October 13, 2008
by Clyde Cleveland

Robert H. Hemphill, Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Georgia, said:

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 defect remedied very soon.

Many of us worked hard in the last weeks to defeat the outrageous bail-out bill. Not only did they eventually pass it, but they added another 150 billion in outrageous spending to the original 700 billion (this will actually end up being countless trillions with much of it going to foreign banks).  In one of my letters I stated that if the bail-out bill passed, the hoped for increase in stock prices would be insignificant if it happened at all.

Last Monday the markets showed what they thought of the bail-out bill!  And the whole situation was created in the first place by allowing our government, in association with a cartel of private bankers (The Federal Reserve), to print money at their whim for almost a century. Now, of course, the situation is much worse, we have now given the government and bankers even more authority to print even more money out of thin air.

Here is an appropriate analogy;  There has been a massive and incredibly destructive campaign of arson all over the country.  Finally, after trillions of dollars of damage is done, they find the arsonist.  He is then tried and found guilty with irrefutable evidence.  It is then up to the people's elected representatives to make a decision of what the punishment will be.  Next, the people let their representatives know emphatically what they think, and the people of course respond with common sense, and their responses are almost 95 to 1 in favor of stopping the arsonist from ever being able to repeat his crimes again.

So the punishment is decided upon by the elected representatives.And their decision is to provide the arsonist with 700 billion gallons of gasoline, 150 billion matches and set him free!!

That is exactly what we did last week.  The government and Federal Reserve have been printing money and creating massive debt for decades creating a horrendous monetary crisis, and they fixed the problem by giving the government even more authority to do even more of the same thing!!   And they did it with over 95% of the people telling them not to do it!

So what is positive about this situation?  The fact that so many people responded and told their representatives not to pass this bill.  Also the fact that now so many people are aware that what "we the people" say does not make any difference. Finally America is starting to wake up to the fact that we are no longer a republic or a democracy.  We are, in fact, an oligarchy.

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit has been concentrated. The growth of the nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world - no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.
- Woodrow Wilson, a few years after realizing his mistake in signing the Federal Reserve bill.

Now I know that these are harsh realities to stomach for many people but what happened last week clearly shows that this is the case.  The fact that both candidates, (let's call them McBama,) were told what to say and how to vote shows that they are both puppets.  All one of them had to do was stand with the people and vote no to this travesty and they could have been elected in a landslide.

There is only one way we are going to come out of this mess with more freedom, prosperity and peace in our world.  We must have a highly educated public that understands what is happening economically.  I believe that the most important thing we can do at this time is educate everyone we know.  Everything I am going to give you now is available free on the internet so it can be read or viewed any time for free.  I stayed up again late tonight to increase my own understanding of what is happening. I finished half of "Beware the Alchemists" by Ludwig Von Mises and it is incredible. This is a compilation of speeches Mises gave in the 1960s.  Let me give you a couple of quotes from Mises to whet your appetite:

"What we have to realize is this: Every kind of human arrangement is connected in some way or other with money payments. And, therefore if you destroy the monetary system of a country or of the whole world, you are destroying much more than simply one aspect. When you destroy the monetary system, you are destroying in some regards the basis of all interhuman relations. If one talks of money, one talks about a field in which governments were doing the very worst thing which could be done, destroying the market, destroying human cooperation, destroying all peaceful relations between men."

"Modern constitutions, the political systems of all nations that are not ruled by barbarian despots, are based upon the fact that the government depends financially upon the people, indirectly upon the men that the voters have elected for the constitutional assembly. And this system means that the government has no power to spend anything that has not been given it by the people, through the constitutional procedures which make it possible for the government to collect taxes. This is the fundamental political institution. And it is a fundamental political problem if the government can inflate. If the government has the power to print its own money, then this constitutional procedure becomes absolutely useless."

"Our whole political system is based upon the fact that the voters are sovereign, that the voters are electing Congress and other such institutions in the various states that rule the country. We call the United States a democracy because the rule of the country is in the hands of the voters. The voters determine everything. And this distinguishes the system, not only from the despotic systems of other countries, but also from the conditions as they prevailed in earlier days, in countries that already had parliamentary institutions and parliamentary government, at that time.

However, there has developed, especially in the last decade, a problem of constitutional law, that is whether the government must get the approval of the people through Congress when it wants to spend, or whether the government, because it is established and has at its disposal a number of armed men, is free to spend as it wishes, simply by increasing the quantity of money. People must realize that the question is "Who should be supreme? The parliaments elected by the voters, who can restrict government spending by refusing to grant the power to tax? Or institutions that want to override the interests of the people by increasing the quantity of money to expand government spending and so do away with the prerogative and independence of the individual voter?"

Before I start with my list I have to tell you that I believe everyone should start this process by going to http://www.commonsenserevisited.org/ and reading COMMON SENSE; Revisited.   You can download the whole pamphlet for free.  It gives the reader an excellent perspective on the difference between surrogate power and indigenous power.  This is critical to understanding the whole issue of sovereignty that Mises mentions in this quote above. It also has a chapter on how vital it is to create a monetary system based on indigenous power.  This pamphlet (2.5 hour reading time) has been endorsed by the Campaign for LIberty.  You can order this in bulk and hand it out to everyone you know, most people are ordering a minimum of 50 copies and one man from Chicago ordered 300 copies at $1.00 a copy.

Now for the rest of the list:

First, an excellent one hour video called Fiat Empire. This is a fantastic link to send to your friends to start them on the learning process.

Secondly, I found this article, Economic Rape of America on the internet last night and read the whole thing in about 25 minutes. It is an excellent and concise description of the Federal Reserve, its history, and how it operates. The author uses examples to explain the mechanics. I really like this piece because it answers many basic questions about how the seemingly incomprehensible system works.

Now, before going on, my suggestion is to read and view again all three of these items; Common Sense Revisted, Fiat Empire, and The Economic Rape of America. With the life-time of conditioning we have all received it takes more than one reading/viewing of these materials to really sink in for most of us.  Then please continue to encourage others to get these three items spread around the country and watched by as many people as possible.

For more in depth study I suggest the following three books and articles on the Mises site - they are incredible for understanding what money is, how central banks work, and how incredibly important the monetary system is to freedom, peace and prosperity:

What Has Government Done to Our Money, Murry Rothbard

The Case for Gold, by Ron Paul

Beware the Alchemists, by Ludwig Von Mises

This link lists dozens of outstanding articles by various authors that will deepen your understanding of every aspect of the monetary issue.

The first step to eliminating the current corrupt system is getting educated but a close second is getting these two bills passed. Please go to DownsizeDC and read about these bills; "Honest Money Act" and  "Freedom of Currency Act" please tell your representatives in Congress that you want them to co-sponsor both of these bills so we can end legal tender laws and permit the private coining of money.

Another one of our favorite books on the Federal Reserve is a classic: The Creature from Jekyl Island, A Second Look at the Federal Reserve by G. Edward Griffin This one has to be ordered from http://www.realityzone.com/

I also like the Money Masters video: a 3.5 hour documentary on the history of central banking. The creators of this video promote a FIAT currency issued with out debt as the solution to our problems. We believe that you can never give a government this power as it will always end up being abused. So the documentary history in this video is outstanding and should be seen by everyone, however, their is flawed and counter to what is really a more natural law based solution, which is a currency backed by something precious and limited in its availability. The market has spoken over thousands of years and declared that gold and silver are real money.  You can go to their site and order the DVD, it is also on YouTube as well and the second link below may be available for free viewing.

I have one final quote to share with you before I retire for the night, it is such a classic and revealing message to all Americans.  Congressman Louis T. McFadden said the following during a speech before Congress on June 10, 1932:

Mr. Chairman, 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. The Federal Reserve Board, a government board, has cheated the Government of the United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and the iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks acting together have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.

Some people think the Federal Reserve banks are United States Government institutions. They are not government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders. In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man's throat to get a dollar out of his pocket; there are those who send money into states to buy votes to control our legislation; and there are those who maintain an international propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us and wheedling us into the granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime.

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Clyde Cleveland is a successful entrepreneur with a passion for saving the environment and securing individual freedom. He is the co-author of "Restoring the Heart of America, a Return to Government by the People". He was the Libertarian candidate for Governor of Iowa in 2002. He has also run for office as a Republican and was elected to the state platform committee for the Iowa Republican party in 2008.  Visit his website: Restoring the Heart of America.

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