25 facts about the Federal Reserve

[778 neighbour of some guy]

Copy/paste job from todays Infowars.

25 Fast Facts About The Federal Reserve – Please Share With Everyone You Know

Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
September 16, 2013


As we approach the 100 year anniversary of the creation of the Federal Reserve, it is absolutely imperative that we get the American people to understand that the Fed is at the very heart of our economic problems. It is a system of money that was created by the bankers and that operates for the benefit of the bankers. The American people like to think that we have a “democratic system”, but there is nothing “democratic” about the Federal Reserve.

Unelected, unaccountable central planners from a private central bank run our financial system and manage our economy. There is a reason why financial markets respond with a yawn when Barack Obama says something about the economy, but they swing wildly whenever Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke opens his mouth.

The Federal Reserve has far more power over the U.S. economy than anyone else does by a huge margin. The Fed is the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world, and if the American people truly understood how it really works, they would be screaming for it to be abolished immediately. The following are 25 fast facts about the Federal Reserve that everyone should know…

#1 The greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was when there was no central bank.

#2 The United States never had a persistent, ongoing problem with inflation until the Federal Reserve was created. In the century before the Federal Reserve was created, the average annual rate of inflation was about half a percent. In the century since the Federal Reserve was created, the average annual rate of inflation has been about 3.5 percent, and it would be even higher than that if the inflation numbers were not being so grossly manipulated.

#3 Even using the official numbers, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by more than 95 percent since the Federal Reserve was created nearly 100 years ago.

#4 The secret November 1910 gathering at Jekyll Island, Georgia during which the plan for the Federal Reserve was hatched was attended by U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department A.P. Andrews and a whole host of representatives from the upper crust of the Wall Street banking establishment.

#5 In 1913, Congress was promised that if the Federal Reserve Act was passed that it would eliminate the business cycle.

#6 The following comes directly from the Fed’s official mission statement: “To provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system. Over the years, its role in banking and the economy has expanded.”

#7 It was not an accident that a permanent income tax was also introduced the same year when the Federal Reserve system was established. The whole idea was to transfer wealth from our pockets to the federal government and from the federal government to the bankers.

#8 Within 20 years of the creation of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. economy was plunged into the Great Depression.

#9 If you can believe it, there have been 10 different economic recessions since 1950. The Federal Reserve created the “dotcom bubble”, the Federal Reserve created the “housing bubble” and now it has created the largest bond bubble in the history of the planet.

#10 According to an official government report, the Federal Reserve made 16.1 trillion dollars in secret loans to the big banks during the last financial crisis. The following is a list of loan recipients that was taken directly from page 131 of the report…

Citigroup - $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion
Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion
Bank of America - $1.344 trillion
Barclays PLC - $868 billion
Bear Sterns - $853 billion
Goldman Sachs - $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion
JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion
Deutsche Bank - $354 billion
UBS - $287 billion
Credit Suisse - $262 billion
Lehman Brothers - $183 billion
Bank of Scotland - $181 billion
BNP Paribas - $175 billion
Wells Fargo - $159 billion
Dexia - $159 billion
Wachovia - $142 billion
Dresdner Bank - $135 billion
Societe Generale - $124 billion
“All Other Borrowers” - $2.639 trillion

#11 The Federal Reserve also paid those big banks $659.4 million in fees to help “administer” those secret loans.

#12 The Federal Reserve has created approximately 2.75 trillion dollars out of thin air and injected it into the financial system over the past five years. This has allowed the stock market to soar to unprecedented heights, but it has also caused our financial system to become extremely unstable.

#13 We were told that the purpose of quantitative easing is to help “stimulate the economy”, but today the Federal Reserve is actually paying the big banks not to lend out 1.8 trillion dollars in “excess reserves” that they have parked at the Fed.

#14 Quantitative easing overwhelming benefits those that own stocks and other financial investments. In other words, quantitative easing overwhelmingly favors the very wealthy. Even Barack Obama has admitted that 95 percent of the income gains since he has been president have gone to the top one percent of income earners.

#15 The gap between the top one percent and the rest of the country is now the greatest that it has been since the 1920s.

#16 The Federal Reserve has argued vehemently in federal court that it is “not an agency” of the federal government and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

#17 The Federal Reserve openly admits that the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are organized “much like private corporations“.

#18 The regional Federal Reserve banks issue shares of stock to the “member banks” that own them.

#19 The Federal Reserve system greatly favors the biggest banks. Back in 1970, the five largest U.S. banks held 17 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets. Today, the five largest U.S. banks hold 52 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.

#20 The Federal Reserve is supposed to “regulate” the big banks, but it has done nothing to stop a 441 trillion dollar interest rate derivatives bubble from inflating which could absolutely devastate our entire financial system.

#21 The Federal Reserve was designed to be a perpetual debt machine. The bankers that designed it intended to trap the U.S. government in a perpetual debt spiral from which it could never possibly escape. Since the Federal Reserve was established nearly 100 years ago, the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.

#22 The U.S. government will spend more than 400 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt this year.

#23 If the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt rises to just 6 percent (and it has been much higher than that in the past), we will be paying out more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.

#24 According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress is the one that is supposed to have the authority to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”. So exactly why is the Federal Reserve doing it?

#25 There are plenty of possible alternative financial systems, but at this point all 187 nations that belong to the IMF have a central bank. Are we supposed to believe that this is just some sort of a bizarre coincidence?

[Ba-ba-Ra]

For me it is this simple: Why should we pay a privately-owned company (which the Federal Reserve is - it's not Federal, its private) to print our money? .. . and then give them the power to set the interest rate that they charge us?!?!?!?

[donk]

Posted by Ba-ba-Ra (here)
For me it is this simple: Why should we pay a privately-owned company (which the Federal Reserve is - it's not Federal, its private) to print our money? .. . and then give them the power to set the interest rate that they charge us?!?!?!?

Look at who the board members are of that private company...and if you are still interested, go and learn some facts about the DTCC (and then compare the board members of that quasi-governmental agency aka private company)

Or don't...it's too late for any of these "facts" to make a difference. Currently they are being made up as they go along. Economics does not resemble the "reality" they teach in the I universities. Acknowledging these "facts" is part of the problem, it's giving them power, even though they make no sense, are abominations

Our faith based system will remain, as long as we stay attached to the idea they're anything more than artificial constructions (individuals' decisions)...most of which currently violate the laws of thermodynamics...which matters, since money is just a store of energy (future work).

[rgray222]

Since Obama has come into office not one new bank has opened, in the last 5 years the federal reserve has created megabank after megabank. Obama has designated 5 banks as being too large to fail. This "to big to fail" attitude has the banks risking money and making extremely poor business decisions because they know that they will never be allowed to fail.

The income gap numbers also known as the wealth gap numbers quietly came out today and over the past 5 years the gap between the wealthy and the poor has reached an all time record. When you look back at history you can track the two great (1920's and 30's) depressions in the USA directly to the Federal Reserve. It is truly one of the greatest travesties that has occurred in world.

The unfortunate thing is that most people around the world have no idea what role central banks play. The media not only refers to them simply as the "Federal Reserve" they refer to them (occasionally) as a quasi government organization. Both descriptions are a bold face lie, they are a private for profit organization nothing more nothing less. The fed is suppose to turn their profits over to congress but the american taxpayer currently owes the fed in excess of $1 Trillion.

Investors endlessly debate the value of the Fed, whether or not its appropriate for a small group of people to have so much economic power and whether paper currency is a bad idea. It is my opinion that the debate is over and allowing a small handful of people to wield such power over the life of virtually every American and most of the world is a very bad idea indeed! The debate over paper currency is another matter altogether.

[Carmody]

It is never the evil that men do.

It is always an issue of good men standing aside and doing nothing.

[Prodigal Son]

Posted by Carmody (here)
It is never the evil that men do.

It is always an issue of good men standing aside and doing nothing.

... or being stupid enough to get on JP Morgan's ship when they were told in a novel that this same exact ship with all these Big Bankers and famous people on board were going to die in the Atlantic Ocean.... I mean bejeezus, it was the same exact ship going to the same exact place And it was named the "Titan"!! ...didn't any of those bankers know the criminals they were dealing with? It was a New York Times best seller... certainly they knew the story [shakes head]

It was a lot more than just Astor, Guggenheim and Strauss that were removed from opposing the Fed.... there were more than six hundred banking bigwigs on board, the "who's who" of the financial world... and not many of them wanted a central bank... they KNEW the manipulation game the banksters played by then. Rothschild's threats and the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson pounding his fists and swearing to root them out...the Viennese Congress, the Civil War and supporting both sides... WTF??

[donk]

... or being stupid enough to get on JP Morgan's ship when they were told in a novel that this same exact ship

Who's this THEY you are referring to? WE are necessary, OUR stupidity...or more like conditioned ignorance...is what allows the "ship", the game, to exist.

To be "smart" enough to come out of this mess...we have to think an entirely different way, not giving ANY power to any part of this strange parasitic machine we allowed ourselves to be completely dependent on. It will require real creativity to shift to a new paradigm....

[Ba-ba-Ra]

It's my understanding the the Federal Reserve's Charter (or whatever the piece of paper they have giving them power is called) runs out in December 2013.

Hmmm, perhaps this would be a good time to do something about them!?!?!?

[Prodigal Son]

Posted by donk (here)

... or being stupid enough to get on JP Morgan's ship when they were told in a novel that this same exact ship

Who's this THEY you are referring to? WE are necessary, OUR stupidity...or more like conditioned ignorance...is what allows the "ship", the game, to exist.

To be "smart" enough to come out of this mess...we have to think an entirely different way, not giving ANY power to any part of this strange parasitic machine we allowed ourselves to be completely dependent on. It will require real creativity to shift to a new paradigm....

True.... and I understand what you're saying, but let's take baby steps first ... the subject here is the Fed.... Abolishing the Fed and going back to a debt-free system would fix a lot of things on this planet in the short term...but I'm having a hard time understanding how the American people and ultimately the rest of the world it enslaved were responsible for the financial coup that was pulled off by sinking the Olympic.... I didn't sign off on that, and neither did you.... Woodrow Wilson did.

I liked the idea of Carmody's post and wanted to run with that a bit... when good men do nothing. What is good, really? To me its the idea of benevolence, the basic premise of the constitution where everyone has equal rights and everyone deserves freedom. The Fed's system is a slave system... it is financial slavery to an elite few. Does opposing it make you "good"? Look at what point that kind of financial system has carried us to at this very moment...

[donk]

My point is that "financial systems" drive everything that's ever happened in the part of recorded history we are allowed to know about.

Financial systems are the creation of individual beings' decisions, which we've been programmed to go along with. I'm not blaming anything on "us" or anyone, just sharing my perspective on our shared reality.

A part of the reality we all currently share is the belief that a financial system of any sort is required for us to live.

I also believe baby steps will never get us collectively to the realization that we are unwittingly responsible for giving power to the decisions that keep it in place.

We have been manipulated into believing in only a very limited range of ideas of how we can arrange a way to live together. Few are able to see how this traps us into protecting the mechanisms that enslave us. A large part of Carmody's comment speaks to how we are lead to believe certain actions (rights, institutions, ideas such as ownership and property) are "good" or "liberating"...when in fact they just tighten the shackles...

As long as we live in a world that "values" the idea that it is ok for any being to live in excess while others are in need, nothing will change, no matter how we rearrange the available resources. The "selfish gene" or whatever it is about "human nature" that allows such a thought must be exposed for what it is: parasitic...anti-life

It is the fact that humans will defend these ideas--property, ownership, entitlement, rights...and not see how exclusive and disempowering and self destructive they are, that brought to us where we are now.

We shouldn't be talking about giving "rights", by definition they are no one's to give. We should consider what it means to label something as "property" and what it is to value "ownership"...as if whoever has such abstract concepts would even benefit from them if others knew the "rights" that define them. Only a sense of entitlement can lead to such beliefs, and only ego can create entitlement.

I am getting a bit abstract, I guess...but I feel the situation is rotten to this very core. Competition is the value created to justify these beliefs...intra-species competition in particular, but our competition with the rest of life (as we know it) is also at the root.

I believe life can--must--be based on mutually beneficial energy exchanges, which is counter to any financial system in existence. I believe the lie of competition fueling innovation is one of the biggest ruses of all, as I believe we could just as easily (actually...MUCH more easily) be taught that cooperation, working together and pushing each other to succeed--rather than the competitive drive to be better than others and "get yours" is the driving of real and healthy innovation

Jeez I'm ranting...sorry, working at bank is eating my soul