EDITORIAL: The monetary system and the national debt

Lariat Editorial Board

The monetary system has been described by Ron Paul as “the forbidden issue.” How our money is created and the implications of the process are rarely if ever spoken of.

Americans are alarmed about a growing national debt. What tough decisions will need to be made in order to pay it off? We can’t understand how Wall Street banks can be on the verge of collapse but then make record profits the following year. Some blame government policies, some blame greed. But the real problem is the private Federal Reserve System.

The Federal Reserve is a private corporation made up of the largest multinational banks. Once again, it is a private company despite what its name seems to imply. When the United States government needs money, the Federal Reserve lends the “federal reserve notes”, or dollars, to the government. This is how money is created.

The question that you should be asking yourself is where did the Fed get the money to lend? They create it out of thin air.

It’s not a complicated process at all. The difficult part to understand is why the private Federal Reserve prints the money and not the United States Government. Especially since the government must borrow these Federal Reserve notes and owe them back to the private banks plus interest.

Lately there has been much outrage about the national debt. It’s a staggering figure of $13 trillion. But just who does America owe this debt to? The Federal Reserve holds $5.2 trillion of American debt, by far the largest share. Compare that to the $900 billion that China owns.

How can the United States government, a collection of all the workers, resources, and capital of our country be in such a large debt to such a small group of bankers?

The only explanation is that our monetary system is a scam. It’s a magic trick. It’s a system designed to transfer the wealth of working men and women to the idle money makers who run Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America.

These money lenders don’t have our well-being at heart. They charge interest of 29% to credit card holders who miss a single payment. They created mortgage backed securities they knew would fail and sold them to clients looking for a safe investment, and then bet against the security. When it looked like the house of cards was about to collapse they ran to the government pleading and begging for a bailout. They are usurers, fraudsters, and will not acknowledge their failures. It’s best to judge a tree by its fruits.

The American people have a history of challenging the money interests. The Populist movement of the late 19th Century got William Jennings Bryan nominated as a Democrat for President of the United States where he said, “We believe the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government.” Abraham Lincoln actually issued debt-free government money during the Civil War in the form of Greenbacks. In 2008 Ron Paul led one of the most exciting campaigns primarily behind the slogan “End the Fed.”

The private control of the money system is a tyranny that must be brought to an end.

 

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