What should every American understand about the Federal Reserve? It’s a predatory system built upon a house of cards. Allow me to explain…
The Federal Reserve is an independent agency made up of privately-owned banks. It’s run by a Board of Governors, 12 regional banks, and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The President of the United States appoints the Board of Governors and Senate confirms them. While the headquarters of the Federal Reserve are located in Washington D.C., it is NOT a government agency. So, the term “Federal” in their name was chosen to obfuscate the truth.
Alan Greenspan, a former Chair of the Federal Reserve Board was asked, what is the proper relationship between the President and the Fed Chair, he stated, “well, first of all, the Federal Reserve is an independent agency and that means, basically, that there is no other agency of government which can overrule actions that we take.”(1) Essentially, he admitted that there are no checks or balances on the power of the Federal Reserve.
Over the years, the Federal Reserve has stealthily expanded the reach of its tentacles and in doing so, has exponentially increased its power. In 1944, the Brenton Woods agreement established a global monetary system in which foreign central banks agreed to fix their currency to the U.S. dollar, rather than to gold. This happened because the U.S. held the majority of the world’s gold after WWII. The Brenton Woods agreement crowned the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. In turn, the U.S. agreed that foreign central banks could redeem the dollar in gold for $35 per ounce.
A major flaw in the Brenton Woods System is that there were no limits placed on the Federal Reserve with regard to currency creation. At that time, there was a growing demand for the dollar by foreign banks. The Federal Reserve obliged by creating more currency, but this outpaced the growth of gold held in reserves. By 1971, the United States economy was in stagflation, a condition of slow growth and inflation, and countries were losing their confidence in gold convertibility. President Nixon met with 15 top financial advisers including Federal Reserve Chair, Arthur Burns, at Camp David in August 1971.(2) Together, they devised a new economic policy that would end the dollar’s convertibility to gold to stave off a looming gold run. In other words, Nixon officially took us off the gold standard, and ever since, the U.S. Dollar has been a fiat currency.
A fiat currency is backed by nothing. History proves that nations or empires that debase their currencies, collapse! Fiat currencies have failed 100% of the time; they buckle under the weight of debt. Gold always wins!(3) In the past several hundred years, approximately every 40 years there is a change in the monetary system. We are now 51 years into a fiat currency system; our economy is on the precipice of implosion. A major structural shift away from a central banking system is critical for the prosperity of our nation.
The product of the Federal Reserve is DEBT. Look at this dollar bill, at the top, you will see that it says “Federal Reserve Note”. A Note is a debt instrument; it’s an I.O.U. The Fed uses money magic to enslave us.
Picture yourself at a magic show and the magician pulls out of thin air, the first-ever, one-dollar bill. The magician gives you the one-dollar bill and says that you can have it, but you will have to pay him back one dollar plus interest. Now you might be thinking, if it’s the first ever minted dollar bill and there is no other currency yet created, what currency will you use to pay the interest? Well, have no fear, the magician creates a second dollar bill out of thin air and gives it to you. Now you have the money to pay the magician back, right? Not really. He tells you that you now owe him $2 plus interest. Once again, there is no other currency to pay for the interest. He goes back to his magic act and creates a third dollar bill. But by now you have caught on and can see that this is an endless cycle with no possible way to pay off the I.O.U. Welcome to the debt enslavement trick! The Federal Reserve creates Federal Reserve Notes out of thin air; they are just paper or in most cases, just digital numbers on a computer screen.
The Boston Federal Reserve Bank admitted to this as well.
“When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money.”(4)
So, the term “Reserve” in their name was a slight of hand, they didn’t have reserves by which they lent money out. The Federal Reserve simply creates money out of thin air. It’s important to understand that the same year the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified which allowed Congress to impose a federal income tax to pay off the interest from the dollars borrowed from the Federal Reserve. When the government gives billions of dollars to other countries, such as Ukraine, we Americans are on the hook for that bill.
The U.S. banking system is built upon a house of cards called fractional reserve banking. Fractional reserve banking is the practice of holding only a portion of deposits within reserves. It’s based on the likelihood that depositors will stagger their withdrawals, rather than withdraw their deposits all at once. The Federal Reserve set the reserve requirement for banks; most banks are set at 10%. What does this mean? If I deposit $100 in my bank account, the bank keeps $10 of my deposit in their reserves and then lends out the rest. The $90 in new loans generates interest for the bank. The bank may charge, let’s say, 12% in interest on the loans they created with my money, but yet they give me a measly less than 1% interest for the privilege of having access to my money. This is just one of the many ways the banking system exploits us.
Greed is a powerful driving force that compels bankers and investors to engage in “moral hazards.” The Great Recession of 2008 is evidence of this. The dollar signs attached to risky investments were more enticing than sound financial investments. The Too Big To Fail (TBTF) banks understood that the Federal Reserve would rescue them if they teetered on the edge of insolvency. The checks and balances of accounting practices were manipulated into shadow banking practices called off-balance-sheet (OBS) accounting. Hotshot Wall Street investors created new streams of cash that exploited the lower standards within the mortgage lending industry passed during the Clinton presidency. The shadow banking system created the derivatives market, yet another tool of obfuscation. Who became king of the derivatives market? None other than JP Morgan Chase.
According to the Fourth Quarter 2007 report from the Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC), JP Morgan Chase was leveraged 64:1 in the derivatives market.(5) For every dollar the bank had in assets, they carried $64 in debt tied to purchases in derivatives. The derivatives market is fractional reserve banking on crack! It’s endemic within the banking system. When the massive bubble burst in 2008, it triggered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve stepped in as the lender of first resort awarding massive bailouts at near-zero percent interest rates to the very banking institutions that engaged in “moral hazards.” The Federal Reserve’s willingness to lend freely and buy up the junk investment instruments that were rejected on Wall Street, communicated to the TBTF banks that they can continue with their reckless investment strategies and not face the consequences. Is it any wonder the TBTF banks haven’t changed their practices?
The most recent OCC Report is for the second quarter of 2022 and it reveals that TBTF banks are engaged in outrageously dangerous behavior. It shows that Goldman Sachs’ derivatives activities are leveraged 99:1!(6) Yes, that’s right, 99:1. When Lehman Brothers was deemed insolvent and forced to close their doors in 2008, causing 25,000 employees to lose their jobs, they were only leveraged 5:1. The irresponsible behavior of Goldman Sachs could trigger a collapse in the global economy at any moment.
Within the Dodd-Frank Act is a bail-in clause. Epoch Times explains the impact of this for the everyday American, “if you happen to hold your money in a savings or checking account at a bank, and that bank collapses, it can legally freeze and confiscate your funds for purposes of maintaining its solvency. So instead of relying on government funds (taxpayer money) to save itself from going bankrupt, a bank can simply dip into your deposit accounts to stabilize itself. To compensate you, the bank will exchange your money for its equivalent value in company shares. In other words, if a bank fails, it takes your money and hands you an equivalent amount of shares in its failing operation. Ethical? No. Legal? Yes.”(7)
If the TBTF banks teeter on the edge of insolvency, which is most likely their current status, they can seize the assets of depositors. “In principle, depositors are the most senior creditors in a bank. However, that was changed in the 2005 bankruptcy law, which made derivatives liabilities most senior. In other words, derivatives liabilities get paid before all other creditors -- certainly before non-crony creditors like depositors. Considering the extreme levels of derivatives liabilities that many large banks have, and the opportunity to stuff any bank with derivatives liabilities in the last moment, other creditors could easily find there is nothing left for them at all.”(8)
When I discovered this as a result of the research I did for The Roots of the Federal Reserve, my husband and I pulled all our accounts from Wells Fargo and opened accounts in credit unions instead. Credit Unions do not invest in derivatives and thus will not utilize a bail-in clause.
Excerpt from The Roots of the Federal Reserve that describes the den of thieves:
“The debasement of the dollar over the past century tells the grim story of how our economy has fared under the Federal Reserve System. When the Federal Reserve first started printing dollars, the currency was backed by gold, but now it is simply a fiat currency. A fiat currency is not backed by anything of value, but instead, only has value because the U.S. government decrees it so. The value only lasts as long as the public has confidence in the ability of the government to back its value. When this confidence is eroded, bank runs ensue, inflation rises, and in the worst-case scenarios, hyperinflation sets in. As Maloney puts it, “fiat currency is designed to lose value. Its very purpose is to confiscate your wealth and transfer it to the government. As each new dollar enters circulation it devalues all the other dollars in existence because there are now more dollars chasing the same amount of goods and services. This causes prices to rise. It is the insidious stealth tax known as inflation, robbing you of your wealth like a thief in the night.”
No matter how rocky the road gets moving forward, we must remember where our provisions come from, Yahweh Yireh! Lean into the Father and trust Him for your provisions; He knows just what we need.
Matthew 6:25-34
“Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
Written by Laura Sanger, Ph.D.
References
- [The Corbet Report] (July 6, 2014). Century of Enslavement: The History of the Federal Reserve [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IJeemTQ7Vk&t=3509s
- Ghizoni, S. K. (2013, November 22). Nixon Ends Convertibility of US Dollars to Gold and Announces Wage/Price Controls. Federal Reserve History. Retrieved from https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/gold_convertibility_ends
- Sanger, L. (2020). The Roots of the Federal Reserve. Dallas, TX: Relentlessly Creative Books.
- [The Corbet Report] (July 6, 2014). Century of Enslavement: The History of the Federal Reserve [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IJeemTQ7Vk&t=3509s
- Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (April 2008). Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities (Fourth Quarter 2007). Retrieved from https://www.occ.gov/publications-and-resources/publications/quarterly-report-on-bank-trading-and-derivatives-activities/files/q4-2007-derivatives-quarterly.html
- Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (September 2022). Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities (Second Quarter 2022). Retrieved from https://www.occ.gov/publications-and-resources/publications/quarterly-report-on-bank-trading-and-derivatives-activities/files/pub-derivatives-quarterly-qtr2-2022.pdf
- GSI Exchange (August 22, 2022) How Dodd-Frank Made It Legal for Banks to Confiscate Funds During a Banking Crisis. The Epoch Times. Retrieved from https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-dodd-frank-made-it-legal-for-banks-to-confiscate-funds-during-a-banking-crisis_3097779.html
- Lewis, N, (May 3, 2013). The Cyprus Bank ‘Bail-In’ Is Another Crony Bankster Scam. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanlewis/2013/05/03/the-cyprus-bank-bail-in-is-another-crony-bankster-scam/?sh=515f4ad92685