. Griffin continues to lie about easily verifiable matters: “Bankers love to possess gold but they hate a gold-backed currency because that limits their money supply and, thereby, limits the volume of loan.”
Once again, he is depending on his readers being ignorant of their history. There are many examples to demonstrate the falsity of this claim -- like the adoption of the gold standard in the Roman Empire after the Third Punic War, when they found massive amounts of gold in Carthage, which then engendered the scarcity of currency and favorable conditions to creditors, which led to the consolidation of property and end of the republic – but perhaps the more relevant is the more recent Crime of '73. In 1873, a bill was passed in the US written by politician John Sherman, whose close confidante was August Belmont, himself representative of Rothschild interests in America. The Coinage Act of 1873 demonetized silver, effectively cutting the money supply of the United States in half. This legislation was drafted because large veins of silver ore were being discovered in the west and the expansion of money supply which would follow from the mining would devalue the national currency and thus devalue the Bonds. In order to preserve the value of the bonds, the Finance Class lobbied to demonetize silver, nipping it in the bud, and halving the money supply. The next three decades would bear witness to the most galvanized form of class politics which ever occurred in American history, including afterwards. The politics were focused around the money question – specifically, the remonetization of silver, but also the reintroduction of fiat currency, as was used during the war – and the conflicts were bitter. There emerged a Farmer-Worker alliance in American politics, two historically irreconcilable factions, united around the core issue of the monetary serfdom imposed by the east-coast banks. The critiques of the Money System which are still applicable today were all born of this period. They were opposed to the system of bank-credit circulating as un-backed currency, but more than anything they were opposed to the exclusively gold standard. The reason is simple: under gold, currency is scarce and thus creates excellent conditions for creditors. When money cannot be gotten easily, interest rates are high. Simple. Put it another way: there did not exist any critics of the Money System which were in favor of a gold standard until after Allied Victory. The economists which gold-standard enthusiasts rally behind were not critics of the Money System but critics of those critics. That ought to say enough.
G. Edward Griffin is either a cargo-cultist or expects us to be cargo-cultists: the aim of the banks is not to expand the volume of credit, the aim is to maximize their ownership of the economy's sum-total product, which can be achieved in either inflation or deflation. Expanding the volume of credit to a maximum is a way of achieving this end under certain conditions. Under different conditions, other methods are used. Furthermore, he obfuscates everything by equivocating both bank-created paper money with state-created paper money under the banner of “fiat money”. We are led to believe that “Fiat” is bad because it means “State Coercion” in French. We are meant to take “Fiat” as synonym for “unbacked”, as in, a currency not backed by anything but State Power. But once again the truth is simple and obvious: all kinds of currencies, metals-based ones included, are backed by nothing but State Power.
Griffin's core fallacy is that inflation is bad, that the more the money supply grows, the more we are fleeced. Anyone can see that the Money Supply as an absolute quantity is completely benign. The Money Supply could be 1 trillion or simply 1. If it were just 1, we would use tiny fractions of it to buy our goods and services, similar to how with Bitcoin, one usually makes purchases in the 0.005-0.03 range ($50-300). The money supply as a quantity is completely irrelevant. The only relevant fact here is the growth/shrinkage of the money supply as a rate or flow. Let us consult some common sense from the past on this issue:
"There is one central truth running through all history. It is that a steeply falling price-level inflicts such wide¬ spread suffering that no attempt drastically to reduce a price-level has ever been permanently successful. Once prices have been allowed to rise, whether by dishonesty, by wise policy, or by miscalculation, experience has invariably proved that there has been no alternative but to accept the new price-level as a fait accompli.
A falling price-level inflicts great hardship and injustice— on producers and debtors. A rising price level also, it may be argued, inflicts hardship and injustice—on creditors and those who live on fixed incomes. The rise may be as unjust as the fall, but those who suffer from the rise are in no position to hit back at the society which has robbed them. Those who suffer from the fall—the producers —can always compel society to suffer with them by refusing to produce if it is not made worth their while to do so. Therefore it has happened throughout the course of centuries that prices have sometimes risen but have never sub¬stantially fallen. By consequence they are to-day, in England as in every other country, greater by a very considerable multiple than they were at any date in the distant past. Christopher Hollis, The Two Nations (1937)
Falling price-levels ruin everything both by increasing the real cost of debt and by the fact that falling prices are not actuated by producers' voluntary downward adjustments but by a deficit of consumption which is engendered by the scarcity of the currency. Falling price-levels mean, effectively, higher debt and lower profits, meaning unemployment and ruin for all. Rising price-levels, on the other hand, can be ruinous but are not necessarily so. Rising price-levels cheapen debt, usually increase consumption and therefore profits and therefore a greater possibility of production. On the other hand if the rise in prices is too great, the value of the currency is destroyed and the country loses its savings and its effective access to the international trade system. But, as Hollis says, new price levels are fait accompli, they can't be reversed to lower levels, only raised. An attempt to reverse to a lower price-level does not simply readjust prices downwards, keeping everything the same but the absolute quantity of money, but instead removes the purchasing power necessary to buy the economic product at the given price-level, meaning prices are unchanged but sales are greatly diminished. Downward price readjustments are thus only effected in bankruptcies and other ruins.
Griffin, in focusing on the “devaluation of the currency” issue, which is a non-issue, distracts us from the main issues. In regards to Gold, the issue is that the currency has an inherently unstable and deflation-prone basis. In regards to bank-paper, the issue is that the currency is created as debt but the purchasing power required to pay the principal-plus-interest is never created, only the principal, thus engendering another deflation telos. For Griffin, the important thing for his readers to know then, is that banks are adding zero's to numbers and not that banks are forcing the economy-at-large into an interest-serfdom whose inescapable conclusion is failure. His stupid book and all of its fanboys redirect the focus away from the inherent instability and indebtedness of bank-money or gold-money and pins the blame on... rising price levels, which are themselves the sine qua non for national prosperity (not to mention, so hateful to bankers and major asset-holders that they impose coup d'etats to halt inflationary episodes where the value of their debts and bonds are concerned).
The last issue to address is the Fed. In these Bircher money-critiques, the enemy is always inflation and the Federal Reserve System. With the critique positioned as such, the people are primed to slit their throats with the enthusiasm of revolutionaries. The Federal Reserve is the only institution in the country which is capable of, essentially, creating purchasing power at no cost to the American public. If the Fed were abolished tomorrow, what would change? Banks would still create currency. The only thing that would be different is that they would not be backstopped by a central bank. The system of interest-serfdom would still be in place, but it would just be much more unstable – prone to bankruptcies and debt-deflation -- without an institution to provide reserves unconditionally (which is what it does now).
Isn't it strange that Glenn Beck promoted this G Edward Griffin book on his TV show, on which the historical nemesis is the progressive movement and its welfare state?
I leave you with a quote from a genuine representative of the people's interests, against the banks, from Congressman Charles Lindbergh Sr., whose son's baby and last of the Lindbergh line was murdered by jews, and who understood as an American congressman, with perfect clarity, what no American politicians understand today. This was Lindbergh speaking in December 1913, against the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. In addition to the quoted material, he also accused Morgan & co. of manufacturing the Crisis of 1907 and of using sock-puppet bankers to provide phony opposition to the bill:
It is the acme of absurdity for Congress to place between the people and the Government itself an agency in the absolute control of the distribution of money and the use of credit that would be valueless without the guaranty of the Government, and yet that is the identical thing that has been done by Congress, and the Glass bill emphasizes the absurdity.
Why should Congress place a controlling agency, employed for private gain, between the people and the Government of the United States ? That is what has been done by giving to the banks the exclusive privilege of the use of the Government credit. Why is it proposed that the banker should take the merchants's, the manufacturers's and other notes, as well as the bonds of towns, villages, cities, States, and even the Nation's bonds, to the Government and get currency, and at the same time refuse the producers themselves, the makers of those notes and obligations, an equal privilege ? The absurdity of the Government giving away its own credit to corporations to exploit the people is incomprehensible. The bankers are not to blame. Congress is to blame for giving away the people's rights and bestowing them upon the banks.
It is true that Congress possesses the authority and has the power to strip the banks of their exclusive monopoly, but the most of us have not the courage, and therefore we have the absurdity of the Congress of the United States giving to special interests the Government credit --the credit of the people-- thereby forcing the people to borrow at exorbitant rates of interest the very money that their own Government issues on their own credit. The fiat of the Government is stamped upon the coins and the currency and then given to special interests and used as a means to pauperize the people. If the exclusive privilege were not given to the banks, then they would become the people's natural agents, but with the exclusive monopoly they become the people's masters.
[…]
The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. It may not do so immediately, but the trusts want a period of inflation, because all the stocks they hold have gone down, because the people got suspicious of them in the investigations and refused to buy. They have been dropping for a long time. Now, if the trusts can get another period of inflation, they figure they can unload the stocks on the people at high prices during the excitement and then bring on a panic and buy them back at low prices. Formerly they worked the stocks up and down several times a year to fleece the people, but the people have been keeping out of stocks for a while. Excitement, it is hoped by the trusts, will bring them back.
Several in both House and Senate voted against this bill because their votes were not necessary to carry it. But if it stood in danger of losing, like the 23 Democrats who a few sessions since came to the rescue of the standpat Republicans to save as much of the gag rules as possible, here too, I repeat, if it were necessary to save from defeat this Money Trust bill, there would be a sacred and trusted "23," so to term it, on hand to help pass the bill.
This act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth, such as the Sherman Antitrust Act would dissolve if Congress did not by this not expressly create what by that act it prohibited. When the President signs this act the invisible government by the money power, proven to exist by the Money Trust investigation, will be legalized.
Sources:
G Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island
Cleon Skousen, The Naked Capitalist
Eustace Mullins, Secrets of the Federal Reserve
Charles Lindbergh Sr., Debating Carter-Glass Bill, December 1913
Christopher Hollis, The Two Nations
Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money
Henry Carey, The Harmony of Interests
Anthony Migchels, realcurrencies.wordpress.com ,
“You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!” - William Jennings Bryan
In the late 1950's, a political activist group named the John Birch Society was formed. It was a group formed by a cluster of what Carroll Quigley would call “Super-patriots”, American businessmen who had become woke to Communist Infiltration of the highest levels of government, in light of the Reece Commission findings and the McCarthyist Episode. This was back in the days that 'Communist' was synonymous with 'Jew'; one did not bother to speak the redundancy of a 'Jewish Communist'. Their thesis was that the US Government was being primed for a political union with the Communist powers by the most wealthy American and quasi-American philanthropists, heirs to great fortunes, and political insiders. Accordingly their stated platform was an unconditional opposition to any kind of interventionist economic program and commitment to anti-communist politics abroad.
Were they right? No. Did they have good cause to believe this? The JBS was blindly poking and prodding its finger right in the eyes and mouth of the forces of International Finance, but failing to understand the nature of the conflict. It's legacy in the culture of 'conspiracy research' can't be understated, as most all of the accusations against global government are paired libertarianism and anti-communist politics; Alex Jones is Exhibit A. As the open record of history – by which we mean open or declassified government and corporate documents, correspondences and memoirs of the involved parties, and so on – shows, there was indeed smoke.
The works of Antony Sutton, Luis Marszalko, Carroll Quigley and others demonstrate that there was indeed a facilitation of Military-Technological (especially Atomic) transfer from the US to the USSR, carried out by associates of the Rockefeller family through affiliated tax-exempt foundations and corporations. Not only this but Renee Wormser's book documents those same foundations' role in providing for academics to espouse left-wing social doctrines, especially as they pertained to education, family structure and what we would call bourgeois morality. Wormser unfortunately concluded from his findings that the Rockefeller family were secretly radical socialists who wished to end the Free Enterprise System once and for all, rather than the truth, which is that they were facilitating a transvaluation of values while monitoring and redirecting American Leftism in a more suitable direction. There were indeed dozens of Atomic Spies scurrying about and wealthy Americans were indeed transferring the necessary technology for the production of ICBMs to Soviet Russia and they were indeed facilitating the spread social doctrines of entropy, state-dependence, and liberation at the most far-removed levels of academia. From this they drew the conclusion that America's Big Capitalists were secretly Communists and that the Jews were also Communists and so the enemy was Communism. And Soviet Russia was Communism. So we were being attacked by Communism. This is the origin-spring of the Traitor/Patriot political paradigm which is so irrelevant and ridiculous but so often presented by the career conspiracy-people.
The followers of the JBSers / McCarthyists / Super-patriots failed to understand the situation with adequate nuance: the truth being that at the highest levels of power, struggle is not between Nation-States and had not been for some time. States are mere instruments and the lines of the battlefield are not drawn geographically but economically, politically, and spiritually. What appeared to be Communist Infiltration was in fact a confluence of Anglo-American and Jewish elite, not necessarily devoted to the project of Communism but just their own power.
Whether or not the Super-Patriots were just using this to form their own power bloc, their own state-within-a-state is beside the question. Perhaps it was a red herring, all for show. A single organism accusing its left hand with its right hand or a genuine schism within the State. We're talking about the man on the street reading JBS literature. Suffice to say it roughly divided the public side of American politics into two camps: hardline anti-Communists (American Security Council) and Detente'ists (Council on Foreign Relations).
The John Birch Society's Cleon W. Skousen is responsible for much of America's Gadsden-Flag Ideology; he wrote the books The Naked Communist and The Naked Capitalist in which he borrowed from the findings of Carroll Quigley, regarding the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, CFR and RIIA, and then superimposed his own belief that they were all conspiring to implement global communism rather than their openly stated aim of implementing “The British Empire” (Capitalism, Liberalism, Materialism). To these works can be attributed the shallow and popular libertarian claims along the lines that Big Business “hates competition” and “loves regulation” because “regulation stifles competition”; “deregulation is a monopolist's worst nightmare”, and so on. Because the JBS was basically the only organization which was presenting the truth to the public about the American government being a front for the CFR/RIIA, the followers took everything else presented as the word of god. The thought process of a bircher goes like this: “JBS says Rockefeller runs everything. And evidently he does. They also say he hates Gold. Am I a banker shill or patriotic lover of gold?”
Someone skilled at government would make use of everything, his enemies included. Would not the most skilled governor have his enemies advocating for his own interests more zealously than was publicly appropriate or tasteful? The collapse of the America First movement of Christian mid-westerners – which did accurately identify problems and rationally present solutions – left Americans adrift in the Cold War social-engineering state, where their only options were the liars on TV or a strange group of business-radicals who seemed to be revealing the truth about everything.
G. Edward Griffin, a longtime member and officer of the JBS, released his book Creature from Jekyll Island in 1994, which was a critical history of the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, naming names and offering commentary on the economic implications of the bill. Eustace Mullins, however, protege and friend of Ezra Pound during his imprisonment, had also written a very similar book in 1952, using all of the same press clippings and same details. Both books named the various Rockefeller, Morgan and Warburg-associated personalities responsible for the passage of the bill and both labeled the Fed as an instrument of economic exploitation on behalf of the banks, but their interpretations of the how and why differed strongly.
In response to a criticism of gold as monetary standard, Griffin has this to say, from his book:
“The Rothschilds do not own all the gold or even close to it. Most of it is still in the ground, in the ocean, and in private hoards. Even if they did own all of it that presently is in the form of bars, that would just drive up the price and stimulate gold mining so that new supplies would quickly come into production – as now is happening around the world. When the price hits several thousands of dollars per ounce, it will be profitable to extract it from the oceans, and there is a limitless supply from that source. It’s just a question of the natural balance between supply and demand – without a committee of politicians and bankers drafting a magic formula and using coercion to redirect human resources. Bankers may hoard gold (because they understand its value more than most people) but they have always done everything possible to prevent a gold-backed currency. If they wanted it, they could have had it long ago, but (as you may have noticed) they always have worked against it. Why is that? It’s because they can acquire far more wealth by expanding the money supply at will and collecting interest on money created out of nothing than they can by having limits on their money supply and collecting interest on a much smaller amount of gold-backed loans. Bankers love to possess gold but they hate a gold-backed currency because that limits their money supply and, thereby, limits the volume of loans.
Any system other than precious metals is dependent on human decree and manipulation. It must inevitably end up no different than any other fiat money. I am familiar with the social-credit scheme and find it lacking in merit. It is a social engineer’s fantasy. It does not line up with human nature."
Starting with the question of Rothschild ownership of global gold supply, who can say how much they own, it's impossible to know for sure. Their adoring biographer Niall Ferguson openly presents that, by a relatively early point in the 19th century, they had such wealth and control over bond issues, that they had veto power over European foreign policy decisions: “Rothschild... without whom no power in Europe today seems able to make war” (1828, Prince Puckler-Muskau). Also presented by him, that the International Price of Gold was fixed daily at N.M. Rothschild and Sons in London. I only make reference to Ferguson on these points because if I referred to another author I would be accused of anti-semitism; only a philo-semite can reveal the truth publicly on these matters.
A curious footnote in Henry Carey's protectionist classic Harmony of Interests reveals an incident of some importance regarding the Rothschild's appetite for holding gold:
" The banker, however, as much a Jew as Rothschild, had a plan of his own. He immediately began selling the consols receivedfrom the latter, together with a similar amount in his own possession. The funds dropped; the Stock Exchange grew alarmed; other circumstances tended to depress it; the fatal price of 74 was reached; and the Christian banker had the satisfaction of outwitting the Hebrew loanmonger. But, if sometimes outwitted himself, there is little doubt he made others pay for it; and, on one occasion, it is reported that his finesse proved too great for the authorities of the Bank of England. Mr. Rothschild was in want of bullion, and went to the governor to procure on loan a portion of the superfluous store. His wishes were met; the terms were agreed on ; the period was named for its return ; and the affair finished for the time. The gold was used by the financier; his end was answered, and the day arrived on which he was to return the borrowed metal. Punctual to the time appointed, Mr. Rothschild entered; and those who reniemhei. his personal appearance may imagine the cunning twinkle of his small, quick eye, as, ushered into the presence of the governor, he handed the borrowed amount in bank notes. He was reminded of his agreement, and the necessity of bullion was urged. His reply was worthy of a commercial Talleyrand. ' Very well, gentlemen. Give me the notes. I dare say your cashier will honour them with gold from your vaults, and then I can return you bullion.' To such a speech, the only worthy reply was a scornful silence."
In case it's not clear from the quote, Rothschild, after being scammed by some other jewish banker, went to the Bank of England to borrow some gold bullion and, when repayment time came for the bullion, he handed the governors of the bank a gold receipt. In other words, he was keeping the gold and nobody was going to say anything about it. Is the story true? Perhaps. If it is true, it demonstrates that he understood that paper money was worthless and bullion alone was worth holding, otherwise he would have returned the bullion to the bank rather than handing a receipt of supposedly equal value.
Griffin claims without substance that they don't control 'even close' to all of the gold. I say this claim can be dismissed with equally little substance. Next he says that most of the gold is still in the ground. Anyone who understands the long history of money and precious metals knows that the low-hanging fruit of gold and silver were picked long ago. As Del Mar shows in his History of the Precious Metals, European gold and silver yields dried up a millennium ago and South American mines in precious metals were brought to one tenth of their original fruitfulness within two centuries. The great majority of mines have all been failures; mining prospectors have historically only lost money, as the veins which are detected by surveyors are rarely substantial enough to justify the initial investment. By the time the meagerness of the vein is discovered, it's already too late. Why then, have so many miners and mining companies tried their hand? It's a good question. The Auri Sacre Fames perhaps. The history of money and precious metals is the history of governments attempting to alleviate the scarcity of the metals. But Griffin tells us there's much more to be had.
Money obsessive Anthony Migchels asks Griffin “We are supposed to go Gold because its volume cannot be increased. But if we need more we can dig it up?” Good question. Which is it: gold is good because it is scarce? Or gold can't be manipulated because it's abundant? They're mutually exclusive, one must be picked. Griffin continues to lie about easily verifiable matters: “Bankers love to possess gold but they hate a gold-backed currency because that limits their money supply and, thereby, limits the volume of loan.”
Once again, he is depending on his readers being ignorant of their history. There are many examples to demonstrate the falsity of this claim -- like the adoption of the gold standard in the Roman Empire after the Third Punic War, when they found massive amounts of gold in Carthage, which then engendered the scarcity of currency and favorable conditions to creditors, which led to the consolidation of property and end of the republic – but perhaps the more relevant is the more recent Crime of '73. In 1873, a bill was passed in the US written by politician John Sherman, whose close confidante was August Belmont, himself representative of Rothschild interests in America. The Coinage Act of 1873 demonetized silver, effectively cutting the money supply of the United States in half. This legislation was drafted because large veins of silver ore were being discovered in the west and the expansion of money supply which would follow from the mining would devalue the national currency and thus devalue the Bonds. In order to preserve the value of the bonds, the Finance Class lobbied to demonetize silver, nipping it in the bud, and halving the money supply. The next three decades would bear witness to the most galvanized form of class politics which ever occurred in American history, including afterwards. The politics were focused around the money question – specifically, the remonetization of silver, but also the reintroduction of fiat currency, as was used during the war – and the conflicts were bitter. There emerged a Farmer-Worker alliance in American politics, two historically irreconcilable factions, united around the core issue of the monetary serfdom imposed by the east-coast banks. The critiques of the Money System which are still applicable today were all born of this period. They were opposed to the system of bank-credit circulating as un-backed currency, but more than anything they were opposed to the exclusively gold standard. The reason is simple: under gold, currency is scarce and thus creates excellent conditions for creditors. When money cannot be gotten easily, interest rates are high. Simple. Put it another way: there did not exist any critics of the Money System which were in favor of a gold standard until after Allied Victory. The economists which gold-standard enthusiasts rally behind were not critics of the Money System but critics of those critics. That ought to say enough.
G. Edward Griffin is either a cargo-cultist or expects us to be cargo-cultists: the aim of the banks is not to expand the volume of credit, the aim is to maximize their ownership of the economy's sum-total product, which can be achieved in either inflation or deflation. Expanding the volume of credit to a maximum is a way of achieving this end under certain conditions. Under different conditions, other methods are used. Furthermore, he obfuscates everything by equivocating both bank-created paper money with state-created paper money under the banner of “fiat money”. We are led to believe that “Fiat” is bad because it means “State Coercion” in French. We are meant to take “Fiat” as synonym for “unbacked”, as in, a currency not backed by anything but State Power. But once again the truth is simple and obvious: all kinds of currencies, metals-based ones included, are backed by nothing but State Power.
Griffin's core fallacy is that inflation is bad, that the more the money supply grows, the more we are fleeced. Anyone can see that the Money Supply as an absolute quantity is completely benign. The Money Supply could be 1 trillion or simply 1. If it were just 1, we would use tiny fractions of it to buy our goods and services, similar to how with Bitcoin, one usually makes purchases in the 0.005-0.03 range ($50-300). The money supply as a quantity is completely irrelevant. The only relevant fact here is the growth/shrinkage of the money supply as a rate or flow. Let us consult some common sense from the past on this issue:
"There is one central truth running through all history. It is that a steeply falling price-level inflicts such wide¬ spread suffering that no attempt drastically to reduce a price-level has ever been permanently successful. Once prices have been allowed to rise, whether by dishonesty, by wise policy, or by miscalculation, experience has invariably proved that there has been no alternative but to accept the new price-level as a fait accompli.
A falling price-level inflicts great hardship and injustice— on producers and debtors. A rising price level also, it may be argued, inflicts hardship and injustice—on creditors and those who live on fixed incomes. The rise may be as unjust as the fall, but those who suffer from the rise are in no position to hit back at the society which has robbed them. Those who suffer from the fall—the producers —can always compel society to suffer with them by refusing to produce if it is not made worth their while to do so. Therefore it has happened throughout the course of centuries that prices have sometimes risen but have never sub¬stantially fallen. By consequence they are to-day, in England as in every other country, greater by a very considerable multiple than they were at any date in the distant past. Christopher Hollis, The Two Nations (1937)
Falling price-levels ruin everything both by increasing the real cost of debt and by the fact that falling prices are not actuated by producers' voluntary downward adjustments but by a deficit of consumption which is engendered by the scarcity of the currency. Falling price-levels mean, effectively, higher debt and lower profits, meaning unemployment and ruin for all. Rising price-levels, on the other hand, can be ruinous but are not necessarily so. Rising price-levels cheapen debt, usually increase consumption and therefore profits and therefore a greater possibility of production. On the other hand if the rise in prices is too great, the value of the currency is destroyed and the country loses its savings and its effective access to the international trade system. But, as Hollis says, new price levels are fait accompli, they can't be reversed to lower levels, only raised. An attempt to reverse to a lower price-level does not simply readjust prices downwards, keeping everything the same but the absolute quantity of money, but instead removes the purchasing power necessary to buy the economic product at the given price-level, meaning prices are unchanged but sales are greatly diminished. Downward price readjustments are thus only effected in bankruptcies and other ruins.
Griffin, in focusing on the “devaluation of the currency” issue, which is a non-issue, distracts us from the main issues. In regards to Gold, the issue is that the currency has an inherently unstable and deflation-prone basis. In regards to bank-paper, the issue is that the currency is created as debt but the purchasing power required to pay the principal-plus-interest is never created, only the principal, thus engendering another deflation telos. For Griffin, the important thing for his readers to know then, is that banks are adding zero's to numbers and not that banks are forcing the economy-at-large into an interest-serfdom whose inescapable conclusion is failure. His stupid book and all of its fanboys redirect the focus away from the inherent instability and indebtedness of bank-money or gold-money and pins the blame on... rising price levels, which are themselves the sine qua non for national prosperity (not to mention, so hateful to bankers and major asset-holders that they impose coup d'etats to halt inflationary episodes where the value of their debts and bonds are concerned).
The last issue to address is the Fed. In these Bircher money-critiques, the enemy is always inflation and the Federal Reserve System. With the critique positioned as such, the people are primed to slit their throats with the enthusiasm of revolutionaries. The Federal Reserve is the only institution in the country which is capable of, essentially, creating purchasing power at no cost to the American public. If the Fed were abolished tomorrow, what would change? Banks would still create currency. The only thing that would be different is that they would not be backstopped by a central bank. The system of interest-serfdom would still be in place, but it would just be much more unstable – prone to bankruptcies and debt-deflation -- without an institution to provide reserves unconditionally (which is what it does now).
Isn't it strange that Glenn Beck promoted this G Edward Griffin book on his TV show, on which the historical nemesis is the progressive movement and its welfare state?
I leave you with a quote from a genuine representative of the people's interests, against the banks, from Congressman Charles Lindbergh Sr., whose son's baby and last of the Lindbergh line was murdered by jews, and who understood as an American congressman, with perfect clarity, what no American politicians understand today. This was Lindbergh speaking in December 1913, against the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. In addition to the quoted material, he also accused Morgan & co. of manufacturing the Crisis of 1907 and of using sock-puppet bankers to provide phony opposition to the bill:
It is the acme of absurdity for Congress to place between the people and the Government itself an agency in the absolute control of the distribution of money and the use of credit that would be valueless without the guaranty of the Government, and yet that is the identical thing that has been done by Congress, and the Glass bill emphasizes the absurdity.
Why should Congress place a controlling agency, employed for private gain, between the people and the Government of the United States ? That is what has been done by giving to the banks the exclusive privilege of the use of the Government credit. Why is it proposed that the banker should take the merchants's, the manufacturers's and other notes, as well as the bonds of towns, villages, cities, States, and even the Nation's bonds, to the Government and get currency, and at the same time refuse the producers themselves, the makers of those notes and obligations, an equal privilege ? The absurdity of the Government giving away its own credit to corporations to exploit the people is incomprehensible. The bankers are not to blame. Congress is to blame for giving away the people's rights and bestowing them upon the banks.
It is true that Congress possesses the authority and has the power to strip the banks of their exclusive monopoly, but the most of us have not the courage, and therefore we have the absurdity of the Congress of the United States giving to special interests the Government credit --the credit of the people-- thereby forcing the people to borrow at exorbitant rates of interest the very money that their own Government issues on their own credit. The fiat of the Government is stamped upon the coins and the currency and then given to special interests and used as a means to pauperize the people. If the exclusive privilege were not given to the banks, then they would become the people's natural agents, but with the exclusive monopoly they become the people's masters.
[…]
The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. It may not do so immediately, but the trusts want a period of inflation, because all the stocks they hold have gone down, because the people got suspicious of them in the investigations and refused to buy. They have been dropping for a long time. Now, if the trusts can get another period of inflation, they figure they can unload the stocks on the people at high prices during the excitement and then bring on a panic and buy them back at low prices. Formerly they worked the stocks up and down several times a year to fleece the people, but the people have been keeping out of stocks for a while. Excitement, it is hoped by the trusts, will bring them back.
Several in both House and Senate voted against this bill because their votes were not necessary to carry it. But if it stood in danger of losing, like the 23 Democrats who a few sessions since came to the rescue of the standpat Republicans to save as much of the gag rules as possible, here too, I repeat, if it were necessary to save from defeat this Money Trust bill, there would be a sacred and trusted "23," so to term it, on hand to help pass the bill.
This act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth, such as the Sherman Antitrust Act would dissolve if Congress did not by this not expressly create what by that act it prohibited. When the President signs this act the invisible government by the money power, proven to exist by the Money Trust investigation, will be legalized.
Sources:
G Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island
Cleon Skousen, The Naked Capitalist
Eustace Mullins, Secrets of the Federal Reserve
Charles Lindbergh Sr., Debating Carter-Glass Bill, December 1913
Christopher Hollis, The Two Nations
Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money
Henry Carey, The Harmony of Interests
Anthony Migchels, realcurrencies.wordpress.com ,
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