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| One of the first "greenbacks," of 1861, used to pay federal workers. |
This calendar was researched and written by Greg Coleridge, Adele Looney, Phyllis Titus, Donna Schall, Leah Davis, and Alice Francini.
We've done our best to be accurate. It's meant to be a living calendar. Check back regularly for updates. If you discover inaccuracies and/or have any suggestions for elaborations or inclusions, please email them to monetarycalendar@yahoo.com. Thank you!
JANUARY 1
1817 - SECOND NATIONAL BANK OF THE US OPENS
This was the third quasi national bank of the US — following the Bank of North America (1781-1785) and Bank of the United States (1791-1811). While called a “national” bank, it was not public but actually a commercial/corporate bank with the power to issue money directly (just like its two predecessors). It issued initially 20 times more money than it had in reserve its reserves as loans. This led to financial speculation and large corporate profits. A year later, it stopped issuing loans, resulting in a severe contraction of the money supply — which led to massive bankruptcies and the Panic of 1819. President Andrew Jackson believed the bank was a threat to the nation. He vetoed a bill in 1832 renewing the bank’s charter (license).
1879 – DATE TO REDEEM GREENBACKS FOR GOLD
Forces in opposition to public money passed the Resumption Act in 1875. It established January 1, 1879 as the date anyone could redeem federal Greenbacks for gold. Greenbacks were debt free money created by the Lincoln administration in his effort to avoid borrowing money from banks and having to pay interest. Why not simply create the money as stipulated in the Constitution (Art 1, Sec 8 giving the government the authority to coin money)? Bankers hoped most Greenbacks would be turned in – so that they could once more exclusively control the issuance and circulation of paper money – at enormous profit. Doomsayers predicted as Greenbacks were redeemed for gold, the nation would go bankrupt. Neither occurred. Only $135,000 in Greenbacks were exchanged for gold – nationwide. Meanwhile, $400,000 gold was exchanged for Greenbacks! The New York Daily Tribune called the day, “the grandest page in the history of the United States.” (Jason Goodwin, Greenbacks)
1909 - BIRTH OF US SENATOR (REPUBLICAN) BARRY GOLDWATER
“The Trilateralist Commission is international and is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the U.S. The Trilateralist Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power -- political, monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical.” (Barry Goldwater With No Apologies)
1911 - US POSTAL SAVINGS SYSTEM OPENS
The Postal Savings System offered savings accounts to depositors, but no loans. When banks failed after the Great Depression, many people shifted their remaining funds. With post officers serving as bank branches, the Postal Savings System held upwards of 20% of the nation’s savings in the mid 1940’s. Commercial/corporate banks lobbied against their expansion and for their elimination — which occurred in 1967.
1999 – EURO INTRODUCED
The Euro replaced the national currencies of the majority of European Union nations. It was first introduced as an accounting currency (e.g. travelers cheques, electronic transfers). Coins and paper notes began circulating euros three years later. The flow of euros is controlled by the European Central Bank, similar to the flow of dollars controlled by the Federal Reserve Bank in the U.S. In both cases, however, the “central” banks are largely private entities. The euro came under harsh criticism in 2012 as many people in many nations began to understand that the loss of national currencies equated to a loss of national sovereignty, despite the face that national currencies were issued by the private national banks of individual nations. The relative public influence over a nation’s money supply is still greater having its own currency vs a continent-wide currency controlled by a private continent-wide central bank.
JANUARY 2
1909 – BIRTH OF BARRY GOLDWATER, FORMER REPUBLICAN SENATOR FROM ARIZONA
"The Trilateralist Commission is international…(and)…is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the U.S. The Trilateralist Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power-political, monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical."
JANUARY 3
1977 - DEATH OF CARROLL QUIGLEY, PROFESSOR AND HISTORIAN
“The influence of financial capitalism and of the international bankers who created it was exercised both on business and on governments, but could have done neither if it had not been able to persuade both these to accept two 'axioms' of its own ideology...by basing the value of money on gold and by allowing bankers to control the supply of money. To do this it was necessary to conceal, or even mislead, both governments and people about the nature of money and its methods of operation.” (from his book, Tragedy and Hope)
JANUARY 5
1066 – DEATH OF KING EDWARD THE CONFESSOR
Calling usury (interest) the root of evil, the English King declared all those who charged usury outlaws and banished them from the country.
JANUARY 7
1782 – BANK OF NORTH AMERICA OPENS
This was the nation’s first private commercial bank. At that time, the nation’s constitution was the Articles of Confederation. Article 9 of the Articles gave Congress the power to “emit bills of credit” -- to create debt free money. By a single vote, Congress voted to transfer their authority to issue money to the The Bank of North America when it approved its charter on December 31, 1781. Thus, the Bank served as a quasi central bank (which created money as loans, called “debt money”). Why did Congress willingly give up their money power? The public argument was that the business of finance could not be competently conduced by a public body (Congress) — only by a small number of private financiers. The first head of the Bank was Robert Morris, the richest merchant in America.
1868 – SPEECH OF CONGRESSMAN SAMUEL FENTON (INDEPENDENT REPUBLICAN) OF OHIO ON FLOOR OF HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
“Our Constitution gives to Congress the exclusive power to coin money and regulate the value thereof... These are attributes of sovereignty and belong exclusively to the representatives of the whole people...The value of money has no relation to or dependence upon the material of which it is made. If it has the properties or powers of representing, measuring, and exchanging value, it is money; and these properties or powers are not inherent in any substance, but are conferred upon any chosen material by the sovereign power....The Greenback, as it has been denominated, was an invaluable expedient, backing our boys in blue and covering their backs at the same time. It served our purpose well and will serve us still if permitted. It helped us through one danger and will bear us triumphantly through another unless the cupidity of bankers, bondholders and shoddy contractors shall triumph over the industrial and tax-paying classes of our people...The first step in the right direction will be to pass a law to call in and cancel the entire bank circulation and simultaneously issue an equal quantity of Treasury certificates or legal tenders.”
JANUARY 8
1786 – BIRTH OF NICHOLAS BIDDLE, PRESIDENT OF SECOND NATIONAL BANK
Biddle threatened to cause a depression if President Andrew Jackson did not re-charter the bank, The privately owned Second Bank was chartered in 1816. President Jackson did not sign the bill to renew the charter. "This worthy President thinks that ... he is to have his way with the Bank. He is mistaken...[opposition] can only be broken by the actual conviction of exiting distress in the community... Our only safety is in pursuing a steady course of firm restriction [of the money supply] - and I have no doubt that such a course will ultimately lead to restoration of the currency and the re-charter of the Bank." The result of the contraction of the money supply was a financial panic followed by a deep depression in 1837. (Edward Kaplan, The Bank of the United States and the American Economy)
1835 – PRESIDENT JACKSON PAYS OFF THE LAST INSTALLMENT OF THE NATIONAL DEBT
He was the only President ever to do so. This after he decided not to renew the charter of the private Second Bank of the United States.
JANUARY 10
1843 – BIRTH OF LORD ACTON, ENGLISH HISTORIAN, POLITICIAN, AND WRITER
“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later, is the people versus the banks.“
JANUARY 11
1757 – BIRTH OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, FIRST SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY OF THE UNITED STATES
Hamilton was a major proponent of First Bank of the United States. The bank’s name gave the impression that the bank was public when it was actually privately owned. The nation's money was created by the private bank as government loans - at interest - and to private individuals. Eighty percent of the stock was privately held. Hamilton considered public debt "a public blessing" because it would tie the wealthy (who would own the government bonds) of the country to the government, and they would in turn provide political support for higher taxes to pay off the government bonds.
1893 – DEATH OF BENJAMIN F. BUTLER, US GENERAL, US REPRESENTATIVE (MASSACHUSETTS) AND GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS
“The government shall issue an amount equal to its taxes…which shall be lawful money and legal tender for all debts, public and private, which by law are not made payable in coin.”
JANUARY 13
1808 – BIRTH OF SALMON P. CHASE, US SENATOR (OHIO), GOVERNOR OF OHIO, US TREASURY SECRETARY UNDER ABRAHAM LINCOLN, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE US SUPREME COURT
"My agency in procuring the passage of the National Bank Act, was the greatest financial mistake of my life. It has built up a monopoly that affects every interest in the country. It should be repealed. But before this can be accomplished, the people will be arrayed on one side and the banks on the other in a contest such as we have never seen in this country." The National Bank Act established a system of nationally chartered banks. Before the Act, most banks were chartered by states. The Act permitted these new nationally chartered banks to turn government bonds into the US Treasury in exchange for the right to print an equal amount of debt-based Bank Money. This undermined U.S. Greenbacks, which was debt-free public money.
2007 – ARTICLE PUBLISHED BY JAMES PETRAS, PROFESSOR (EMERITUS), BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK
"Within the financial ruling class,…political leaders come from the public and private equity banks, namely Wall Street - especially Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, the Carlyle Group and others. They organize and fund both major parties and their electoral campaigns. They pressure, negotiate and draw up the most comprehensive and favorable legislation on global strategies and sectoral policies...They pressure the government to "bailout" bankrupt and failed speculative firms and to balance the budget by lowering social expenditures instead of raising taxes on speculative "windfall" profits...These private equity banks are involved in every sector of the economy, in every region of the world economy and increasingly speculate in the conglomerates which are aquired. Much of the investment funds now in the hands of the US investment banks, hedge funds and other sectors of the financial ruling class originated in the profits extracted from workers in the manufacturing and service sector." Global Research - January 13, 2007
JANUARY 14
1753 - DEATH OF GEORGE BERKELEY, ANGLICAN BISHOP OF CLOYNE IRELAND, PHILOSOPHER
Berkeley wrote The Querest in 1735. It was written as questions, which suggested their own answers. On whether money has inherent value, he asked/wrote: "Whether money is to be considered as having an intrinsic value, or as being a commodity, a standard, a measure, or a pledge as is variously suggested by writers? On the evolution of exchange and money, "Whether in the rude original society the first step was not the exchanging of commodities, the next a substitution of metals by weight as the common medium of circulation, after this the making use of coin, lastly a further refinement by the use of paper with proper marks and signatures? And whether as it is the last so it be not the greatest improvement? And whether money be not in truth tickets or tokens for conveying and recording such power, and whether it be of great consequence what materials the tickets are made of."
1875 – U.S. CONGRESS PASSES SPECIE RESUMPTION ACT
Wall Street bankers hated federal Greenbacks (U.S. created debt-free money issued by the administration of Republican President Abraham Lincoln.). They preferred "hard money" or "specie" money (paper money backed by gold), since the major banks controlled most of the nation's gold. Ohio Senator John Sherman (so close was he to the First National Bank of New York that the bank was dubbed "Fort Sherman") was the major advocate of the Specie Resumption Act, passed during the lame-duck controlled Congress (where have we heard that before). The Act legislated the U.S. Treasury to resume the issuance of legal tender notes backed only by gold (Greenbacks were only backed by the faith and credit of the US). The Act also took steps to reduce the amount of Greenbacks in circulation -- a step toward the creation of bank issued debt-money that the government would borrow from them at interest vs using government money without having to pay interest. Farmers and small manufactures opposed the Act, fearful that a contraction of the money supply would lead to a recession or depression. The Act took effect on January 1, 1879. It was a major step toward the re-consolidation of the nation's money supply and economy toward the Money Trust.
2009 – DEATH OF CHARLES WALTERS, FOUNDER OF ACRES MAGAZINE, A VOICE FOR ECO-AGRICULTURE
“Once upon a time the nobles of Europe believed they had accomplished the physical impossibility of perpetual interest simply by owning all the land and raking in tribute from the peasantry, and when death finally pulled down an economic maggot, then there was always the heir. The historical showdown arrived, of course, and the 'new nobles' were forced to invent a more subtle form of tribute taking. It came on as debt, interest, compound interest, and all the institutional arrangements required to make the producing community share its income with the creditor. For centuries the details have stacked up, but economists [by and large] have failed to draw the appropriate conclusions."
JANUARY 16
1911 - ISSUANCE OF PAMPHLET SUGGESTING PLAN FOR NATIONAL PRIVATE CENTRAL BANK
US Senator Nelson Aldrich introduced a plan for creation of a national private central bank based on the conclusions developed by bankers who met secretly on Jekyll Island. GA. The Citizens League, later the National Citizens League, was formed to promote the plan. The establishment of the Federal Reserve System was the event result of the plan.
JANUARY 17
1706 – BIRTH OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
“The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the prime reason for the revolutionary war.”
“This effect of paper currency is not understood in England. And indeed the whole is a mystery to the politicians how we have been able to continue a war for four years without money and how we could pay with paper that had no previously fixed fund appropriated specifically to redeem it. This currency...is a wonderful machine.”
1863 – BIRTH OF LLOYD GEORGE, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER, 1916-1922
“The international bankers swept statesmen, politicians, journalists and jurists all to one side and issued their order with the imperiousness of absolute monarchs.”
JANUARY 18
1910 – BIRTH OF KENNETH BOULDING, ECONOMIST, PROFESSOR, PEACE ACTIVIST, QUAKER
“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
JANUARY 20
1859 – BIRTH OF CHARLES LINDBURGH, SR., REPUBLICAN US REPRESENTATIVE AND FATHER OF THE FAMOUS AVIATOR
"Ever since the Civil War Congress has allowed the bankers to control financial legislation. The membership of the Finance Committee in the Senate (now the Banking and Currency Committee) and the Committee on Banking and Currency in the House have been made up chiefly of bankers, their agents and their attorneys. These committees have controlled the nature of bills to be reported, the extent of them, and debates that were to be held on them when they were being considered in the Senate and the House."
"This [Federal Reserve] Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the president signs this bill, the invisible government by the monetary power will be legalized. The people may not know it immediately but the day of reckoning is only a few years removed, the worst legislative crime of the ages perpetrated by this bank bill."
JANUARY 24
1811 – CHARTER OF FIRST BANK OF UNITED STATES NOT RENEWED
A 20-year charter was issued by the federal government (very unusual at the time since most corporate charters, or licenses, were issued by states) to create the first national private bank. This was the first private institution empowered by the U.S. federal government to create paper money -- with all the power and profit that goes along with it. The bank’s paper money was accepted for taxes. Eighty percent of its shares were privately owned, among these 75% were foreign owned (mostly by the English and Dutch). The bank was modeled on the Bank of England. Within 2 months of its creation, it flooded the market with loans and banknotes and then sharply shifted course and called in many of its loans. The result was the first US securities market crash -- what became known as the “Panic of 1792” – the first of many panics, recessions and depressions due to the private/corporate control of our money system. The result was Congress voting to not renew the bank’s charter, thus dissolving the bank. During the first 50 years of the US, legislatures and courts routinely chose not to renew or revoke corporate charters, which were considered democratic instruments and used to control the actions of corporations.
1939 – STATEMENT MADE BY ROBERT H. HEMPHILL, CREDIT MANAGER OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ATLANTA
"We are completely dependent on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible; but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied...”
JANUARY 25
1898 – SECOND INDIANAPOLIS MONETARY CONVENTION BEGINS
Billed as a grassroots effort for monetary reform, the second convention brought together nearly 500 representatives from 31 states. It was a follow-up gathering of major corporate leaders (including many bankers and economists representing leading corporations) to the first convention held a year earlier. Participants advocated for a privately run national central bank. Just as the proposed national central bank was misleading (to be privately controlled), the first and second Indianapolis Monetary Conventions were equally misleading. They were hardly “grassroots”, yet the image was useful when lobbying Congress and communicating with the public.
JANUARY 27
2010 — DEATH OF HOWARD ZINN, HISTORIAN
"The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth. Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson – that everything we do matters – is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think. When we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back."
JANUARY 29
1737 -- BIRTH OF TOM PAINE, US REVOLUTIONARY
Commenting on the value of colonial-issued money, the “Continental”...
"Every stone in the Bridge that has carried us over seems to have a claim upon our esteem. But this was a corner stone, and its usefulness cannot be forgotten."
1956 — DEATH OF H.L. MENCKEN, US JOURNALIST
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." [Note: Mencken would have, no doubt, included the recent “fiscal cliff” negotiations as one such “hobgoblin.”)
JANUARY 30
1835 — ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT AGAINST US PRESIDENT ANDREW JACKSON
In 1832, Jackson called on Congress not to renew the charter of the Second National Bank of the United States. He vetoed a bill to renew the bank’s charter, saying the bank was guilty of fraud, corruption and controlling the money supply (expanding and contracting the supply of money to economically and politically benefit the bank). He stated, “beyond question...this great and powerful institution had been actively engaged in attempting to influence the elections of the public officers by means of its money.” Jackson ordered the US government to move its money out of the Second Bank. In response, the bank called in all its loans and ceased issuing new loans. An economic panic followed. In 1835, Richard Lawrence fired two guns at Jackson but both misfired. He claimed his assassination attempt was because, in part, "money would be more plenty.”
1882 — BIRTH OF PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
"The real truth is…that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” Roosevelt missed a chance to fundamentally improve our economy, if not democracy, during the Great Depression when he chose to go into debt to pay for the his many “New Deal” programs. A group of prominent economists from across the nation had urged him in what was known as “The Chicago Plan” to pay for his programs by issuing debt-free money, based on the previously issued Greenbacks during the Lincoln Administration. Instead, FDR added to the government debt which enriched bankers and all others who purchased U.S. Treasuries.
1934 – PASSAGE OF GOLD RESERVE ACT
The US government ended minting and circulation gold coins. The bill required all holders of gold coins and certificates to surrender them to the US Treasury – at the price of $20.67 per ounce. Collectors and a few others were exempted. Federal Reserve Notes were no longer convertible (or backed) by gold coins.
1948 – ASSASSINATION OF MOHANDAS GANDHI
'Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed." One of his “7 Deadly Sins” was “wealth without work.” He also said "[a] small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.”
2009 – US TREASURY DEPARTMENT PURCHASES STOCK FROM US BANKS
The U.S. Treasury Department purchases a total of $1.15 billion in preferred stock from 42 U.S. banks under the Capital Purchase Program.
JANUARY 31
1934 - PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT INCREASES VALUE OF GOLD
A day after the Gold Reserve Act is passed, President Roosevelt issued an executive proclamation which resulted in the value of gold increasing to $35 per ounce. This would yield a windfall profit for the US government and those who retained possession of gold.
February
FEBRUARY 2
2010- DEATH OF EUSTACE MULLINS, AUTHOR, SECRETS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE
"The Nation magazine was the only public organ, so far as I can find out, which printed out that the issue of the money of the U.S. was being turned over to a body of men who were neither elected nor answerable to elections."
FEBRUARY 3
1913 – RATIFICATION OF THE 16TH AMENDMENT, ESTABLISHMENT OF THE US FEDERAL INCOME TAX
The income tax provides a guaranteed and consistent source of income for the payment of any federal government function, including payment of interest on national debt. It was ratified earlier in the same year as passage of the Federal Reserve Act which turned over the nation’s money power to a private central bank. Many economists believe the dollar holds its value better than the Euro in times of economic crisis since US interest payments from debt can be covered by US income taxes. There is no equivalent European income tax to cover Euro debts. This provides investors greater confidence in the dollar over the Euro.
1924 – DEATH OF WOODROW WILSON, 28TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND SIGNER OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE ACT
"Some of the biggest men in the United States in the field of commerce and manufacture are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so passive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men, who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom. (1911)
[Note: Despite such misgivings, Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act two years later]
FEBRUARY 4
2005 -- STATEMENT OF HANS SCHICHT, AUTHOR
“The fact that the Banker is allowed to extend credit several times his own capital base and that the Banking Cartels, the Central Banks, are licensed to issue fresh paper money in exchange for treasury paper, have provided them with free lunch for eternity. Thanks to the stupidity and corruption of the legislators. And thanks to the great pundits and journalists, that never understood the crux of fiat money and thus never managed to explain the blatant, ongoing legalized robbery of the people by means of the financial fiat system!
“For over 150 years this robbery has been going on, recently increasing hyperbolically and building to an ultimate crisis. Year after year the Banker's slice of the world's asset baskets has been growing and growing. The Banker has become almighty. Through a network of anonymous financial spider webbing only a handful of global King Bankers own and control it all. Big Brother has come to us in the striped suit of the Banker.” (from "The Death of Banking and Macro Politics" February 4, 2005)
FEBRUARY 6
1756 – BIRTH OF AARON BURR, POLITICIAN, BUSINESSPERSON, VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Burr and others convinced New York City council to charter the Manhattan Corporation in 1799. Its purpose was to raise dams and divert water throughout the city in response to the outbreak of yellow fever. A provision of the charter allowing the company to divert its excess capital in any activity “not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.” This vague clause enabled the company to engage in banking activities. Alexander Hamilton (who later Burr killed in a famous duel) said, "He (Burr) has latterly, by a trick, established a bank -- a perfect monster in its principles, but a very convenient instrument of profit and influence." The Manhattan Corporation was the predecessor of what is now the J.P. Morgan Chase bank – one of the largest financial institutions in the U.S.
FEBRUARY 7
1870 – HEPBURN V GRISWOLD US SUPREME COURT DECISION
The Court declared that certain parts of the passed Congressional Legal Tender acts in the 1860’s were unconstitutional. The Legal Tender acts authorized the government to issue paper money, “Greenbacks”, and recognized it as legal to meet financial obligations. The Court concluded, however, that a party to a contract could not use paper money as payment for a debt if the contract stipulated gold or silver as payment. The Court explained how the US Congress possessed the power to coin money, but that that power was different than the power to make paper money legal.
FEBRUARY 10
1808 – STATE OF OHIO GRANTS CHARTER TO BANK OF MARIETTA
This was the first bank chartered by the State of Ohio – and one of the earliest of any kind in the state. Once the charter or license was granted, the bank’s directors and stockholders (as with all banks) were provided the incredible privilege not available to farmers, artisans, or workers of any kind – the license to print money. Their paper bills were deemed legitimate by the state government by agreeing to accept them in payment of certain fees, etc.
“There seemed to be one set of laws for bankers, and another set for everyone else. For subsistence farmers working dawn till dusk the sums involved seemed obscene, and the principles of banking defied common sense. Armed with a charter, a banker could print money on demand to manufacture, out of thin air, a substance other people would pay him to possess. Yet he didn’t own it to begin with: it wasn’t anything but a promise, written on paper, to pay gold on demand—and he didn’t have the gold.” (From Greenback by Jason Goodwin)
FEBRUARY 11
1847 – BIRTH OF THOMAS EDISON, US INVENTOR
“If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good... If the Government issues bonds, the brokers will sell them. The bonds will be negotiable; they will be considered as gilt edged paper. Why? Because the government is behind them, but who is behind the Government? The people. Therefore it is the people who constitute the basis of Government credit. Why then cannot the people have the benefit of their own gilt-edged credit by receiving non-interest bearing currency… instead of the bankers receiving the benefit of the people’s credit in interest-bearing bonds?”
2004 – RON PAUL, US CONGRESSMAN, SPEAKING TO THE HOUSE FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE
He referred to the Federal Reserve by stating, "maybe there's too much power in the hands of those who control monetary policy? The power to create the financial bubbles. The power to maybe bring the bubble about. The power to change the value of the stock market within minutes. That to me is just an ominous power and challenges the whole concept of freedom and liberty and sound money."
FEBRUARY 12
1791 – BIRTH OF PETER COOPER, US INDUSTRIALIST, PHILANTHROPIST (FOUNDED COOPER UNION) AND GREENBACK CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT
"The substitution of greenbacks for National bank notes would have the bounty now paid to banks, which, being invested as a sinking fund, would in less than thirty years pay off the whole debt of the country.”
1809 – BIRTH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
“The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy.”
Under Lincoln’s administration, the US Government issued 450 million “Greenbacks” – interest and inflation free money. They weren’t government bill, bonds or any other debt-bearing note. They were actual US money.
“The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity. The financing of all public enterprise, and the conduct of the treasury will become matters of practical administration. Money will cease to be master and will then become servant of humanity.”
1873 – COINAGE ACT PASSED BY CONGRESS (THE “CRIME OF ‘73”)
The Coinage Act removed silver as a form of currency (“demonetized) – leaving gold as the major form of US currency. The public didn’t realize at first what happened. With silver no longer a form of money, the overall amount of currency dramatically declined, causing the prices farmers received for their produce to drop (deflation) but the cost of their debts rise. Thousand of famers lost their land. Those who held silver also suffered. This was one of the sparks of the rise of the farmer-led US Populist movement.
FEBRUARY 19
1869 CONGRESS PASSES BILL PROHIBITING USING UNITED STATES NOTES AS SECURITY OR COLLATERAL IN ANY LOAN MADE THROUGH A NATIONAL BANKING ASSOCIATION
“That no national banking association shall hereafter offer or receive United States notes or national bank notes as security or as collateral security for any loan of money…and any national banking association offending against the provisions of this act shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof in any United States court having jurisdiction shall be punished by a fine…” Approved February 19 1869
This was one of many attacks by bankers on the Greenbacks -- public money issued by the Lincoln Administration. Public control of the money system meant banks couldn’t control it. Banking corporations wanted, as they had done prior to and after Greenbacks to print money out of thin air and then charge interest on top of it (otherwise known as “debt money”). Banks pressured Congress in a variety of ways to delegitimize Greenbacks. This law was one such way.
NO OTHER ENTRIES THIS PERIOD…HOWEVER IN COMMEMORATION OF THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE “ARAB SPRING”
FROM THE KORAN (2: 275):
"Those who devour usury will not stand except as stands one whom the evil one by his touch hath driven to madness. That is because they say: 'Trade is like usury…but God hath permitted trade and forbidden usury."
Some features of Islamic banking principles (from the Associated Press, 1/2/97):
“Interest on deposits: Islamic banks pay no interest on deposits. Unlike fixed return promised by most Western banks, Islamic banks operate on principle of shared risk. Depositors can choose an account that guarantees their money but pays no dividend, or one that acts like an investment fund. Depositors in investment accounts share in the bank's profits, but risk losing money if its investments perform poorly.
Interest on loans: Islamic banks charge no interest on loans. Instead of lending money to commercial borrowers at fixed rate of return, Islamic bankers become partners, sharing in venture's profits and losses. Some Islamic banks also make mortgage loans, charging flat fees payable in monthly installments, with costs similar to traditional mortgages. But loans have no compound interest or late-payment charges, and borrowers are spared uncertainty of variable interest rates common in Western nations.”
FEBRUARY 20
1862 – US SENATOR THADDEUS STEVENS SPEAKS ON SENATE FLOOR AGAINST “EXCEPTION CLAUSE” OF GREENBACK ACT
“I have a melancholy foreboding that we are about to consummate a cunningly devised scheme, which will carry great injury to all classes of people throughout the Union.”
FEBRUARY 22
1878 – FOUNDING OF GREENBACK-LABOR PARTY
The National (Greenback-Labor) Party was formed at a convention in Toledo, Ohio. Their platform declared that reform of the monetary system was necessary in order to "secure to the producers of wealth the results of their labor and skill, and muster out of service the vast army of idlers who, under the existing system, grow rich upon the earnings of others, that every man and woman may, by their own efforts, secure a competence, so that overgrown fortunes and extreme poverty will seldom be found within the limits of our Republic.”
FEBRUARY 25
1791 – CREATION OF THE FIRST BANK OF THE UNITED STATES
A 20-year charter was issued by the federal government (very unusual at the time since most corporate charters, or licenses, were issued by states) to create the first national private bank. This was the first private institution empowered to create paper money -- with all the power and profit that goes along with it. The bank’s paper money was accepted for taxes. Eighty percent of its shares were privately owned, among these 75% were foreign owned (mostly by the English and Dutch). The bank was modeled on the Bank of England. It’s main proponent, Alexander Hamilton, argued in support: "Suppose that the necessity existed...for obtaining a loan; that a number of individuals came forward and said, we are willing to accommodate the government with this money (which we have or can raise) but in order to do this it is indispensable that we should be incorporated as a bank...and we are obliged on that account to make it a consideration or condition of the loan." In other words, Hamilton was saying the private/corporate bank will be more than happy to give the government loans if the government grants the private/corporate bank the power to create money! Jefferson, Madison and others opposed it. Jefferson said, "This institution (the Bank of England) is one of the most deadly hostility against the principles of our Constitution…suppose an emergency should occur…an institution like this…in a critical moment might overthrow the government." The bank had an enormous impact on the economy early on. Within 2 months of its creation, it flooded the market with loans and banknotes and then suddenly called in many of its loans. The result was the first US securities market crash -- what became known as the “Panic of 1792” – the first of many panics, recessions and depressions due to the private/corporate control of our money system.
1862 – LEGAL TENDER ACT PASSED
A bill authorizing the issuance of $150 million non interest-bearing United States notes (commonly referred to as Greenbacks). Congress would later grant $300 million more in US notes. This was interest free US money. The adminstration of Republican President Abraham Lincoln wanted to avoid the nation going into debt borrowing money from private/corporate bankers to pay for the Civil War. Greenbacks were not bonds or notes or any other promises to pay “money” at some future time. They were money. Since they were not borrowed, they didn’t add to the national debt. What later made them inflationary was they were used to pay for war – which didn’t produce or add anything productive to the economy to offset the added money supply. The bill contained an “Exception Clause”, which stated that Greenbacks could not be used to pay the interest on the national debt, nor to pay taxes, excises or import duties.
1863 – NATIONAL BANKING ACT PASSED
It provided for the national chartering of banks by the federal government. This replaced state charters – many of which contained much more rigid and democratic provisions. The Act in numerous ways standardized banking across the country. The act established National Banking Associations, the office of the Comptroller of the Currency and a system of national chartered banks with control over all of them coming from Washington. The new banks were given virtaully tax free status. In doing so, it entrenched what some have called “structural fraud” of the banking system – creating money out of thin air and charting interest on it.
FEBRUARY 27
1844 – DEATH OF NICHOLAS BIDDLE, PRESIDENT OF SECOND NATIONAL BANK
Biddle threatened to cause a depression if President Andrew Jackson did not re-charter the Bank. The privately owned Second Bank was chartered in 1816. President Jackson did not sign the bill to renew the charter. "This worthy President thinks that ... he is to have his way with the Bank. He is mistaken...[opposition] can only be broken by the actual conviction of exiting distress in the community... Our only safety is in pursuing a steady course of firm restriction [of the money supply] - and I have no doubt that such a course will ultimately lead to restoration of the currency and the re-charter of the Bank." The result of the contraction of the money supply was a financial panic followed by a deep depression. (Edward Kaplan, The Bank of the United States and the American Economy)
1867 – BIRTH OF IRVING FISHER, MATHEMATICAL ECONOMIST
“If two parties instead of being a bank and an individual, were an individual and an individual, they could not inflate the circulating medium by loan transaction; for the simple reason that the lender could not lend what he didn't have as banks can do ... Only commercial banks and trust companies can lend money that they manufacture by lending it.” 100% Money (1935)
FEBRUARY 28
1856 – BIRTH OF WOODROW WILSON, 28TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.” (1911)
March
MARCH 2
1876 -- US SILVER COMMISSION (TO STUDY THE CRIME OF 73) REPORT RELEASED ON WHAT CAUSED THE 1873 DEPRESSION
The Commission concluded that the depression was caused by a reduction of the money supply. They compared the 1873 Depression to the deflation of the Roman era. “The disaster of the Dark Ages was caused by decreasing money and falling prices… Without money, civilization could not have had a beginning, and with a diminishing supply, it must languish and unless relieved, finally perish. Falling prices and misery and destitution are inseparable companions. It is universally conceded that falling prices result from the contraction of the money volume.” The Report suggested that the Dark Ages ended when paper money was issued, “It is suggestive coincidence that the first glimmer of light only came with the invention of bills of exchange and paper substitutes…”
MARCH 3
1863 - LEGAL TENDER ACT PASSED
Congress authorizes the Government to print no more than $400,000 million Greenbacks to pay for the Civil War. This was interest-free and debt-free money. The Lincoln Administration did not want to borrow money from corporate banks to pay for the war.
1865 – NATIONAL CURRENCY ACT AMENDED BY CONGRESS
The act amended the National Currency Act of 1864. State banks were no longer permitted to issue bank notes (currency).
1884 – JULLIARD V. GREENMAN ( 110 U.S. 421 ) SUPREME COURT DECISION
US Supreme Court ruling upholding the legality of US Government issued money (Greenbacks) created following the Legal Tender Acts of 1862 and 1863. The Court ruled that the government possessed the authority under the Constitution to issue a national currency and that that currency could be used to pay debts.
2003 - WARREN BUFFET, SECOND RICHEST PERSON ON EARTH, IN HIS ANNUAL LETTER TO BERKSHIRE HATHWAY SHAREHOLDERS
“Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction."
MARCH 4
1789 – US GOVERNMENT UNDER NEW CONSTITUTION BEGINS OPERATION
The Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation as the overarching legal document of the nation. The new Constitution provides the federal legislature the sole power “[t]o coin money [and] regulate the value thereof.” (Article 1, Sec 8). The Government subsequently abdicated its responsibility when it gave the Federal Reserve and private banks the power to create money literally out of thin air…as debt.
1837 – FAREWELL ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ANDREW JACKSON
Jackson was most responsible for not renewing the charter of the misnamed Second Bank of the United States, a private institution. In his farewell address when leaving office (Presidents used to be sworn in during the beginning of March for decades, now it’s mid January), he stated, “The immense capital and peculiar privileges bestowed upon it [(Second National Bank of the United States] enabled it to exercise despotic sway over the other banks in every part of the country. From its superior strength it could seriously injure, if not destroy, the business of any one of them which might incur its resentment; and it openly claimed for itself the power of regulating the currency throughout the United States. In other words, it asserted (and it undoubtedly possessed) the power to make money plenty or scarce at its pleasure, at any time and in any quarter of the Union, by controlling the issues of other banks and permitting an expansion or compelling a federal contraction of the circulating medium, according to its own will.”
1861 – INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 16TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES – A REPUBLICAN
"The Government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of the consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of the government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity."
This is something to keep in mind during this period when Republican parties at the local level hold their “Lincoln Day” annual fundraising dinners.
MARCH 5
1933 -- FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT ISSUES EXECUTIVE PROCLAMATION 2039 DECLARING A BANK “HOLIDAY”
The “holiday” meant that all banks would be closed from March 6-9 to prevent further runs by depositors. Bank failures were a result of earlier speculative investments and banks loaning out more money than they actually possessed (called “fractional reserve banking”). When too many people came to a bank at the same time wanting their deposits, the banks collapsed since they lacked sufficient assets. The bank “holiday” was meant to restore confidence in the banking system.
MARCH 6
1926 – BIRTH OF ALAN GREENSPAN, CHAIRMAN OF THE US FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM
"I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said." In a speech to the Economic Club of New York, 1988
“Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?”
Mr. Greenspan conceded: “Yes, I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I’ve been very distressed by that fact.” “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. NYT, 10/23/2008
1933 – CONGRESS PASSES EMERGENCY BANKING ACT
Among its provisions, the Act gave the President the ability to declare a national emergency and have absolute control over the national finances and foreign exchange of the United States. It authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to order any individual or organization in the United States to deliver any gold that they possess or have custody of to the Treasury in return for paper currency. It also allowed for closing insolvent banks.
MARCH 7
322 BC – DEATH OF ARISTOTLE
“Money exists not by nature but by law”(Ethics, 1133)
Aristotle understood that no natural substance qualifies as money. Rather, it’s governments that determine the definition of money.
1976 – DEATH OF WRIGHT PATMAN, DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN FROM TEXAS, CHAIRMAN OF US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON BANKING & CURRENCY (1965-75)
“When our Federal Government, that has the exclusive power to create money, creates that money and then goes into the open market and borrows it and pays interest for the use of its own money, it occurs to me that that is going too far. I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money... I am saying to you in all sincerity and with all the earnestness that I possess, it is absolutely wrong for the Government to issue interest-bearing obligations. It is not only wrong; it is extravagant. It is not only extravagant, it is wasteful. It is absolutely unnecessary.
“Now, I believe the system should be changed. The Constitution of the United States does not give the banks the power to create money. The Constitution says that Congress shall have the power to create money, but now, under our system, we will sell bonds to commercial banks and obtain credit from those banks.
“I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with this Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue. I make that statement after years of study.
“We have what is known as the Federal Reserve Bank System. That system is not owned by the Government. Many people think that it is, because it says `Federal Reserve'. It belongs to the private banks, private corporations. So we have farmed out to the Federal Reserve Banking System that is owned exclusively, wholly, 100 percent, by the private banks — we have farmed out to them the privilege of issuing the Government's money. If we were to take this privilege back from them, we could save the amount of money that I have indicated in enormous interest charges.” [From Congressional Record, 1941]
MARCH 9
2005 – MSNBC REPORT ON US INFRASTRUCTURE
MSNBC reported that the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation’s infrastructure an overall grade of D, including its roads, bridges, drinking water systems and other public works. “We need to establish a comprehensive, long-term infrastructure plan. We need to, but we can't, because government at every level is broke." MSNBC report
The Kucinich plan to democratize the US money system, (H.R. 6550 in the last Congress) calls for creating US debt- and interest-free dollars to employ people to address this infrastructure crisis.
MARCH 11
1893 – PUBLICATION OF “PANIC CIRCULAR” BY THE AMERICAN BANKERS ASSOCIATION [Note: Many individuals, including several US public officials, claimed they received the document. The American Bankers Association denied its authenticity].
The document calls on member banks to incite a financial panic to prevent greater public controls of banks, to counter increased public sentiment toward government-issued money and as a means to oppose silver (as opposed to gold) being used as a backing for currency.
The alleged document stated,
“You will at once retire one-third of your circulation (your paper money) and call in one-half of your loans. Be careful to make a monetary [emergency] among your patrons, especially among influential businessmen…
“The future life of national banks as fixed and safe investments depends upon immediate action, as there is an increasing sentiment in favor of Government legal-tender notes and silver coinage
MARCH 14
1782 - BIRTH OF THOMAS BENTON, US SENATOR, MISSOURI
“I object to the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States because I look upon the bank as an institution too great and powerful to be tolerated in a government of free and equal laws. Its power is that of the purse, a power more potent than that of the sword, and this power it possesses to a degree and extent that will enable this bank to draw to itself too much of the political power of this Union, and too much of the individual property of the citizens of these States. The money power of the bank is both direct and indirect." http://yamaguchy.com/library/benton/benton_187.html
1900 – US GOLD STANDARD ACT APPROVED
It established gold as the only metal standard for redeeming paper money. Populists had campaigned for several years before, culminating in the 1896 Presidential election, to include silver as a standard for redeeming paper money. Banks controlled most of the gold and thus the basis for issuing paper money. Populists wanted to expand the money supply to meet the needs of an expanding economy and country. Banks wanted to maintain control of the money supply. President William McKinley (from Canton, Ohio), strongly backed by the nation’s major corporations, signed the Act. Whether gold and/or silver, banking money with metal moved the nation further away from the Greenbacks, the debt- and interest-free currency issued as credit, of the Lincoln administration.
MARCH 15
1767 – BIRTH OF ANDREW JACKSON, SEVENTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
“I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the Bank and annul its charter. I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out and, by the Eternal, I will rout you out.” 1834
Jackson successfully opposed re-chartering the private “Second Bank of the United States.” He vetoed a bill in 1832 renewing the bank’s charter (license).
MARCH 16
1751 – BIRTH OF JAMES MADISON, FOURTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance."
1938 – HOUSE RESOLUTION (HR) 7230 INTRODUCED
John William Wright Patman, Democratic Congressman 1938-1978 and Chairman, Committee on Banking & Currency, introduces a bill to nationalize the Federal Reserve System.
"The Federal Reserve is a total moneymaking machine. It can issue money or checks, and it never has a problem of making its checks good, because it can obtain the $5 or $10 bills necessary to cover its check simply by asking the Treasury Dept's Bureau of Engraving to print them.” 1964
MARCH 18
1993 – DEATH OF KENNETH BOULDING, ECONOMIST, PROFESSOR, PEACE ACTIVIST, QUAKER
“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. [Editor: the same goes for deb
MARCH 19
1860 – BIRTH OF WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, SENATOR, SECRETARY OF STATE, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (DEMOCRAT/POPULIST)
Bryan had originally supported the 1913 Federal Reserve Act as Secretary of State under the Wilson administration. His position was crucial in gaining the support of many Congressional Democrats and Progressives. He later regretted his decision. "In my long career, the only thing I genuinely regret is my part in getting the banking and currency legislation enacted into law.”
MARCH 21
1821 – GREEK INDEPENDENCE DAY
Solon was an Athenian statesman and lawmaker (presumably, the city in Cuyahoga County is named after him). He became the first effective advocate for democracy in roughly 594 BC when he decentralized power politically in the judiciary and, most importantly, in the Athenian money system. Many in Greece today are advocating exiting the Eurozone, claiming that returning to the Drachma (their original currency) and democratizing its issuance and circulation by the government as opposed to private Greek banks is the path to economic prosperity and political sovereignty. In the name of “austerity”, Greeks are being asked by international bankers, among other things, to privatize national assets and treasures, including Greek islands. Massive popular resistance has followed. Seeing what’s happening in Greece, many in Europe are now calling for the creation of “sovereign money” systems at the nation state level, compared to the current top-down system where monetary matters are determined by the European Central Bank, which is controlled by the largest and wealthiest banks on the continent.
1975 – DEATH OF RALPH HAWTREY, BRITISH ECONOMIST, FRIEND OF JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES
“Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing.”
MARCH 22
1832 – DEATH OF JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, GERMAN WRITER
“None are more enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
MARCH 25
1894 – COXEY’S ARMY BEGINS MARCH
Jacob Coxey, a businessman from Massillon, Ohio organized a 500-strong “Coxey’s Army” march from Massillon (beginning on March 25, 1894) to Washington, D.C. (ending April 30) to promote federal intervention for job creation. The primary demand of this "petition in boots" was unique -- the direct printing and issuance of $500 million by the Federal Treasury to employ 4 million people. Coxey's Army proposed two bills. The first, a "Good Roads Bill”, would help farmers through $500 million issued by the federal government in legal tender notes, or greenbacks, to construct rural roads. The second, a noninterest-bearing bonds bill, would empower state and local governments to issue noninterest-bearing bonds to be used to borrow legal tender notes from the federal treasury. This money would be used to build urban libraries, schools, utility plants and marketplaces. Millions of jobs would have been created -- debt-free.
MARCH 26
1892 – BIRTH OF PAUL DOUGLAS, ECONOMIST, US SENATOR, QUAKER
Douglas was a prominent University of Chicago economist who helped develop “A Program for Monetary Reform” in 1939 -- sent to President Roosevelt as a means to end the Great Depression. More than 230 economists from 150 universities approved it without reservations while an additional 40 supported it with some reservations.
In assessing the problem of the day, the PMR states, “If the purpose of money and credit were to discourage the exchange of goods and services, to destroy periodically the wealth produced, to frustrate and trip those who work and save, our present monetary system would seem a most effective instrument to that end.” It also stated monetary systems based on a gold standard “has had…disastrous results all over the world.”
The PMR called for government creation and maintenance in the quantity of money. “Our own monetary policy should…be directed toward avoiding inflation as well as deflation, and in attaining and maintaining as nearly as possible, full production and employment.” The plan also called for eliminating fractional reserve lending – the process of banks loaning ourt many more times the amount of money in their possession. Back in the 1930’s the reserved requirement was 5:1. Today it’s 9:1. Some of the major banks involved in the economic collapse of 2007 had ignored this law and were loaning out 50 times their reserves. The PMR called for a 100% reserve requirement – banks could only lend the amount of money they possessed.
The document goes on, “In early times the creation of money was the sole privilege of the kings or other sovereigns – namely the sovereign people, acting through their Government. This principle is firmly anchored in our Constitution and it is a perversion to transfer the privilege to private parties to use in their own real or presumed interest. The founders of the Republic did not expect the banks to create the money they lend.
Their plan to reduce the national debt was simply to have the government purchase government bonds with new US debt-free money.
MARCH 30
1948 – BIRTH OF MERVYN KING, CURRENT GOVERNOR OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND
“of all the many ways of organising banking, the worst is the one we have today.” Possible remedies included not just breaking up banks, but also “eliminating fractional reserve banking”—the centuries-old practice of banks taking in deposits and lending most of them out in riskier and longer-term loans.
http://www.economist.com/node/17363435
MARCH 31
1913 – DEATH OF J. PIERPONT MORGAN, BANKER
J.P Morgan founded one of the world's most powerful banks and had extraordinary political influence in the U.S. The National Citizens League, funded by millions of dollars from Morgan and a few other major bankers, financed respected university professors to endorse the concept of creating a private/corporate central bank, which became the Federal Reserve Bank, created by the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. Morgan’s men were among the small number of architects of the private/corporate Federal Reserve.
1980 – US CONGRESS PASSES MONETARY CONTROL ACT
Popularly known as the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors was provided with increased control over monetary policy and non-member financial institutions – requiring all financial institutions to follow Federal Reserve (a mostly private institution) regulations.
April
APRIL 3
1729 – PUBLICATION OF “A MODEST ENQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND NECCESITY OF A PAPER CURRENCY” BY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
The “father of paper money” and a printer, Franklin’s publication circulated throughout the colonies. He was a strong advocate of colonies printing their own money. The publication helped him earn contracts to print paper money for Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
"A legitimate government can both spend and lend money, while banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes. Thus when bankers place money in circulation there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be paid."
APRIL 4
1834 – US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES VOTES AGAINST RECHARTERING THE SECOND BANK OF THE UNITED STATES
The US House voted 134-82 against rechartering (re-licensing) the nation’s central bank – a private bank not ultimately accountable to the public but to its shareholders. Charters were originally considered democratic instruments of public control to keep corporations accountable – as opposed to today where charters are issued automatically as long as minimal conditions are met and a fee is paid. The bank had established loan policies that were detrimental to the nation’s economy but very profitable for its owners. The bank’s President, Nicholas Biddle, had threatened to harm the US economy by restricting the nation’s money supply if the charter were not renewed. The bank shrank the money supply. A financial panic and deep depression followed. President Andrew Jackson was convinced all the more that the private bank should not be in charge of issuing and circulating the nation’s money supply.
1883 – DEATH OF PETER COOPER, US INDUSTRIALIST, PHILANTHROPIST (FOUNDED COOPER UNION) AND GREENBACK CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT
“The substitution of greenbacks for National bank notes will make a uniform currency of money. A greenback legal tender is to the full as much real money as a gold legal tender, the only difference being that as many nations make gold a legal tender, there is more demand for it than for paper legal tenders which have the sovereign stamp of only one Government. The substitution of greenbacks for National bank notes would have the bounty now paid to banks which being invested as a sinking fund would in less than thirty years pay off the whole debt of the country.”
APRIL 5
1764 – BRITISH PARLIAMENT PASSES CURRENCY ACT PROHIBITING COLONIES FROM PRINTING THEIR OWN MONEY
As early as 1723, the colony of Pennsylvania showed that it was possible for money to be issued by the government in the place of taxes without causing inflation. Money was printed and circulated there and elsewhere. No taxes needed to be collected in PA from 1723 to the 1750’s as a result. The Bank of England pressured the British Parliament to pass the Currency Act. Benjamin Franklin believed that passage of the Act caused poverty and triggered the Revolutionary War.
1933 – PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER CONFISCATING GOLD
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102, ordering all citizens to turn in their private gold. The Order prohibited the “hoarding” of almost all privately held gold coins, bullion and certificates “to provide relief in the existing national emergency in banking” (i.e. the Great Depression) that was caused by the monetary policies of the mostly privately operated Federal Reserve system.
2008 - DEATH OF CHARLTON HESTON (WHO PLAYED MOSES IN THE TEN COMMANDMENTS}
[I know this is a stretch, but nevertheless, a means to share the following…]
From the Old Testament in the Bible, Deuteronomy 23:19
“Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest.”
APRIL 10
1816 – CHARTER APPROVED FOR INCORPORATING THE SECOND NATIONAL BANK OF THE UNITED STATES
As with the earlier Bank of the United States, the Second National Bank of the United States was private with many of the largest investors foreigners and those representing great wealth. Congress chartered (licensed) the bank for 20 years. It’s worth remembering that corporate charters are democratic tools once used by sovereign people (that would be We the People) to control and define corporate actions. As a result of bank practices geared to serving the interests of banks/bankers, (including limiting the issuance of money into the economy – which triggered economic stagnation), President Jackson pledged that the bank would not be issued a new charter after its 20-year charter ended. Without a charter – which provides those forming corporations certain legal protections (then and now) – corporations cannot exist.
1858 – DEATH OF THOMAS BENTON, US SENATOR FROM MISSOURI
“I object to the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States, because I look upon the bank as an institution too great and powerful to be tolerated in a government of free and equal laws. Its power is that of the purse, a power more potent than that of the sword; and this power it possesses to a degree and extent that will enable this bank to draw to itself too much of the political power of this Union and too much of the individual property of the citizens of these States. The money power of the bank is both direct and indirect." http://yamaguchy.com/library/benton/benton_187.html
APRIL 11
1932 – PECORA COMMISSION HEARINGS BEGIN – INVESTIGATE CAUSE OF US DEPRESSION
The investigation was launched by a majority-Republican Senate, under the Banking Committee's chairman, Senator Peter Norbeck. Hearings began on April 11, 1932, but were criticized by Democratic Party members and their supporters as being little more than an attempt by the Republicans to appease the growing demands of an angry American public suffering through the Great Depression. Two chief counsels were fired for ineffectiveness, and a third resigned after the committee refused to give him broad subpoena power. In January 1933, Ferdinand Pecora, an assistant district attorney for New York County was hired to write the final report. Discovering that the investigation was incomplete, Pecora requested permission to hold an additional month of hearings. His exposé of the National City Bank (now Citibank) made banner headlines and caused the bank's president to resign. Democrats had won the majority in the Senate, and the new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, urged the new Democratic chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Duncan U. Fletcher, to let Pecora continue the probe. So actively did Pecora pursue the investigation that his name became publicly identified with it, rather than the committee's chairman. Pecora not only documented a litany of abuses, but also paved the way for remedial legislation. The Securities Act of 1933, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 — all addressed abuses exposed by Pecora. It was only poetic justice when Roosevelt tapped him as a commissioner of the newborn Securities and Exchange Commission. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecora_Commission
APRIL 12
1866 – CONGRESS PASSES THE CONTRACTION ACT
The Act authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to begin retiring Greenbacks (public debt-free money first issued by the Lincoln Administration) in circulation and to contract the money supply. By 1876, two-thirds of the nation's money had been called in by the bankers. A contraction of the money supply when demand is high causes depressions, which is what happened from 1873-79.
1910 – DEATH OF WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER, PROFESSOR, YALE UNIVERSITY, MONETARY THEORIST
"For as the currency question is of first importance and we cannot solve it or escape it by ignoring it. We have got to face it and the best way to begin is not by wrangling about speculative opinions as to untried schemes but to go back to history and try to get hold of some firmly established principles."
1945 – DEATH OF PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
"The real truth is…that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson."
APRIL 13
1743 – BIRTH OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, THIRD PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
"This institution (the Bank of England) is one of the most deadly hostility against the principles of our Constitution…suppose an emergency should occur…an institution like this…in a critical moment might overthrow the government."
“And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
“Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.”
APRIL 15
1865 – ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN
“The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy.”
It was President Lincoln who advocated for and oversaw the creation and circulation of our nation’s last debt-free money, the Greenbacks. This was money not borrowed from banks, but created (as authorized in the US Constitution, Article 1, Sec 8) by the government to meet the nation’s needs.
APRIL 16
1854 – BIRTH OF JACOB COXEY, OHIO BUSINESSMAN
Jacob Coxey, a businessman from Massillon, Ohio organized a 500-strong “Coxey’s Army” march beginning on March 25, 1894 from Massillon to Washington, D.C. (ending April 30) to promote federal intervention for job creation. The primary demand of this "petition in boots" was unique -- the direct printing and issuance of $500 million by the Federal Treasury to employ 4 million people. Coxey's Army proposed two bills. The first, a "Good Roads Bill," would help farmers with $500 million issued by the federal government in legal tender notes, or greenbacks, to construct rural roads. The second, a noninterest-bearing bonds bill, would empower state and local governments to issue noninterest-bearing bonds to be used to borrow legal tender notes from the federal treasury. This money would be used to build urban libraries, schools, utility plants and marketplaces. Millions of jobs would have been created -- debt-free.
1915 – DEATH OF NELSON ALDRICH, LEADER OF REPUBLICAN PARTY IN THE US SENATE
Aldrich was a key proponent of the Aldrich-Vreeland Act, a bill creating a National Monetary Commission in 1908, which studied the problem of monetary instability following the financial Panic of 1907. The Commission played a pivotal role in calling for “reform” of the US monetary system. The Act also established the “Aldrich-Vreeland system” which through the Comptroller of the Currency authorized some banks to issue new money. This helped the US deal with the financial crisis associated with WWI. The expanded money power of the government, however, was meant to be short-lived. The final volume of the Commission’s report called for a privately owned central bank, the “National Reserve Association,” in which “[c]ontrol was to be exercised completely by private bankers.” Passage of this Act was a stepping-stone to passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.
APRIL 17
1790 – DEATH OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
"Experience, more prevalent than all the logic in the world, has fully convinced us all that paper money has been, and is now, of the greatest advantage to the country."
"The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the prime reason for the revolutionary war. "
"A legitimate government can both spend and lend money, while banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes. Thus, when bankers place money in circulation, there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be paid."
1837- BIRTH OF JP MORGAN, US FINANCIER AND BANKER
John Pierpont Morgan dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. His empire consisted of banks but also hundreds of other corporations via interlocking corporate directors and financial investments. The “House of Morgan” was also one of the key players in organizing politically and backing financially the campaign to pass the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, creating the largely private Federal Reserve system.
APRIL 20
1868 – BIRTH OF JOHN HYLAN, MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY, 1918-1925
“The real menace of our republic is this invisible government, which, like a giant octopus, sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen....At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.”
What may have been practically in Mayor Hylan’s time is actually today.
APRIL 21
1910 – DEATH OF MARK TWAIN, AUTHOR
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
APRIL 22
EARTH DAY – CREE INDIAN PROVERB
“Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish been caught, will we realize we cannot eat money.” Seems an appropriate quote on this day.
APRIL 23
384 BC – BIRTH OF ARISTOTLE
"The most hated sort of wealth getting is usury, which makes again out of money itself and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money...of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural."
"Money exists not by nature but by law." This is one of the most insightful comments on money of all time.
871 - REIGN OF KING ALFRED OF ENGLAND BEGINS
King Alfred (Alfred the Great) implemented a law that moneylenders who took usury would forfeit all their possessions to the King.
APRIL 27
2009 – COMMENTS BY DICK DURBIN, US SENATOR, ILLINOIS
“And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”
APRIL 29
1947 – DEATH OF IRVING FISHER, PROFESSOR AND ECONOMIST
"Thus our national circulating medium is now at the mercy of loan transactions of banks, which lend, not money, but promises to supply money they do not possess. "
May
MAY 1
1871 -- KNOX V LEE US SUPREME COURT DECISION
This decision was one of several popularly known “Legal Tender Cases” during this period (the others were Hepburn v. Griswold and Julliard v Greenman). The Supreme Court reversed their earlier decision in Hepburn v. Griswold (1870). The decision upheld the Legal Tender Act declaring that making paper money legal tender did not conflict with US Constitution (Article 1). The decision allowed debtors to repay debts in Greenbacks rather than gold or silver.
MAY 3
1939 – TESTIMONY OF GRAHAM TOWERS, GOVERNOR OF THE BANK OF CANADA (1934-54) BEFORE CANADIAN SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND COMMERCE
Question: "But there is no question about it, that banks create that medium of exchange?" [i.e., bank deposits]
Towers: "That is right. That is what they are for."
Question: "And they issue that medium of exchange when they purchase securities or make loans?"
Towers: "That is the banking business, just in the way that a steel plant makes steel." (p. 287)
Towers testified that just as steel corporations create steel, banking corporations create money. The difference is that steel corporations start with iron ore and apply labor and technology. Banks, by contrast, create money out of thin air…as debt.
MAY 5
1821 – DEATH OF NAPOLEAN BONAPARTE
“Money has no motherland, financiers are without patriotism or decency; their sole object is gain.”
MAY 7
1873 – DEATH OF SALMON P. CHASE, US TREASURY SECRETARY
“My agency, in procuring the passage, of the National Bank Act, was the greatest financial mistake of my life. It has built up a monopoly that affects every interest in the country. It should be repealed. But before this can be accomplished, the people will be arrayed on one side and the banks on the other in a contest such as we have never seen in this country."
Note: The National Bank Acts of 1863 was known originally as the National Currency Act and was updated the following year. The Act established chartered national banks that could issue bank notes which were backed by the United States Treasury. These notes existed side by side to public “Greenbacks” (directly issued by the government). Bankers supported the Bank Acts as a means to eventually supplant Greenbacks and once more gain full control of the US money system.
MAY 10
1729 – PENNSYLVANIA PASSES A PAPER CURRENCY ACT
Pennsylvania was one of the first colonies to issue their own paper money to facilitate exchange to offset the lack of British pounds in circulation. By 1755, all 13 colonies had issued some form of colonial currency.
On colonial issued currency, Benjamin Franklin said,
"This effect of paper currency is not understood in England. And indeed the whole is a mystery to the politicians how we have been able to continue a war for four years without money and how we could pay with paper that had no previously fixed fund appropriated specifically to redeem it. This currency...is a wonderful machine. It performs its office when we issue it and when we are obliged to issue a quantity excessive, it pays itself off by depreciation."
1775 – CONTINENTAL CONGRESS ISSUES “CONTINENTALS”
The Continental Congress voted to issue $200 million in paper money, “continental currency” or “continentals”, to finance the American Revolution. The money was essential since British pounds were in short supply. The currency lost much of their value during the war due to the flooding of British counterfeit “continentals” as a means to destroy the colonial economy. Inflation was also due to continentals being used to fund war purchases rather than socially and economically useful goods and services. Nevertheless, the colonial currency served its purpose in allowing the colonies to economically and militarily resist and defeat the most powerful nation on earth.
1837 – US FINANCIAL PANIC
Banks limited credit and starting calling on debtors to repay. This ignited the Financial Panic of 1837. Urban worker faced rising unemployement and food prices. A prolonged economic depression followed, including hundreds of bank failures. The economic depression that followed lasted nearly five years. This is the inevitable result of a debt-based money system – the lessons of which we never seem to learn.
1915 – BIRTH OF ROBERT HEMPHILL, CREDIT MANAGER, FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ATLANTA
If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.
MAY 15
1915 – BIRTH OF PAUL SAMUELSON, ECONOMIST (FIRST AMERICAN TO WIN THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR ECONOMICS)
“Few understand that all our money arises out of debt and IOU operations. The banking system as a whole can do what each small bank cannot do: it can expand its loans and investments many times the new reserves of cash created for it, even though each small bank is lending out only a fraction of its deposits.” Economics, An Introductory Analysis by Professor Paul A. Samuelson. (Best selling college economics textbook of all time, c1948.)
1931 – “QUADRAGESSIMO ANNO” LETTER ISSUED BY POPE PIUS XI
The Pope discusses the ethical implications of economic and social order in this letter, warning of the dangers of unrestrained capitalism.
"Economic dictatorship is being most forcibly excercised by the few who hold the money and completely control it, control credit and the lending of money. Hence they regulate the flow of the life-blood whereby the entire economic system lives, and have so firmly in their grasp the soul of economics that no one can breathe against their will."
MAY 16
1876 – SECOND GREENBACK NATIONAL CONVENTION OPENS IN INDIANAPOLIS
May 16–18, 1876 — Academy of Music, Indianapolis, Indiana. There were 239 delegates present from 17 states. Peter Cooper was nominated for President of the Greenback Party (calling for the creation of debt-free national money) with 352 votes to 119 for three other contenders.
1912 – PUJO COMMITTEE HEARINGS BEGIN
A special subcommittee of the House Banking and Currency Committee began hearings under its Chairman, Arsene P. Pujo. Its purpose was to investigate the powers of the nation’s "money trust.” Its final report, issued in 1913, concluded that the power over the nation’s money and credit was concentrated in a small group of Wall Street bankers. The report created a climate for reform. Unfortunately one of the reform advocated for was the misnamed Federal Reserve Act, which provided the appearance that finances would become a public function.
MAY 17
1787 – LAUNCH OF SHAYS’ REBELLION
A revolt of farmers in Western Massachusetts, spread to other states, fueled by the rise of personal and public taxes and debt and the collapse of any legitimate federal currency.
1901 – FINANCIAL PANIC
The first stock market crash in the US was caused by large investors speculating on railroad stocks. Thousands of small investors were ruined.
1930 – BANK OF INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS ESTABLISHED
This is the central bank of all central banks, established as an international financial institution to "foster international monetary and financial cooperation.” Its headquarters are in Basel, Switzerland. The BIS serves to strengthen the international private banking system, not national economies. The BIS advocates the establishment of a global currency, building on the International Monetary Fund “Special Drawing Rights” – a quasi currency which has a value based on a basket of 4 major currencies (the dollar, euro, pound and yen).
2002 – TALK BY WILLIAM HUMMEL, AUTHOR, MONETARY RESEARCHER
"Banks are not ordinary intermediaries, like non-banks, they also borrow, but they do not lend the deposits they acquire. They lend by crediting the borrowers account with a new deposit… The accounts of other depositors remain intact and their deposits fully available for withdrawal. Thus a bank loan increases the total of bank deposits, which means an increase in the money supply."
MAY 23
1933 – ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT PRESENTED IN THE US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AGAINST THE FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD OF GOVERNORS , THE OFFICERS AND DIRECTORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANKS, THE US SECRETARY OF TREASURY AND OTHERS FOR THEIR COLLUSION IN CAUSING THE GREAT DEPRESSION.
The Articles of Impeachment were introduced by US Congressman Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee. McFadden stated,
"The Great Depression was not accidental; it was a carefully contrived occurrence… bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here, so that they might emerge as rulers of us all."
"We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are U.S. government institutions. They are private credit monopolies; domestic swindlers, rich and predatory money lenders, which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers….The truth is, the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States by the arrogant credit monopoly, which operates the Federal Reserve Board."
MAY 24
1924 – DEATH OF CHARLES LINDBERGH, REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN (MN) AND FATHER OF FAMED AVIATOR
"This [Federal Reserve] Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the president signs this bill, the invisible government by the monetary power will be legalized. The people may not know it immediately but the day of reckoning is only a few years removed, the worst legislative crime of the ages perpetrated by this bank bill."
“The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board administers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money."
MAY 29
1998 – DEATH OF BARRY GOLDWATER, REPUBLICAN SENATOR FROM ARIZONA
“The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board administers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is Private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money."
MAY 30
1908 – ALDRICH-VREELAND ACT SIGNED BY PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT
The Act established the National Monetary Commission recommending the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, creating the Federal Reserve System, the current private central bank (actually 12 banks to give the appearance of decentralization of economic power and control) of the US. The Aldrich-Vreeland Act was passed in response to the economic Panic of 1907 of bank failures. JP Morgan and other bankers who had been the target of Roosevelt’s trust busting efforts through more aggressive enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act manufactured the Panic. Through manipulating the stock market, calling in loans and not granting new ones, Morgan severely contracted the nation’s money supply. Thousands of banks were overextended. An economic crash followed. The Panic of ’07 was the pretext used to end the nation’s system of decentralized private banking by creating a system of centralized private banking – the Federal Reserve System.
June
JUNE 3
1864 – PASSAGE OF NATIONAL BANK ACT
This Act superseded the National Bank Act of 1863. Both Acts were pushed by bankers and their supporters to undercut Greenbacks. A system of nationally chartered, private/corporate banks was established and expanded. These new national banks were provided with virtually tax-free status and subsidized through purchasing of government bonds with discounted Greenbacks. These banks were permitted to then create “US Bank Notes” (debt-based money) which entered the money supply – to be used in payment of taxes and duties only. This system enriched banks and worked to wean the US away from Greenbacks (debt free money). The Act limited the issuance of Greenbacks to $300 million
JUNE 4
1910 – BIRTH OF ROBERT B. ANDERSON, SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY UNDER PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
"When a bank makes a loan it simply adds to the borrowers’ deposit account in the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone else's deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone. It's new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower."
JUNE 6
1934 – CHICAGO PLAN INTRODUCED IN THE US CONGRESS
The “Chicago Plan” was a proposal developed by several prominent economists directed at President Roosevelt to end the Great Depression. The Plan was signed by 157 academic economists, another 40 approved it with reservations. Main features: 1. Only the government would create money. 2. The Plan separated the loan-making function, which can belong in private banks, from the money-creation function, which belongs in government. 3. The proposal recognized the distinction between money and credit. The Plan was introduced in Congress (S. 3744) by Senator Bronson Cutting (R, NM). In several respects, the Chicago Plan was the precursor to the National Emergency Employment Act (HR 6550) introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich in 2010, and reintroduced as HR 2990 in 2011.
JUNE 8
1042 – REIGN OF KING EDWARD OF ENGLAND BEGINS
Taking any interest on loaned money was considered a sin in early England. Under King Edward’s reign, those who charged interest (usurers) were declared outlaws and banished from the country.
1809 – DEATH OF THOMAS PAINE, COLONIAL REVOLUTIONARY
Commenting on the value of colonial-issued money, the “Continental”...
"Every stone in the Bridge, that has carried us over seems to have a claim upon our esteem. But this was a corner stone, and its usefulness cannot be forgotten."
1845 – DEATH OF ANDREW JACKSON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
"The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government ... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people, should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it."
"If Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations."
JUNE 10
1816 -- DELEGATES CONVENE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION IN INDIANA
Private banking corporations were banned altogether by the Indiana Convention in 1816 and the Illinois Constitution in 1818. Voters in Wisconsin, plus four other states, rewrote existing consititutions requiring popular votes on every bank charter recommended by their legislatures as a result of corrupt banking practices associated with issuing bank notes. Only private banks that didn’t issue money (bank notes) operated in these states.
1932 – QUOTE OF LOUIS MCFADDEN (R- PA), CHAIRMAN OF THE US HOUSE BANKING AND CURRENCY COMMITTEE
"We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are U.S. government institutions. They are private credit monopolies; domestic swindlers, rich and predatory money lenders which prey upon the people the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers. The Federal Reserve banks are the agents of the foreign central banks. The truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States by the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the Federal Reserve Board."
JUNE 15
1836 – CHARTER (LICENSE) FOR SECOND NATIONAL BANK OF THE UNITED STATES REPEALED
This was the third quasi national bank of the US — following the Bank of North America (1781-1785) and Bank of the United States (1791-1811). While called a “national” bank, it was not public but actually a commercial/corporate bank with the power to issue money directly. Early on, it issued a huge amount of money (more than 20 times its reserves) as loans that led to financial speculation and large corporate profits. A year later, it stopped issuing loans, resulting in a severe contraction of the money supply. This led to massive bankruptcies and the Panic of 1819. When President Andrew Jackson threatened to repeal its charter, the Bank’s leaders used its power to restrict money circulation to cause another depression. Bank President Nicolas Biddle wrote, “Nothing but widespread suffering will produce any effect on Congress…Our only safety is in pursuing a steady course of firm restriction – and I have no doubt that such a course will ultimately lead to restoration of the currency and the recharter of the Bank.”
President Andrew Jackson said this about the bank, “The immense capital and peculiar privileges bestowed upon it enabled it to exercise despotic sway over the other banks in every part of the country. From its superior strength it could seriously injure, if not destroy, the business of any one of them which might incur its resentment; and it openly claimed for itself the power of regulating the currency throughout the United States. In other words, it asserted (and it undoubtedly possessed) the power to make money plenty or scarce at its pleasure, at any time and in any quarter of the Union, by controlling the issues of other banks and permitting an expansion or compelling a general contraction of the circulating medium, according to its own will.”
JUNE 16
1929 – DEATH OF VERNON PARRINGTON, HISTORIAN
“The only safe and rational currency is a national currency based on the national credit sponsored by the state, flexible and controlled in the interests of the people as a whole.”
1933 – PASSAGE OF GLASS-STEAGALL ACT
Actual title was Banking Act of 1933. Considered one of the most important post Depression laws, the legislation created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which protected bank deposits. It also instituted several bank reforms to curb speculation that caused the Depression. One important provision was to create a firewall between Main Street depository banks and Wall Street investment banks. The Act was repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999
JUNE 19
1843 – DEATH OF LORD ACTON, ENGLISH HISTORIAN, POLITICIAN, AND WRITER
“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later, is the people versus the banks.”
JUNE 21
1940 -- DEATH OF SMEDLEY BUTLER, MARINE CORP MAJOR GENERAL (MOST DECORATED MARINE IN US HISTORY AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH)
“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism…I wouldn't go to war again, as I have done, to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things that we should fight for. One is the defense of out homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket…. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912…”
JUNE 24
1996 – LEWIS V UNITED STATES (AMENDED DECISION OF THE US COURT OF APPEALS, NINTH CIRCUIT)
“Federal reserve banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of a Federal Tort Claims Act, but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations in light of fact that direct supervision and control of each bank is exercised by board of directors. Federal Reserve banks…are locally controlled by their member banks; banks are listed neither as "wholly owned" government corporations nor as "mixed ownership" corporations; federal reserve banks receive no appropriated funds from Congress and the banks are empowered to sue and be sued in their own names. . . .”
JUNE 30
1812 – FIRST US TREASURY NOTES AUTHORIZED BY THE UNITED STATES
Treasury notes are promise to pay notes to borrowers to raise revenue. The US needed funds to fund the War of 1812. Rather than print US money (such as “Continentals” – an interest- and debt-free money issued by the Continental Congress to pay for the Revolutionary War), the US government followed a different course – to issue notes to borrowers with promises to pay the principal with interest at a later date. The original interest rate was 5.4%. Wars cause indebtedness. Bankers tend to like wars since they tend to create financial dependency of nations to bankers. Thomas Edison would later say about Treasury bonds, “If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good...”
2005 – PUBLICATION OF "A MATTER OF INTEREST" BY WILLIAM HIXSON, CANADIAN ECONOMIST
"The very idea of a government that can create money for itself, allowing banks to create money that the government then borrows, and pays interest on, is so preposterous that it staggers the imagination. Either everyone in government in charge of the procedure is lacking in intelligence or they have been bought and paid for by those who profit from their skullduggery and their infidelity to the public interest."
JUNE (not certain of exact date)
1992- UPDATED PUBLICATION OF MODERN MONEY MECANICS BY THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF CHICAGO
“The actual process of money creation takes place in commercial banks. Banks can build up deposits by increasing loans and investments…This unique attribute of the banking business was discovered several centuries ago…At one time, bankers were merely middlemen. They made a profit by accepting gold and coins for safekeeping and lending them to borrowers. But they soon found that the receipts (bank notes or IOUs) they issued were being used as if they were a means of payment. These receipts were acceptable as if they were money since whoever held them could go to the banker and exchange them for metallic money…Then bankers discovered...that they could make loans merely by giving borrowers their promises to pay (bank notes). In this way banks began to create money...More notes (IOUs) could be issued than the gold and coin on hand, because only a portion of the notes outstanding would be presented for payment at any one time...Demand deposits (checks) are the modern counterpart of bank notes. It was a small step from printing notes to making book entries to the credit of borrowers, which the borrowers in turn, could 'spend' by writing checks.”
July
JULY 1
1818 – SECOND NATIONAL BANK OF US TRIGGERS RECESSION/DEPRESSION
The Second National Bank of the United States (a private financial institution) on this day reversed its financial course from monetary expansion to contraction. They called in loans and cut future loans. They required payments from state banks in gold alone. This caused deflation, leading to a two-year recession/depression – called the “Panic of 1819.” This is what happens time and again when private financial corporations control a nation’s money system instead of We the People through their government.
1944 – BRETTON WOODS CONFERENCE BEGINS
The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, known as the Bretton Woods Conference was a meeting of 44 Allied nations in New Hampshire, where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank were created. Participant nations agreed to fix their currencies to a set value of gold. Debtor nations were to be helped with payments. The actual program was the use of loans (to be paid back with interest) to create political and economic dependence to loaning countries and their bankers. Agreements to receive further loans were often conditioned on “Structural Adjustment Programs” which called for privatization/corporatization of public services, wage cuts and perversion of economies to service debt payments.
1967 – US POSTAL SAVING SYSTEM ENDS
Because of opposition from the commercial banks the postal savings system does not develop in a substantial way. The United States Postal Savings System was a postal savings system operated by the United States Postal Service from January 1, 1911 until July 1, 1967
NOTE: Several individuals have inquired about the June 24 posting from last week. On that date in 1996, the US Supreme Court ruled, in Lewis v. United States that federal reserve banks are not federal agencies. Below is background on the case from http://nesara.org/court_summaries/lewis_v_united_states.htm
John L. Lewis was injured by a vehicle owned and operated by a federal reserve bank, and brought action alleging jurisdiction under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The District Court dismissed the case by ruling that the federal reserve bank was not a federal agency within meaning of the Federal Tort Claims Act and the court therefore lacked subject-matter jurisdiction. The Appeals court affirmed the decision.=
The court stated “Examining the organization and function of the Federal Reserve Banks, and applying the relevant factors, we conclude that the Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities for purpose of the FTCA, but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations.”
However, this does not imply, as so many wrongly interpret, that private individuals own the banks for the court also stated “Each Federal Reserve Bank is a separate corporation owned by commercial banks in its region. The stockholding commercial banks elect two thirds of each Bank’s nine member board of directors. The remaining three directors are appointed by the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve Board regulates the Reserve Banks, but direct supervision and control of each Bank is exercised by its board of directors. 12 U.S.C. Sect. 301. The directors enact by-laws regulating the manner of conducting general Bank business, 12 U.S.C. Sect. 341, and appoint officers to implement and supervise daily Bank activities. These activities include collecting and clearing checks, making advances to private and commercial entities, holding reserves for member banks, discounting the notes of member banks, and buying and selling securities on the open market. See 12 U.S.C. Sub-Sect. 341–361.
JULY 2
1787 – LETTER TO JAMES MADISON FROM GOUVENEUR MORRIS, ONE OF THE PRIMARY ARCHITECTS OF THE US CONSTITUTION
In describing the motives of the owners of the new Bank of North America, Morris stated,
“The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did. They always will…They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by [the power of] government, keep them in their proper spheres.”
1881 – PRESIDENT JAMES A. GARFIELD SHOT. HE DIED 10 WEEKS LATER
"Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce, and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”
1890 – SHERMAN ANTITRUST ACT BECOMES LAW
The Sherman Act was an attempt to prevent unlawful restraint of trade and commerce and prevent monopolies – including banking monopolies. The Act was more aggressively enforced under President Teddy Roosevelt, including against the corporate practices of JP Morgan, the most powerful banker, if not corporate titan, of the day. In response to this increased enforcement of the Sherman Act and the Hepburn Act, Morgan created a financial panic by having his banks and those he controlled call in loans and refuse to grant new ones. The economic crash of 1907 followed. The “Panic of 1907” was a direct cause for the creation of the Federal Reserve System several years later.
JULY 4
1826 – DEATH OF JOHN ADAMS, SECOND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
“ All of the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arises, not from the defects of the Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.”
1826 – DEATH OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, THIRD PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
1892 – ADOPTION OF THE “OMAHA PLATFORM,” FOUNDING DOCUMENT OF THE POPULIST PARTY
“The national power to create money is appropriated to enrich bondholders; a vast public debt payable in legal tender currency has been funded into gold-bearing bonds, thereby adding millions to the burdens of the people…[The two political parties] propose to drown the outcries of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle over the tariff, so that capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, the demonetization of silver and the oppressions of the usurers may all be lost sight of.
PLATFORM
"We demand a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible, issued by the general government only, a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and that without the use of banking corporations, a just, equitable, and efficient means of distribution direct to the people, at a tax not to exceed 2 per cent. per annum, to be provided as set forth in the sub-treasury plan of the Farmers' Alliance, or a better system; also by payments in discharge of its obligations for public improvements….We demand that postal savings banks be established by the government for the safe deposit of the earnings of the people and to facilitate exchange."
JULY 6
1863 – BIRTH OF RICHARD MCKENNA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE MIDLANDS BANK OF ENGLAND
"I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create and destroy money. And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people."
JULY 7
1896 – REMARKS OF WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN BEFORE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION, CHICAGO, IL (BRYAN WAS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT)
"We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government…Those who are opposed to the proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson...and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business...When we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and ... until that is done, there is no reform that can be accomplished."
1947 – DEATH OF HENRY FORD, INDUSTRIALIST, FOUNDER, FORD MOTOR COMPANY
"It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
JULY 9
1778 – FIRST STATES RATIFY THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION.
Eight states signed the Articles on this day. Other states followed shortly thereafter. The Articles granted the Federal Government the authority to issue money and determine its value if nine states agreed.
2007 – CITIGROUP CEO CHARLES PRINCE INTERVIEW WITH THE FINANCIAL TIMES
Explaining his bank’s excessive money creation through the creation of risky sub-prime loans,
“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will get complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.”
JULY 10
1509 – BIRTH OF JOHN CALVIN, FRENCH THEOLOGIAN AND PASTOR
“For we altogether condemn usuries, we shall impose severer restrictions upon the consciences that the Lord himself desired.”
1832 – ANDREW JACKSON VETOES LEGISLATION TO RENEW THE CHARTER OF THE PRIVATE SECOND BANK OF THE UNITED STATES
“Is there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank that in its nature has so little to bind it to our country?... Should its influence become concentrated, as it may under the operation of such an act as this, in the hands of a self-elected directory whose interests are identified with those of the foreign stockholders, will there not be cause to tremble for the purity of our elections in peace and for the independence of our country in war? Their power would be great whenever they might choose to exert it; but if this monopoly were regularly renewed every fifteen or twenty years on terms proposed by themselves, they might seldom in peace put forth their strength to influence elections or control the affairs of the nation. But if any private citizen or public functionary should interpose to curtail its powers or prevent a renewal of its privileges, it can not be doubted that he would be made to feel its influence.
JULY 11
1862 – LEGISLATIVE ACT AUTHORITIZING US GOVERNMENT TO ISSUE MONEY
Congress passes legislation to issue and circulate $150 million in non-interest bearing, debt-free notes – Greenbacks. This is authorized in the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.
JULY 12
1804 – DEATH OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, FIRST SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY
He was a major proponent of First Bank of the United States - a privately owned national bank. The name was to deceive people into thinking that money creation was done by the government instead of corporate banks. The nation's money was created out of thin air and loaned to the government - at interest - and to private individuals. Eighty percent of the stock was privately held. Hamilton called the public debt "a public blessing" because of his belief that it would tie the wealthy (who would own the government bonds) of the country to the government, and they would, in turn, provide political support for higher taxes, to make sure that there was enough money in the treasury to pay off their principal and interest.
JULY 13
1832 – CONGRESS FAILS TO OVERRIDE PRESIDENT JACKSON’S VETO TO RENEW THE CHARTER OF THE SECOND NATIONAL BANK OF THE UNITED STATES
In his veto message to renew the misnamed “national bank” (it was actually a private bank controlled/owned by stockholders, a majority of whom were foreigners), Jackson stated: “Controlling our currency, receiving our public monies, and holding thousands of our citizens in dependence…would be more formidable and dangerous than a naval and military power of the enemy.”
1956 – QUOTE OF OF J.R.R TOLKIEN, AUTHOR (THE HOBBIT AND LORD OF THE RINGS) AND UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD PROFESSOR, IN CONTOUR MAGAZINE
“The true equation is “democracy” = government by world financiers.
"The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer.
"Throned above all, in a manner without parallel in all past, is the veiled prophet of finance, swaying all men living by a sort of magic, and delivering oracles in a language not understood of the people…
"There should only be one source of money: one fountainhead from which flows the nation’s blood to vitalize commerce and industry, ensure economic equity and justice and safeguard the welfare of the people…In other words, it has always been and still is our contention that the prerogative of creating and issuing the money of the nation should be restored to the State. “
JULY 14
1833 – DEATH OF WILLIAM GOUGE, ADVISOR TO PRESIDENT ANDREW JACKSON; AUTHOR, A SHORT HISTORY OF MONEY AND BANKING
"The large extent of bank influence is not easily seen. We seldom see an identified bank or a money corporation candidate running for office; but when questions arise which affect them, the banks have agents at work, whose operations are the more effective because they are unseen."
JULY 16
1979 - FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF SAN FRANCISCO AD FOR COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS IN "COMPUTERWORLD MAGAZINE"
"Some people still think we're a branch of the Government. We're not."
[Note: You can’t get any clearer or more succinct than this!]
JULY 17
1780 – BANK OF PENNSYLVANIA ESTABLISHED
Quakers or Friends (short names for members of the Religious Society of Friends) first introduced public banking in America with the creation of this state-owned bank, which issued its own paper scrip that it lent to farmers. Residents paid no income taxes. There was no government debt and no inflation. The state prospered.
1862 – PASSAGE OF POSTAGE CURRENCY ACT
The act authorized the issuance of 5, 10, 25, and 50 cent notes – which were needed to substitute for gold, silver and copper coins which were hoarded. These fractional currency US debt-free notes, sold in perforated sheets like stamps, were redeemable by the US Post Offices at face value in postage stamps until 1876.
JULY 18
BIRTH OF STEPHEN ZARLENGA, DIRECTOR, AMERICAN MONETARY INSTITUTE
"We propose that ultimately the monetary power should be constituted as a fourth branch of government, like the executive, judicial and legislative branches. We have concluded that the nature of man and society requires four, not three, branches of government." "True monetary reform must take a better path. AMI’s research indicates that money, properly defined, is a legal institution of society and government; not a commodity or economic good of the markets; that if money is a legal institution, then the control of monetary systems can be rightfully viewed as a proper function of government; much as the law courts are.” "When society loses control over its money system, it loses any control it might have had over its destiny."
JULY 22
1950 – DEATH OF WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING, 10TH PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA, 1935-48.
"Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nations’ laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognised as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile....The Liberal Party believes that credit is a public matter, not of interest to bankers only, but of direct concern to every citizen. The Liberal Party declares itself in favour of the immediate establishment of a duly constituted national bank for the control of the issue of money in terms of public needs. The flow of money must be in relation with the domestic, social, and industrial needs of the Canadian people...If my party is returned to power, we shall make good our monetary policy in the greatest battle between the money power and the people Canada has ever seen." Mackenzie King won re-election. The private Bank of Canada, which had been a private corporation, was converted to a "Crown Corporation," belonging to the people of Canada.
JULY 24
1862 – DEATH OF MARTIN VAN BUREN, 8TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
"It can only be when the agriculturalists abandon the implements and the field of their labor and become, with those who now assist them, shopkeepers, manufacturers, carriers, and traders, that the Republic will be brought in danger of the influences of the MONEY POWER"
JULY 25
1876 – BIRTH OF CONGRESSMAN LOUIS T. MCFADDEN (R-PA), CHAIRMAN OF THE HOUSE BANKING AND CURRENCY COMMITTEE
“We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are U.S. government institutions. They are private credit monopolies; domestic swindlers, rich and predatory money lenders which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers….The truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States by the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the Federal Reserve Board."
JULY 26
1925 – DEATH OF WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, SECRETARY OF STATE
"We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government…Those who are opposed to the proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson...and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business...When we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and ... until that is done, there is no reform that can be accomplished."
JULY 27
1694 – BANK OF ENGLAND FOUNDED
A private central bank, England began to borrow all of its money from corporate banks rather than simply creating it debt-free, as it had for hundreds of years. “The result…is a kind of national financial servitude by an economy almost entirely indentured to private financial interests, a system prefigured in the Roman Republic and, in modern times, first established in Britain with the founding of the Bank of England in 1694...The idea was to subscribe a private bank with capital, and then obtain a monopoly for that bank from the government for the issuance of government debt, allowing for usurious rates; such debt was ultimately issued as bills of credit on that bank and circulated as money.” (Adrian Kuzminski, Fixing the System)
JULY 28
1919 – BANK OF NORTH DAKOTA FOUNDED
The Bank of North Dakota is the only state-owned bank in the US. Its primary deposit base is the State of North Dakota. All state funds and funds of state institutions are deposited with the Bank, as required by law. Other deposits are accepted from any source, private citizens to the U.S. government. No tax dollars are used to pay interest to bond holders since the state has no debt. Coincidentally or not, North Dakota is one of the few states in the nation not facing a fiscal crisis.
JULY 30
1863 – BIRTH OF HENRY FORD, INVENTOR AND INDUSTRIALIST
"It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
JULY 31
1881 – BIRTH OF SMEDLEY BUTLER, US MARINE MAJOR GENERAL (TWICE DECORATED)
“I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested…
"I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things that we should fight for. One is the defense of out homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.”
1912 – BIRTH OF MILTON FRIEDMAN, ECONOMIST
“If you kill the Fed [Federal Reserve] and don't kill fractional reserve lending, you've done nothing.”
JULY [Not certain what date]
1939 - A PROGRAM FOR MONETARY REFORM RELEASED
A group of prominent economists issue a plan for US monetary reform. One of the co-authors of the plan, “A Program for Monetary Reform,” was University of Chicago professor and Quaker Paul H. Douglas (later to become U.S. Senator). More than 230 economists from 150 universities approved it without reservations, while an additional 40 supported it with some reservations.
In assessing the problem of the day, the PMR states, “If the purpose of money and credit were to discourage the exchange of goods and services, to destroy periodically the wealth produced, to frustrate and trip those who work and save, our present monetary system would seem a most effective instrument to that end.” It also stated a monetary system based on a gold standard “has had…disastrous results all over the world.”
The PMR called for government creation and maintenance in the quantity of money. “Our own monetary policy should…be directed toward avoiding inflation as well as deflation, and in attaining and maintaining as nearly as possible full production and employment.” The plan also called for eliminating fractional reserve lending – the process of banks loaning our many more times the amount of money in their possession. Back in the 1930’s the reserved requirement was 5:1. Today it’s 10:1. Some of the major banks involved in the economic collapse of 2007 had ignored this law and were loaning out 50 times their reserves. The PMR called for a 100% reserve requirement – banks could only lend the amount of money they possessed.
The document goes on, “In early times the creation of money was the sole privilege of the kings or other sovereigns – namely the sovereign people, acting through their Government. This principle is firmly anchored in our Constitution and it is a perversion to transfer the privilege to private parties to use in their own real, or presumed, interest. The founders of the Republic did not expect the banks to create the money they lend.
Their plan to reduce the national debt was simply to have the government purchase government bonds with new US debt-free money.
August
AUGUST 2
1100 – BEGINNING OF THE REIGN OF KING HENRY I OF ENGLAND
About 1100 AD, the King ordered the creation of a unique form of money. Made of wood, the currency was called “Tally Sticks.” They were polished sticks of wood declared by the Sovereign King to be good for the payment of taxes. The sticks were used as money by England for 726 years – included the period of the British Empire. It may be no coincidence that shortly after the Bank of England (a private entity) was established in 1694, it attacked the Tally Stick system. Nevertheless, the Sticks were accepted as money for another 150 years, until 1854.
AUGUST 3
1871 – BIRTH OF VERNON PARRINGTON, AMERICAN HISTORIAN
"The only safe and rational currency is a national currency based on the national credit sponsored by the state, flexible and controlled in the interests of the people as a whole."
AUGUST 6
1893 – BIRTH OF OF WRIGHT PATMAN, DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN FROM TEXAS, CHAIRMAN OF US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON BANKING & CURRENCY (1965-75)
"I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiot system to continue."
AUGUST 9
1836 – BIRTH OF ALEXANDER DEL MAR, AMERICAN POLITICAL ECONOMIST, HISTORIAN, NUMISMATIST, AUTHOR, DIRECTOR US BUREAU OF STATISTICS
"As a rule political economists…don't take the trouble to study the history of money; it is much easier to imagine it and to deduce the principles of this imaginary knowledge."
“[T]he State alone had the right to issue money and to decide of what substances its symbols should be made, whether of gold, silver, brass or paper. Whatever the State declared to be money was money.”
“Lexington and Concord were trivial acts of resistance, which chiefly concerned those who took part in them and which might have been forgiven; but the creation and circulation of bills of credit by revolutionary assemblies in Massachusetts and Philadelphia were the acts of a whole people, and coming, as they did, upon the heels of the strenuous efforts made by the Crown to suppress paper money in America, they constituted acts of defiance so contemptuous and insulting to the Crown, that forgiveness was thereafter impossible…Thus the bills of credit of this era, which ignorance and prejudice have attempted to belittle into the mere instruments of a reckless financial policy, were really the standard of the Revolution. They were more than this: they were the Revolution itself.”
1989 – FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS REFORM RECOVERY AND ENFORCEMENT ACT (FIRREA) ENACTED
The law passed in response to the 1980’s savings and loan crisis – in which. FIRREA created the Resolution Trust Corporation, which bailed out failed institutions primarily through taxation. It also shifted regulatory authority from the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to the Office of Thrift Supervision within the Department of the Treasury.
It should be noted that more than more than a thousand felony convictions followed the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s and early 1990s. There have been virtually no investigations, let alone convictions, of those responsible for the 2007-2008 global financial meltdown triggered by US financial institutions.
AUGUST 10
1863 – BIRTH OF ALFRED OWEN CROSIER, PROMINENT OHIO ATTORNEY AND AUTHOR
Crosier wrote widely against the power and influence held by Wall Street Bankers. Crozier wrote eight books, including The Magnet and U.S. Money vs. Corporation Currency, which served to warn the country of the replacement of the country’s currency by notes printed by private banking corporations. A wonderful display of political cartoons from his book, US Money vs. Corporations Currency is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qQ59w4ML4
1868 – BIRTH OF PAUL WARBURG, US BANKER
Warburg guided the operations of the National Citizens League, an organization formed in 1911 with $5 million in contributions from the big New York banks (including those owned by Rockefeller and J.P Morgan) to establish an "educational fund." The fund financed respected university professors to endorse the concept of creating a private central bank, which became the Federal Reserve Bank, created by the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.
1929 – THE FEDERAL RESERVE BEGINS TO TIGHTEN THE MONEY SUPPLY – LEADS TO GREAT DEPRESSION
The Federal Reserve sharply raises the interest rate it charges local banks to borrow money (called the “discount rate”). At the same time, it begins to sell its government securities (remember, the Fed is not part of the federal government, despite its name, but rather a largely private entity controlled by 12 reserve banks which are controlled by banks). These actions were the seeds, which led to the Great Depression – as limited money in circulation prevents business and commercial transactions from occurring.
1930- GEORGE GOODMAN, AUTHOR, “THE MONEY GAME”
“[T]hose who live by numbers can also perish by them, and it is a terrifying thing to have an adding machine write an epitaph, either way.”
AUGUST 14
1935 – SOCIAL SECURITY ACT PASSES
Social Security, providing monetary benefits to older Americans and permanently disabled, is considered the single most important poverty fighting legislation in the history of the nation.
1989 –DEATH OF ROBERT B. ANDERSON, SECRETARY OF TREASURY UNDER PRESIDENT EISENHOWER
"We are completely dependent on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system."
AUGUST 15
1769 – BIRTH OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
“When a government is dependent upon banks for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.”
1971 – PRESIDENT NIXON CLOSES “GOLD WINDOW”
Richard Nixon issues Executive Order 11615 freezing wages and prices. Foreign-held paper dollars are no longer converted for gold, thereby nullifying the Bretton Woods Agreement.
AUGUST 20
1935 – BIRTH OF RON PAUL, US CONGRESSMAN
Referring to the Federal Reserve, he stated, "maybe there's too much power in the hands of those who control monetary policy? The power to create the financial bubbles. The power to maybe bring the bubble about. The power to change the value of the stock market within minutes. That to me is just an ominous power and challenges the whole concept of freedom and liberty and sound money."
AUGUST 23
1935 – PASSAGE OF BANKING ACT
The law made the FDIC a permanent agency and raised the deposit insurance level to $5,000.
The Federal Reserve System was reformed with the transformation of the Federal Reserve Board of Directors to the Board of Governors. All board members were appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate and the term of service was expanded to 14 years. Open-market operations were formalized in the Federal Open Market Committee and the Governors were allowed to determine interest rates and bank reserve requirements. These “reforms,” however, were window dressing. The power and authority to issue money as debt was retained in the hands of the private Federal Reserve and private banking corporations. Keeping reserve requirement decisions in the hands of the Fed only invited speculation and risk (reserve requirements are the ratio of money banks lend in excess of money they actually possess “in reserve” to cover loans. Banks loan many times the amount of funds in their reserve).
AUGUST 24
1916 – BIRTH OF ROBERT DE FREMERY, AUTHOR, RIGHTS VS PRIVILEGES
"It is not obvious that there are serious defects in our banking system and our tax system that deprive most of us of fundamental rights and bestow enormous privileges on others? How many riots must we endure? How many prisons must we build? How many of our rights must we lose? How many of our young people must be sent away to fight in foreign wars before we decide that enough is enough?"
AUGUST 29
1786 – BEGINNING OF SHAYS’ REBELLION
Sparked in large part by personal debt, nonpayment of salaries, and collapse of the national currency, farmers in Massachusetts, led by Daniel Shays, attack a US Armory. The lack of a focused response to the uprisings led to calls to reforming the Articles of Confederation. The Philadelphia Convention, which followed, rather than reforming the Articles of Confederation, created a new more centralized Constitution. While less democratic in many ways (as it was drafted by and gave exclusive rights ony to white, male landowners), the new Constitution empowered the government to coin its own money, separate from banks and financial institutions.
2005 – DEATH OF JUDE THADDEUS WANNISKI, AMERICAN JOURNALIST, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR AND POLITICAL ECONOMIST
“There was a big party at Morgan Stanley after the Mexican peso devaluation, people from all over Wall Street came, they drank champagne and smoked cigars and congratulated themselves on how they pulled it off and they made a fortune.”
AUGUST 30
1930 – BIRTH OF WARREN BUFFET, INVESTOR
"Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction."
AUGUST 31
1959 – ROBERT B. ANDERSON, SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY UNDER PRESIDENT EISENHOWER
"When a bank makes a loan it simply adds to the borrowers’ deposit account in the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone else's deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone. It's new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower." August 31, 1959
September
SEPTEMBER 1
1764 – PASSAGE OF BRITISH CURRENCY ACT
The Act banned Colonial paper money as legal tender, severely limiting commerce and widening the trade deficit between England and the Colonies. Colonists were forced to pay their taxes only in gold or silver. Many, including Benjamin Frankln, claimed this was one of the major triggers, if not the major trigger, of the Revolutionary War.
1894 – DATE AMERICAN BANKERS ASSOCIATION CALLS ON BANKS TO STOP LOANING MONEY TO CAUSE FORECLOSURES
American Bankers Association memo (as submitted in the Congressional Record): “On September 1, 1894, we will not renew our loans under any consideration. On September 1st we will demand our money. We will foreclose and become mortgagers in possession. We can take two-thirds of the farms west of the Mississippi, and thousands of them east of the Mississippi as well, at our own price... Then the farmers will become tenants as in England..."
SEPTEMBER 2
1839 – BIRTH OF HENRY GEORGE, ECONOMIST, POLITICIAN AND AUTHOR OF “PROGRESS AND POVERTY”
“[I]t is the business of government to issue money…To leave it to every one who chose to do so to issue money would be to entail general inconvenience and loss, to offer many temptations to roguery, and to put the poorer classes of society at a great disadvantage. These obvious considerations have everywhere, as society became well organized, led to the recognition of the coinage of money as an exclusive function of government. When, in the progress of society, a further labor-saving improvement becomes possible by the substitution of paper for the precious metals as the material for money, the reasons why the issuance of this money should be made a government function become still stronger. The evils entailed by wildcat banking in the United States are too well remembered to need reference. The loss and inconvenience, the swindling and corruption that flowed from the assumption by each State of the Union of the power to license banks of issue ended with the war, and no one would now go back to them. Yet instead of doing what every public consideration impels us to, and assuming wholly and fully as the exclusive function of the General Government the power to issue paper money, the private interests of bankers have, up to this, compelled us to the use of a hybrid currency, of which a large part, though guaranteed by the General Government, is issued and made profitable to corporations.”
1877 – BIRTH OF FREDERICK SODDY, NOBEL PRIZE RECIPIENT (CHEMISTRY) AND MONETARY REFORM AUTHOR
“There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth. Our money system is nothing better than a confidence trick.”
SEPTEMBER 3
2012 – LABOR DAY
The enactment of the National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act, HR 2990, would create 7 million jobs. The jobs would be to repair our nation's infrastructure. The debt would not need to be raised. Taxes would not need to be imposed. Funding from any other public program would not have to be shifted. Public creation and circulation of U.S. money is all that would be required. Just as the colonists did when fighting the British. Just as President Lincoln did during the 1860. Just as economists proposed under the "Chicago Plan" during the 1930's to President Roosevelt to move the nation out of the Great Depression. For more information on the NEED Act, go to www.monetary.org
SEPTEMBER 6
1943- DEATH OF RICHARD MCKENNA, FORMER PRESIDENT, MIDLANDS BANK OF ENGLAND
"I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create and destroy money. And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people." (From a 1924 speech)
SEPTEMBER 8
1999 – DEATH OF HERBERT STEIN, FORMER CHAIRMAN OF PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISORS
"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."
[Sounds like our current debt-based money system – an unsustainable system which can only continue if more debt is issued, which happens by banks when they issue loans and purchase treasury bonds, bills and notes]
SEPTEMBER 9
1828 – BIRTH OF LEO TOLSTOY, RUSSIAN WRITER AND SOCIAL REFORMER
"Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal, there is no human relation between master and slave."
1890 – BIRTH OF MARRINER S. ECCLES, FORMER CHAIRMAN AND GOVERNOR OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM
"That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money."
SEPTEMBER 12
1857 -- STEAMSHIP CENTRAL AMERICA SINKS
The steamship had a million dollars in gold and silver onboard. It caused the Ohio Life and Trust Company to fail and sparked the Financial Panic of 1857 since money was backed by gold. Under such a metal-based money system, the less gold and silver, the fewer dollars in circulation. The fewer dollars, the less economic transactions occur, resulting in less production and more unemployment.
SEPTEMBER 13
1785 – PENNSYLVANIA REPEALS THE CHARTER OF THE BANK OF NORTH AMERICA
This was the nation’s first private commercial bank, chartered by Congress under the Articles of Confederation. The Articles gave Congress the power to “emit bills of credit” -- to create money. By a single vote, Congress voted to transfer their authority to issue money to the Bank, thus, become a quasi central bank. The Pennsylvania legislature repealed the Bank’s charter, which was significant since it primarily operated in just three states. Why did Congress willingly give up their money power in the first place? The public argument was that the business of finance could not be ably conduced by a public body (Congress) — only by a small number of private financiers.
1873 – NATION’S BIGGEST BANK, JAY COOKE & COMPANY, BECOMES EFFECTIVELY INSOLVENT
Congress has passed the Coinage Act earlier in the year, which ended the minting of silver dollars. US money system was, thus, backed only by gold. The effect was similar to other instances in US history when money was backed by gold -- a depression ensued, prices feel, unemployment increased and major banks failed as there wasn’t enough gold to back the money needed to fuel the growing economy. Jay Cooke & Company was the largest bank to fail due to this policy of gold-backed money.
SEPTEMBER 15
2008 - LEHMAN BROTHER INC FILES FOR CHAPTER 11 BANKRUPTCY PROTECTION
SEPTEMBER 16
2003 - STATEMENT MADE ON THIS DAY BY HENRY C.K. LIU, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS
The current monetary system is a cruel hoax. There is virtually no "real" money in the system, only debts. Except for coins, which are issued by the government and make up only about one-thousandth of the money supply, the entire U.S. money supply now consists of debt to private banks, for money they created with accounting entries on their books.
2008 – FEDERAL RESERVE BAILS OUT AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL GROUP (AIG)
AIG was the largest insurance corporation, which had speculated in risky home mortgages. The Fed issued AIG $85 billion in credit in September 2008 to meet their financial obligations
SEPTEMBER 17
1787 – CONSTITUTION DAY
“The Congress shall have power to…coin money [and] regulate the power thereof" Section 8, US Constitution.” “Coin” is a verb used in this way, representing the power to issue money. We the People possess the constitutional authority to issue and circulate our own money. Instead, we have permitted banking corporations to “privatizing” the creation of money via loans (debt). This is both economic and political madness.
SEPTEMBER 19
1881 -- DEATH OF PRESIDENT JAMES GARFIELD (R, OHIO)
"Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce...and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate." A few weeks after making this statement, Garfield was shot. He died two months later.
SEPTEMBER 20
2008 – US TREASURY SUBMITS DRAFT LEGISLATION TO CONGRESS FOR AUTHORITY TO “PURCHASE TROUBLED ASSETS” (i.e. BAIL OUT BANKING CORPORATIONS)
U.S. Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson, former Chair and CEO of Goldman Sachs banking corporation, submits on behalf of the Bush Administration legislation to bail out banking corporations that engaged in risky and bizarre mortgages and investments. The legislation, called the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was a whole 3-pages long. It requested a virtual $700 billion blank check for the Administration. Public outrage was fierce. Calls against the legislation to offices of some Senators and Representatives totaled 100 to 1 against it. The Administration was forced to pull the bill and substitute a new one later. The original TARP bill is at http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/20/news/economy/treasury_proposal/index.htm
SEPTEMBER 21
1950 –FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE LIMIT RAISED
The popular FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) limit is raised by Congress to $10,000. The FDIC insures commercial bank deposits against loss due to bankruptcy or default. It was created following the Great Depression when depositors lost their savings when banks collapsed due to speculative investments and/or depositor fears which led to a run on banks.
2008 – FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD APPROVES APPLICATIONS OF INVESTMENT BANKING CORPORATIONS GOLDMAN SACHS AND MORGAN STANLEY TO BECOME BANK HOLDING COMPANIES
Prior to the Great Depression, banking corporations could engage in both both “commercial” (traditional loans to individuals and businesses) and “investment” (stock and other forms of speculative activities) activities. Overzealous speculation by banks using depositors money was one of the causes of the Depression. This led to the 1933 Glass Steagall Act, separating commercial from investment activities. This law was overturned in 1999, leading to a breach in the “firewall” keeping the two types of financial activities separate. This grant application allowed two of the largest investment banks on the planet to gegin engaging in commercial banking activities.
SEPTEMBER 22
1956 -- DEATH OF FREDERICK SODDY, NOBEL LAUREATE
“It was recognized in Athens and Sparta…centuries before the birth of Christ that one of the most vital prerogatives of the State was the right to issue money.”
On money: "To allow it to become a source of revenue to private issuers is to create first, a secret and illicit arm of the government and last, a rival power strong enough ultimately to overthrow all other forms of government."
SEPTEMBER 23
1998 – TALK BY MICHAEL CHOSSUDOVSKY, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS
“Monetary policy is in the hands of private creditors who have the ability to freeze state budgets, paralyze the payments process, thwart the regular disbursement of wages to millions of workers and precipitate the collapse of production and social programs.”
SEPTEMBER 24
1976 – DEATH OF PAUL DOUGLAS, ECONOMIST, US SENATOR, QUAKER
A prominent University of Chicago economist, Douglas was one of six economists who developed A Program for Monetary Reform in 1939. It was sent to President Roosevelt as a proposal to end the Great Depression. More than 230 economists from 150 universities approved it without reservations while an additional 40 supported it with some reservations.
In assessing the problem of the day, the PMR states, “If the purpose of money and credit were to discourage the exchange of goods and services, to destroy periodically the wealth produced, to frustrate and trip those who work and save, our present monetary system would seem a most effective instrument to that end.” It also stated monetary systems based on a gold standard “has had…disastrous results all over the world.”
The PMR called for government creation and maintenance in the quantity of money. “Our own monetary policy should…be directed toward avoiding inflation as well as deflation, and in attaining and maintaining as nearly as possible, full production and employment.” The plan also called for eliminating fractional reserve lending – the process of banks loaning ourt many more times the amount of money in their possession. Back in the 1930’s the reserved requirement was 5:1. Today it’s 9:1. Some of the major banks involved in the economic collapse of 2007 had ignored this law and were loaning out 50 times their reserves. The PMR called for a 100% reserve requirement – banks could only lend the amount of money they possessed.
The document goes on, “In early times the creation of money was the sole privilege of the kings or other sovereigns – namely the sovereign people, acting through their Government. This principle is firmly anchored in our Constitution and it is a perversion to transfer the privilege to private parties to use in their own real or presumed interest. The founders of the Republic did not expect the banks to create the money they lend.
Their plan to reduce the national debt was simply to have the government purchase government bonds with new US debt-free money.
The PMR was the outgrowth of an earlier similar proposal from many of the same economists, The Chicago Plan, which was introduced as federal legislation in 1934, as a means to end the Great Depression The Chicago Plan called for the issuance of debt-free U.S. money and the end of banks lending less that their assets as means to reduce public and private debt, eliminate bank runs, and gain control over money creation.
[NOTE: A new economic/mathematical analysis of the The Chicago Plan has just been published The Chicago Plan Revisited is a working paper by two International Monetary Fund economists, Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhoff. It affirms virtually every assertion by its advocates in the 1930’s. The paper is at http://www.stanford.edu/~kumhof/chicago-imfwp.pdf ]
SEPTEMBER 26
1939 – DEATH OF ALFRED OWEN CROSIER, PROMINENT OHIO ATTORNEY AND AUTHOR
Crosier wrote widely against the power and influence held by Wall Street Bankers. Crozier wrote eight books, including The Magnet and U.S. Money vs. Corporation Currency, which warned the country of the replacement of the country’s currency by notes printed by private banking corporations. A wonderful display of political cartoons from his book, U.S. Money vs. Corporations Currency is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qQ59w4ML4
1942 - STATEMENT OF REVERENT WILLIAM TEMPLE, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, CALLING FOR THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND
“The private issue of new credit should be regarded in the modern world in just the same way in which the private minting of money was regarded in earlier times. The banks should be limited in their lending power to the amount deposited by their clients, while the issue of newer credit should be the function of public authority. This is not in any way to censure the banks or bankers...But the system has become anomalous, and, so often happens when anomaly has persisted through a long period of time, the result is to make into the master what ought to be the servant.”
Temple’s advocacy for banks being “limited in their lending power to the amount deposited by their clients” was for the ending of “fractional reserve banking” – the common practice of financial institutions providing loans in amounts many times in excess of the actual amount held by them. This feature is one of the major components of HR 2990, The National Emergency Employment Defense Act.
SEPTEMBER 29
1897 – BIRTH OF GRAHAM TOWERS, GOVERNOR OF THE CENTRAL BANK OF CANADA, 1934-1955
In testimony in 1939 before a Standing Committee on Banking and Commerce of the Canadian Parliament when asked whether banks create money, he stated: “That is right. That is what they are for... That is the Banking business, just in the same way that a steel plant makes steel…The manufacturing process consists of making a pen-and-ink or typewriter entry on a card in a book. That is all…Each and every time a bank makes a loan (or purchases securities), new bank credit is created — new deposits — brand new money…As loans are debts, then under the present system all money is debt.”
2008 – U.S. STOCK MARKET CRASH
The Dow Jones plummeted by 778 points, its largest one-day drop in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. The crash was the result of the bursting of a massive housing “bubble” caused by financial institutions issuing money out of thin air many times in excess of their assets to finance many highly risky mortgages and other bizarre risky investments. The money issued for mortgages were loans, making the massive amount of new money issued (roughly 97% of all originating into our economy) as debt. The elimination on controls of the financial industry a decade earlier opened the door, but was not the root cause, of the crash that has come to be known as the Great Recession. The root cause of the 2008 crash, similar to all other bursts of financial bubbles before it, was the ability of banks to issue money out of thin air as debt (loans) many times in excess of their assets. The smaller the asset base, the greater the risk that banks will go bankrupt when their loans cannot be repaid or other investments go bad.
October
OCTOBER 1
1936 – DEATH OF LOUIS MCFADDEN (R- PA), CHAIRMAN OF THE US HOUSE BANKING AND CURRENCY COMMITTEE
"We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are U.S. government institutions. They are private credit monopolies; domestic swindlers, rich and predatory money lenders which prey upon the people the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers…The truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States by the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the Federal Reserve Board."
OCTOBER 2
1869 – BIRTH OF MOHANDAS GANDHI
'Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed." One of his “7 Deadly Sins” was “wealth without work.” He also said "[a] small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.”
OCTOBER 3
2008 – US CONGRESS APPROVES $700 BILLION BAILOUT FOR BANKS
Congress passes and President Bush signs into law the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-343), which establishes the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The largest US banks were bailed out by US taxpayers since they were considered “too big to fail.” Main Street businesses and side street homeowners facing foreclosures (due in large part to the speculative practices of major financial institutions) received no such support. Many of these major banks were major political campaign contributors/investors in the 2008 political campaign. The final bailout legislation was a revised and slightly better version of an original bill proposed by Sec. of Treasury Hank Paulson that was literally only a few pages in length. Massive public anger resulted in a flood of calls, emails and visits to congressional offices. The original proposal was defeated by Congress.
OCTOBER 4
1923 – BIRTH OF CHARLTON HESTON, ACTOR [I KNOW THIS IS A BIT OF A STRETCH]
“You shall not charge interest to your countrymen…” A quote from Moses from the Bible, [Deuteronomy 23: 19-20]. Moses was born sometime in 1527 BC. Since the exact date is unknown, why not use the birth date of the guy who played him in films!
OCTOBER 5
1941 – DEATH OF LOUIS BRANDEIS, US SUPREME COURT JUSTICE (1916-1939)
“The development of our financial oligarchy followed, in this respect, lines with which the history of political despotism has familiarized us: usurpation, proceeding by gradual encroachment rather than by violent acts; subtle and often long-concealed concentration of distinct functions, which are beneficent when separately administered, and dangerous only when combined in the same persons. It was by processes such as these that Cæsar Augustus became master of Rome. The makers of our own Constitution had in mind like dangers to our political liberty when they provided so carefully for the separation of governmental powers. . . .
“The goose that lays golden eggs has been considered a most valuable possession. But even more profitable is the privilege of taking the golden eggs laid by somebody else's goose. The investment bankers and their associates now enjoy that privilege. They control the people through the people's own money.”
OCTOBER 8
1946 – BIRTH OF DENNIS KUCINICH, CONGRESSMAN, OHIO
Author of the National Emergency Employment Defense [NEED] Act, introduced in 2010 and 2011. Amontg the bill’s provisions are: (a) make the Federal Reserve System more accountable by placing the Fed under the US Department of Treasury, (b) create government issued money to hire people to repair the nation’s physical and human infrastructure, and (c) eliminate fractional reserve lending – the practice that permits banks to lend many times more funds that they actually possess.
OCTOBER 13
1879 – DEATH OF HENRY CAREY, CHIEF ECONOMIC ADVISOR TO PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Carey was the major proponent in the Lincoln Adminstration of issueing debt-free US money, Greenbacks. In referencing the US economy under the Greenback system, he said, …”for the first time, too, in the history of the world, there has been presented a community in which nearly all business was done for cash, and in which debt has scarcely an existence…there has been a large and general diminution of the rate of interest…traders have therefore become more independent of the capitalist, while the country at large has become more independent of the ‘wealthy capitalists’ of Europe.”
OCTOBER 15
1908 – BIRTH OF JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH, U.S. ECONOMIST
Two quotes. “The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise or evade truth, not to reveal it.” "The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”
1913 – ADDRESS OF NELSON ALDRICH (FORMER SENATOR OF RHODE ISLAND AND CHAIR OF THE NATIONAL MONETARY COMMISSION) BEFORE THE ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
In commenting on the proposed bill that would become the Federal Reserve Act passed later in the year, Aldrich said, "If the attempt is successful it will be the first and most important step toward changing our form of government from a democracy to an autocracy. No imperial government in Europe would venture to suggest, much less enact, legislation of this kind.”
1982 – U.S. CONGRESS PASSES GARN - ST. GERMAIN DEPOSITORY INSTITUTIONS ACT
The act deregulated savings and loan associations and allowed banks to provide adjustable-rate mortgage loans. Many believe it contributed to the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s.
OCTOBER 18
1931 – DEATH OF THOMAS EDISON, U.S. INVENTOR
This is one of the best statements ever on the ease and legitimacy of the government creating its own money.
“If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good... If the Government issues bonds, the brokers will sell them. The bonds will be negotiable; they will be considered as gilt edged paper. Why? Because the government is behind them, but who is behind the Government? The people. Therefore it is the people who constitute the basis of Government credit. Why then cannot the people have the benefit of their own gilt-edged credit by receiving non-interest bearing currency… instead of the bankers receiving the benefit of the people’s credit in interest-bearing bonds?”
OCTOBER 19
1987 – U.S. STOCK MARKET CRASH
Known as Black Monday, stock markets around the world crashed. The Dow Jones average dropped by 508 points. It was the largest one-day percentage decline in Dow Jones history.
OCTOBER 23
2008 – TESTIMONY OF ALAN GREENSPAN, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN, BEFORE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM (NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE)
“Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?”
Mr. Greenspan conceded: “Yes, I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I’ve been very distressed by that fact.” “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief.”
OCTOBER 24
2008 – PNC FINANCIAL SERVICES CORPORATION PURCHASES NATIONAL CITY CORPORATION
Using bank bailout funds under the federal TARP program, PNC, headquartered in Pittsburgh, purchases National City Corporation, a major Cleveland based bank. The transaction created the 5th largest U.S. banking corporation. TARP funds were intended to assist struggling banks. The funds ended up in many cases, like PNC, enlarging “too-big-to-fail” banking corporations.
OCTOBER 27
1945 – BIRTH OF LULA DE SILVA, PRESIDENT OF BRAZIL (2003-2010)
“The Third World War has already started. The war is tearing down Brazil, Latin America, and practically all the Third World. Instead of soldiers dying, there are children. It is a war over the Third World debt, one which has as its main weapon, interest, a weapon more deadly than the atom bomb, more shattering than a laser beam.”
OCTOBER 29
1897 – DEATH OF HENRY GEORGE, AUTHOR OF “POVERTY AND PROGRESS,” POLITICIAN AND ECONOMIST
On the other hand it is the business of government to issue money. This is why the issuance of this money should be made a government function become still stronger. The evils entailed by wildcat banking in the United States are too well remembered to need reference. The loss and inconvenience, the swindling and corruption that flowed from the assumption by each State of the Union of the power to license banks of issue ended with the war, and no one would now go back to them. Yet instead of doing what every public consideration impels us to, and assuming wholly and fully as the exclusive function of the General Government the power to issue money, the private interests of bankers have, up to this, compelled us to the use of a hybrid currency, of which a large part, though guaranteed by the General Government, is issued and made profitable to corporations. The legitimate business of banking – the safekeeping and loaning of money, and the making and exchange of credits, is properly left to individuals and associations; but by leaving to them, even in part and under restrictions and guarantees, the issuance of money, the people of the United States suffer an annual loss of millions of dollars, and sensible increase the influences which exert a corrupting effect upon their government.
1929 – US STOCK MARKET CRASH
Known as "Black Tuesday," October 29 was the worst day in stock market history. Since everyone was selling and no one was buying, stock prices collapsed. The crash was due to policies of the Federal Reserve which had made money cheap to borrow. Too much money was concentrated in too few hands. Cheap money resulted in wild speculation (booms or bubbles) in financial instruments, the stock market and office buildings rather than useful and necessary goods and services. Speculation was rampant. Understanding what was happening, but not admitting it to the public, the Fed significantly contracted the US money supply by raising interest rates to borrow money. Not enough money was available to meet economic needs. The speculative bubbles burst, triggering what became the Great Depression.
OCTOBER 30
1735 – BIRTH OF JOHN ADAMS, 2ND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword, the other is by debt."
"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America aeise, not from the defects of the Constitution or confederation, not from the want of honour or virtues, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nation, of coin, credit and cirrculation."
1840 – BIRTH OF WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER, PROFESSOR, YALE UNIVERSITY AND MONETARY THEORIST
“For as the currency question is of first importance and we cannot solve it or escape it by ignoring it. We have got to face it and the best way to begin is not by wrangling about speculative opinions as to untried schemes but to go back to history and try to get hold of some firmly established principles.”
1885 – BIRTH OF EZRA POUND, US POET AND CRITIC
Some of his poetry deals with the destructive moral and social effects of usury, or usura, such as his Canto XLV:
“…Usura rusteth the chisel
It rusteth the craft and the craftsman
It gnaweth the thread in the loom
None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;…”
OCTOBER 31
1874 – PUBLICATION OF OCTOBER ISSUE OF INDUSTRIAL AGE MAGAZINE
“The religious press has almost without exception been the allies of the bondholders and bankers in their endless schemes to fleece the public, and the mouthpiece of the monopolists and the defender of the soulless corporations that fill their pockets by robbing the toiling people.”
November
NOVEMBER 1
1873 – PASSAGE OF THE COINAGE ACT BY CONGRESS
The fourth coinage act passed by Congress, the 1873 bill “demonetized” silver – meaning silver was no longer accepted as currency or used as a metal to back paper money. Only gold was now accepted as currency and used to back paper money. With the money supply now contracted, the US went into an economic depression. The demonitization of silver was also not apparent in the bill at the time of passage. When this became public, there was national outrage. Congressional passage became known as “the Crime of ’73.”
NOVEMBER 2
1832- RE-ELECTION OF ANDREW JACKSON, 7TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
"The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government ... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it." "If Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations." "I have no hesitation to say if they can re-charter the bank, with this hydra of corruption, they will rule the nation and its charter will be perpetual and its corrupting influence destroy the liberty of our country."
NOVEMBER 5
1818- BIRTH OF BENJAMIN BUTLER, UNION ARMY CIVIL WAR GENERAL AND MEMBER OF THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE
“I stand here, therefore, for inconvertible paper money, the greenback, which has fought our battles and saved our country, which has been held by us as a just equivalent for the blood of our soldiers, the lives of our sons, the widowhood of our daughters, and the orphanage of their children. I stand here for a currency by which the business transactions of forty million people are safely and successfully done, which, founded on the faith, the wealth, and property of the nation, is at once the exemplar and engine of its industries and power—that money which saved the country in war and has given it prosperity and happiness in peace. To it four million men owe their emancipation from slavery; to it labor is indebted for elevation from that thrall of degradation in which it has been enveloped for ages. I stand for that money, therefore, which is by far the better agent and instrument of exchanged of an enlightened and free people than gold and silver the money alike of the barbarian and the despot.” [Speech on House floor, January 12, 1869 on national currency]
NOVEMBER 6
2012 – ELECTION DAY IN THE UNITED STATES
It may be impossible to believe in our corporate-dominated elections where corporations and the wealthy few decide which candidates are “electable,” what issues are dis(cussed) and what constitutes “news,” but there were some federal elections in our nation’s history where the nature of money and democratic control over the issuing and circulation of our nation’s money was one of, if not THE, major issues in the campaign [i.e. 1832 election of Andrew Jackson and 1896 election of William McKinley over William Jennings Bryan].
1841 – BIRTH OF NELSON ADRICH, US SENATOR (R.I.), LEADER OF REPUBLICAN PARTY IN THE SENATE
Alrich was the major Senate proponent of the Federal Reserve Act. He railroaded the bill through both houses of Congress in the fall and winter of 1913. Alfred Crozier, an Ohio attorney and author of the book US Money vs Corporation Currency, testified before Congress against the Aldrich bill. He said, “The… bill grants just what Wall Street and the big banks for 25 years have been striving for, namely, private instead of public control of currency. [The bill] robs the Government and the people of all effective control over the public money supply and vest in the banks exclusively the dangerous power to make money among the people scarce or plenty.”
NOVEMBER 7
1775 - QUAKERS OF PHILADELPHIA REFUSE TO ACCEPT “CONTINENTALS”
The Continental Congress issued their own money, “continentals,” to facilitate economic transactions during the time of the American Revolution. The money was used in large part to pay for the war, since British and Spanish money was in short supply. Continentals helped the colonists win the war. As pacificts, however, Quakers of Philadelphia argued beginning on this day they couldn't touch money created to fight a war.
1846 - AMENDMENT TO ARKANSAS CONSTITUION ADOPTED
Among the first acts of the new state was chartering two private banking corporations. A depression, lasting from approximately 1834 to 1844, was in progress at the time, including the famous panic of 1837, causing inflation, speculation and “wildcat banking." As a result of these failures, the first amendment to the Constitution of Arkansas of 1836, ratified by the state legislature on November 17, 1846 read: "No bank or banking institution shall be hereafter incorporated or established in this State,” which lasted until after the Civil War.
1931 – PUBLISHED LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF ALBERT EINSTEIN IN BERLINER TAGEBLATT
“The gold standard has, in my opinion, the serious disadvantage that a shortage in the supply of gold automatically leads to a contraction of credit and also of the amount of currency in circulation… The natural remedies to our troubles are, in my opinion...Control of the amount of money in circulation and of the volume of credit in such a way as to keep the price level steady, abolishing any monetary standard.”
NOVEMBER 9
1910 – BIRTH OF CARROLL QUIGLEY, AMERICAN HISTORIAN AND THEORIST OF THE EVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATIONS
"The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds' central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups." Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time
2011- FEDERAL RESERVE AWARENESS DAY
Sponsored by the US Occupy movement, teach-ins and forums took place in several locations across the country to expose the true nature of the largely private Federal Reserve system.
NOVEMBER 10
1796 - BIRTH OF WILLIAM GOUGE, EDITOR AND WRITER
Gouge edited the " Philadelphia Gazette" and other journals, and for thirty years contributed articles on banking to various periodicals. He was for thirty years connected with the treasury department at Washington. He published "History of the American Banking System" (1835); " Expediency of Dispensing with Bank Paper" (1837); and a "Fiscal History of Texas" (1852)
“As it is public credit that supports the Banks, and not the Banks that support public credit, as the deposits of the Banks are the property of the community generally and the profits derived from circulation come from the community generally they ought to go to the community generally and be used to lighten the burden of taxation."
"The banking system is the principal cause of social evil in the United States."
NOVEMBER 12
1999 – ENACTMENT OF FINANCIAL SERVICES MODERNIZATION ACT (ALSO KNOWN AS GRAMM-LEACH-BLILEY ACT)
The act removed many barriers contained in the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, including those that separated banking, securities and insurance corporations. The result was massive combination and consolidation within the financial sector – creating enormously powerful institutions.. The bill was pushed for by leading Republicans in Congress, including Phil Gramm and signed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.
NOVEMBER 13
1856 – LOUIS BRANDEIS, US SUPREME COURT JUSTICE (1916-1939)
“The goose that lays golden eggs has been considered a most valuable possession. But even more profitable is the privilege of taking the golden eggs laid by somebody else's goose. The investment bankers and their associates now enjoy that privilege. They control the people through the people's own money.” Louis Brandeis, Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It (1913)
NOVEMBER 15
1637 – WAMPUM ACCEPTED AS CURRENCY
On November 15, 1637 the Massachusetts General Court stated that wampum beads would pass at 6 to a penny and were to be legal as payment in sums under 12 pence http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/Wampum.intro.html
NOVEMBER 16
1914 – US FEDERAL RESERVE OPENS FOR BUSINESS
“Commercial banks create checkbook money whenever they grant a loan, simply by adding new deposit dollars in accounts on their books in exchange for a borrower's IOU.” From I Bet You Thought, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
2006 – DEATH OF MILTON FRIEDMAN, US ECONOMIST
"The Federal Reserve definitely caused the Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one-third from 1929 to 1933."
NOVEMBER 19
1831 – BIRTH OF JAMES GARFIELD, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
"Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce, and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate."
NOVEMBER 20
1910 -- DEATH OF LEO TOLSTOY, RUSSIAN WRITER AND SOCIAL REFORMER
"Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal, there is no human relation between master and slave. "
NOVEMBER 21
1944 – BIRTH OF DICK DURBIN, US SENATOR, ILLINOIS
"And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”
Interview on WJJG 1530 AM's "Mornings with Ray Hanania," April 2009
NOVEMBER 22
1879 – BIRTH of RALPH HAWTREY, FORMER SECRETARY OF TREASURY, ENGLAND.
"Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing."
NOVEMBER 23
1910 – JEKYLL ISLAND MEETING TO PLAN FOR US PRIVATE CENTRAL BANK
Attending this secret meeting were US Senator Nelson Aldrich; A. Piatt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury; Frank Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of New York; Henry P. Davison, senior partner of J.P. Morgan Company; D. Norton, president of the Morgan-dominated First National Bank of New York; Benjamin Strong (a lieutenant of J.P. Morgan); and Paul Warburg, connected to the banking house of Kuhn, Loeb. The meeting would lead to the Aldrich bill, which eventually led to the Federal Reserve Act, passed in 1913.
NOVEMBER 25
1874 – GREENBACK PARTY FOUNDED
The Greenback Party was founded on this day at a convention in Indianapolis. Many of its members were farmers hurt by the financial Panic of 1873 (also known as the “Crime of ‘73”). The party supported “Greenback” paper money (U.S. Notes) issued and spent into circulation by the Lincoln administration. They opposed all money systems backed by any precious metal, believing that those who owned gold or silver (banks and corporations) would possess the power to define the value of products and labor. Government control of the US money system would also ensure sufficient quantity of money was in circulation to help small businesses and farmers. Twenty one independent congressmen, mostly Greenbackers, were elected in 1878.
NOVEMBER 30
1835 – BIRTH OF MARK TWAIN
"I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars."
December
DECEMBER 1
1135 – DEATH OF KING HENRY I OF ENGLAND
About 1100, King Henry, short on gold money, created a unique form of government issued money – Tally Sticks. These sticks were just that – polished pieces or sticks of wood with notches of a certain size to indicated the value of the wood. They were declared by the King as money and issued for purchases. They were accepted by the King for payment of taxes. Tally Sticks was an accepted debt-free government-issued money system of England for over 700 years, including the period of the rise of the British Empire.
DECEMBER 4
1975 – DEATH OF GRAHAM TOWERS, GOVERNOR, BANK OF CANADA, 1934-54
"Each and every time a bank makes a loan, new bank credit is created - new deposits - brand new money."
DECEMBER 5
1782 – BIRTH OF MARTIN VAN BUREN, 8TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
“The MONEY POWER…when firmly established, was destined to become the only kind of an Aristocracy that could exist in our political system.” (Note, Van Buren always capitalized “MONEY POWER” when using the term.)
Van Buren was Vice President when President Jackson refused to support the re-chartering of the private, mis-named “Second Bank of the United States” – the nation’s central bank at the time (equivalent in some ways to the Federal Reserve Bank of today). The Bank had originally been chartered for 20 years in 1816. A corporate charter was considered then a democratic tool, a means for the public to define the actions of a corporation to ensure it remained subordinate to meeting public needs (something We the People have forgotten today). After the Bank charter was dissolved (which meant the Bank could no longer create money as debt), Jackson and Van Buren sought to replace the money system with coinage or bank notes convertible to gold/silver. But this was an insufficient amount of currency needed to supply the growing the US economy. Currency contracted. The nation experienced the worst depression up to that time beginning in 1837.
DECEMBER 6
1921 – THOMAS EDISON QUOTE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
“If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good... If the Government issues bonds, the brokers will sell them. The bonds will be negotiable; they will be considered as gilt edged paper. Why? Because the government is behind them, but who is behind the Government? The people. Therefore it is the people who constitute the basis of Government credit. Why then cannot the people have the benefit of their own gilt-edged credit by receiving non-interest bearing currency… instead of the bankers receiving the benefit of the people’s credit in interest-bearing bonds?”
DECEMBER 9
1768 – BIRTH OF JOSEPH DESHA, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE, KY
"This accumulation of foreign capital (in the First Bank of the U.S.) was one of the engines for overturning civil liberty and I have no doubt that King George was a principal stock holder."
1946 – BIRTH OF SONIA GANDHI, PRESIDENT, HEAD OF CONGRESS, INDIA
“Let me take you back to Indira Gandhi’s bank nationalization of 40 years ago. Every passing day bears out the wisdom of that decision. Public sector financial institutions have given our economy the stability and resilience we are now witnessing in the face of the economic slowdown.”
DECEMBER 10
1896 – DEATH OF ALFRED NOBEL, INVENTOR AND BENEFACTOR OF NOBEL PRIZES
Each year, annual international awards are bestowed to honor great scientific and cultural advances. Nobel’s great-grandnephew, Peter Nobel, in 2001 asked the Bank of Sweden to differentiate its award to economists given "in Alfred Nobel's memory" from the five other awards. He said, "The economics prize, awarded by the Swedish Rupsbank, runs counter the idealism in Alfred Nobel's declaration that the prizes should be awarded to those who have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind - the vast majority of economic prizes have gone to people who reflect the dominating western view of the world. It's doubtful whether this really is of benefit to all mankind."
1690 - PAPER MONEY ISSUED BY MASSACHUSETTS
Faced with an pressing need to fund military action against Canada during King William's War, the Massachusetts colonial government authorized the issuing of £7,000 in public paper currency. This was the first public paper money issued in the history of Western civilization. The paper money possessed no intrinsic value. Its only value was that it was backed by the colony, accepted for tax payments. The notes could be redeemed for hard currency if such currency was available.
http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCurrency/CurrencyText/MA-1690-1750.html
DECEMBER 13
1953 – BIRTH OF BEN BERNANKE, CHAIRMAN OF THE US FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM
The Federal Reserve is a largely private system, despite the word “Federal” in its title. The 12 Regional Federal Reserve banks are private (e.g. Fed banks appear in the business not government pages of phone books and its employees are not on the government payrolls).
Bernanke said on May 17, 2007:
"All that said, given the fundamental factors in place that should support the demand for housing, we believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime sector on the broader housing market will likely be limited, and we do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system. The vast majority of mortgages, including even subprime mortgages, continue to perform well. Past gains in house prices have left most homeowners with significant amounts of home equity, and growth in jobs and incomes should help keep the financial obligations of most households manageable." Less than 1 year later, the housing market collapsed.
On October 31, 2007 he stated:
"It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve – nor would it be appropriate – to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions."
Turned out the Fed provided $1.2 trillion in secret loans to many of the nation’s biggest banks from 2007-9 which allowed them to grow even bigger. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html
This bail out of Wall Street by the Fed was not accompanied by any bail out of Main Street (small businesses) or the side streets (homeowners). The Fed served its constituents – banks.
2009 – DEATH OF PAUL A. SAMUELSON, ECONOMIST, AUTHOR OF ECONOMICS, AN INTRODUCTORY ANALSYS (BEST SELLING ECONOMICS TEXTBOOK OF ALL TIME)
“Few understand that all our money arises out of debt and IOU operations. The banking system as a whole can do what each small bank cannot do: it can expand its loans and investments many times the new reserves of cash created for it, even though each small bank is lending out only a fraction of its deposits.”
DECEMBER 15
1793 – BIRTH OF HENRY CAREY, PRESIDENT LINCOLN’S CHIEF ECONOMIC ADVISOR
Carey advised Lincoln on creating public money, Greenbacks, rather than take loans from private banks. He helped prevent the destruction of Greenbacks by the National Banking Act and its subsequent modifications (which were presented as monetary “reforms”) by banks but with the intent of eliminating Greenbacks.
2008 – PNC FINANCIAL SERVICES CORPORATION ACQUIRES NATIONAL CITY BANKING CORPORATION
The Federal Reserve Board announced that it has approved the application of PNC Financial Services to acquire National City Corporation. PNC was a major recipient of federal bailout funds. Rather than use the funds to help distressed underwater homeowners, the Pittsburgh based banking corporation used the funds to acquire Cleveland-based National City Bank, and thus, contributing to a further consolidation and concentration of the “too-big-to-fail” banking industry in the United States.
DECEMBER 17
1784 – BIRTH OF WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING, 10TH PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA (1935-1948)
"Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nations laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile."
2010 – NATIONAL EMERGENCY EMPLOYMENT DEFENSE (NEED) ACT, HR 6550, IS INTRODUCED IN CONGRESS
Congressman Kucinich (D-OH) introduced a dramatic new proposal to establish fiscal integrity, reassert Congressional sovereignty and regain control of monetary policy from private banks. The NEED Act would allow the federal government to directly fund badly-needed infrastructure repairs and fund education systems nationwide by spending money into circulation without increasing the national debt. The bill would end the current practice of fractional reserve lending, whereby the economy depends upon private financial institutions to lend money into circulation.
Congressman Kucinich stated, “The staggeringly bad employment and economic numbers represent a massive problem which cries out for bold action. Rather than crossing our fingers and hoping that banks will finally lend some of the billions of public dollars they haven’t thus far seen fit to lend, we can take action. My bill would replace the Federal Reserve System’s dependence on private banks to create credit. In its place, a Monetary Authority under the Treasury Department would directly inject liquidity into the economy by purchasing much needed public infrastructure repair. Today, we have idle capital, millions of able-bodied but unemployed workers, unused equipment, and record low interest rates. These conditions are the best possible time to make a long-term investment in our nation’s infrastructure. My bill would do exactly that.”
The bill was reintroduced in 2011, (HR 2990)
DECEMBER 18
1977 - DEATH OF MARRINER S. ECCLES, FORMER CHAIRMAN AND GOVERNOR OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM
"That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money. "
DECEMBER 20
1666 - FREE COINAGE LAW PASSED, ENGLAND
Charles II placed control of the nation’s money supply in private (bankers) hands following passage of this act. Up until that time, the Sovereign (King, Queen, etc.) had exclusive power over the issuance of money creation.
DECEMBER 21
2012 - END OF THE MAYAN CALENDAR
The Mayans did not believe the end of their 5,125 year calendar marked the end of the world, but rather the end of an old order. In its place would be people with a higher degree of awareness and consciousness.
Part of any such awareness and consciousness will surely include enlightenment and eventual replacement of the unsustainable Ponzi scheme which is the global financial system of credit and debt. The massive and ever-growing debts world-wide, a result of debt-based money systems, cannot be repaid. The system requires continual plundering of non-renewable resources which is transformed into “stuff” (much of it simply not needed) with its waste (pollution) externalized to acquire the money to pay off the ever growing debt which initially funded the plundering.
The end is near alright – of this dangerous, disempowering and distorted financial system.
DECEMBER 23
1913 – FEDERAL RESERVE ACT PASSES CONGRESS – CREATING FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM
The Act created a largely corporate controlled national banking and currency system. It was a major coup for banking corporations through the establishment of a private central bank authorized to "monetize" government debt (i.e. to print their own money and exchange it for government securities or I.O.U.'s). The central banking system was composed of 12 regional private/corporate banks owned by participating commercial banks. All national banks were required to join the system. Banking corporations now controlled the issuance and circulation of our national currency. By controlling our national money faucet, they could create inflation and deflation. This corporate monopolization of our currency allowed for public regulation, but not control. It was now banking corporations, not the US government, that was in control of the national currency.
DECEMBER 24
1294 – PAPACY OF POPE BONIFACE VIII BEGINS
Benedetto Gaetani became Pope of the Catholic Church on Christmas Eve, 1294. He instituted the first Christian “Jubilee” in 1300. Jubilee has both Jewish and Christian roots. According to Wikipedia, “The concept of the Jubilee is a special year of remission of sins and universal pardon. In the Biblical Book of Leviticus, a Jubilee year is mentioned to occur every fifty years, in which slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest.” It was also common for land to be returned. Pope Boniface VIII conditioned the forgiving of sins and debt on personal confessions and pilgrimages to sacred sites (i.e. basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome) at least once a day for a specified time.
DECEMBER 25
2012 YEARS AGO – CLAIMED BIRTH DATE OF JESUS
In his book, Money and its True Function, author FR Burch said, “As long as Christ confined his teachings to the realm of morality and righteousness, He was undisturbed; it was not till He assailed the established economic system and 'cast out' the protiteers and 'overthrew the tables of the money changers,' that He was doomed. The following day He was questioned, betrayed on the second tried on the third and on the fourth crucified.”
1983 – DEATH OF ROBERT H. HEMPHILL, CREDIT MANAGER, ATLANTA FEDERAL RESERVE BANK
"This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the Commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. "
DECEMBER 28
1856 – BIRTH OF WOODROW WILSON, 28TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNTIED STATES
“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.”
1947 – BIRTH OF SPENCER BACHUS, CONGRESSPERSON, ALABAMA, REPUBLICAN CHAIR OF THE HOUSE FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE
"In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."
DECEMBER 31
1781 – BANK OF NORTH AMERICA ESTABLISHED
This was the nation’s first private commercial bank. The Articles of Confederation was the nation’s constitution at that time. Article 9 of the Articles gave Congress the power to “emit bills of credit” -- to create money. By a single vote, Congress voted to willingly transfer their authority to issue money to the The Bank of North America when it chartered the bank on December 31, 1781. Thus, the Bank served as a quasi national central bank. Why did Congress willingly give up their money power? The public argument was that the business of finance could not be ably conduced by a public body (Congress) — only by a small number of private financiers. The first head of the Bank was Robert Morris, the richest merchant in America. This same argument against public issuance of money is made today – a public body can’t be trusted to create and distribute our nation’s money supply. The result is the creation and distribution of our nation’s money supply by banking corporations.
