Money makes the world go around

In a week that Gordon Brown said that banks should be the “servants of the economy and society and never its master”, there is a growing sense that banking is the tail that wags the dog. A good friend of mine, who has a background in banking, is more specific about the current financial malaise & considers the US Federal Reserve System to be the invisible hand that manipulates the global economy. He told me to check out this melodramatic but intriguing article entitled The Shadow Money Lenders: The Real Significance of The Fed’s Zero-Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP).

My friend suspects that the Federal Reserve is behind every economic boom & bust since & including the Great Depression. Motive? Foreknowledge = massive profit. Conversely, economics can also serve as an efficient political weapon. “If the Federal Reserve is behind the Credit Crunch, what’s their aim?” I asked my friend. His response: “China is a slumbering giant; they wish to cripple the economy before it overtakes the West.”

Mistrust of the Federal Reserve is nothing new.  Ezra Pound (modernist poet,visionary, traitor, fascist & lunatic) believed that the bankers in charge of the Federal Reserve and their associates in the Bank of England were responsible for getting the USA into both World Wars, in an effort to drive up government debt beyond sustainable levels.  Pound commissioned his protege, Eustace Mullins, to write a book about the history of the Federal Reserve in the style of a detective story. The book, Secrets Of The Federal Reserve, charges that bankers hide behind the screen of the central banks and pull political strings to drive countries into the war, creating immense profits for themselves as the principal beneficiaries of wartime debt. [Wikipedia]

Another high-profile critic of the Federal Reserve was President John F. Kennedy who, on June 4, 1963, signed Executive Order No. 11110 returning to the U.S. government the power to issue currency without going through the Federal Reserve Bank (effectively stripping the Federal Reserve of its power to loan money to the government at interest).  The John F. Kennedy vs The Federal Reserve showdown didn’t last long however. JFK was assassinated 5 months later & Executive order 11110 became obsolete.