Money, Banks and Democracy: The reality beneath the ideological fantasies and spin

"Power follows property."

The Golden Rule, as cynically applied by the financial elite: "He who holds the gold makes the rules."

Of course, if you can dispense with the need for gold, and still make the rules, that's even better.

I think the evidence is enormously strong that democratically elected governments need to have greater control over their national currencies, not less. The "independence" of a privately owned central bank means economic policies which benefit the private bank's shareholders, rather than the people of the nation.

There is simply overwhelming evidence to support this view. Without democratic control of national currency, via democratically elected bodies such as Congress, sovereignty becomes an impossibility. We need to be dealing with reality here, not ideology.

Central banks that are privately owned - that is, controlled by large corporations or small groups of financial elites - tend to damage national economies while benefiting the financial elite, and more critically, undermine all ability of democratic governments to hold real power on behalf of the people, giving power to the bankers and corporations, and removing effective power from parliament or Congress.

Allowing private empires, such as those who control the FED, to "manage" the nation's money is pretty much letting the wolves guard the hen house. Democratically elected governments have the right, the mandate and the power to print and control the nation’s currency.

To forgo this right and pass this power to highly concentrated financial dynasties, is both unwise and highly dangerous. Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln knew this, and fought to prevent the handing over of control of the nation's currency to a private bank. They were far more prescient than most people or politicians today. Their advice on keeping the central bank public and democratically controlled should have been heeded. Having failed to heed their warnings, we must today correct our mistake. The issue of control over national currency is absolutely central. All talk of freedom or democracy is meaningless and hollow if this is not addressed.

William Lyon Mackenzie King

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.

Thomas Jefferson

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, 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 civilized world - no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
-President Woodrow Wilson

Lord Acton

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.

James Madison

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.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild

Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws.

Napoleon Bonaparte

When a government is dependent upon bankers 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; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.

Lord Acton

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear.

David Rockefeller writes on pages 404 and 405 of his memoirs:
"The anti-Rockefeller focus of these otherwise incompatible
political positions [across the political spectrum] owes
much to Populism. 'Populists' believe in conspiracies, and
one of the most enduring is that a secret group of
international bankers and capitalists, and their minions,
control the world's economy. Because of my name and
prominence as the head of the Chase for many years, I have
earned the distinction of 'conspirator in chief' from some
of these people…Some even believe we are part of a secret
cabal working against the best interests of the United States,
characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of
conspiring with others around the world to build a more
integrated global political and economic structure - one
world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty,
and I am proud of it."

Samuel Adams

If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.

Charles A. Lindbergh

This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs the Bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalised... The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency Bill.

H. L. Birum, Sr.

The Federal Reserve Bank is nothing but a banking fraud and an unlawful crime against civilization. Why? Because they "create" the money made out of nothing, and our Uncle Sap Government issues their "Federal Reserve Notes" and stamps our Government approval with NO obligation whatever from these Federal Reserve Banks, Individual Banks or National Banks, etc.

Grace Commission

100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal Debt ... all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services taxpayers expect from government.

Henry Ford

It is well enough that 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.

Robert A. Heinlein

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

Lord Acton

Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

Thomas Jefferson

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Samuel Adams

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

Thomas Jefferson

Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.

Buddha

Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings -- that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.

John Adams

Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.

Samuel Adams

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.

"The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone." - James Madison

"It is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it." - Thomas Jefferson

John F. Hylan

The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities states and nation. At the head is a small group of banking houses generally referred to as 'international bankers.' This little coterie... run our government for their own selfish ends. It operates under cover of a self-created screen...[and] seizes...our executive officers... legislative bodies... schools... courts... newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.

Justice Felix Frankfurter

The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.

Charles-Louis De Secondat

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

Major L. L. B. Angus

The modern Banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banks can in fact inflate, mint and unmint the modern ledger-entry currency.

"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. 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 pervasive -- that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." - Woodrow Wilson

Carroll Quigley

The powers of financial capitalism had (a) 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 meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.

“They must find it difficult…those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority.” – Gerald Massey

“Where is the knowledge that is lost in information?

Where is the wisdom that is lost in knowledge?”

- T.S. Elliot

“Put fear behind and save the country.” – Simon Bolivar

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

- Eleanor Roosevelt.

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending
too much liberty than to those attending too small
a degree of it.” – Thomas Jefferson

"If there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own -- that thing is the preservation of their own liberties and institutions." – Abraham Lincoln

"The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." - Abraham Lincoln

A diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty. - James Madison

"I have the Confederacy before me, and the bankers behind me, and for my country I fear the bankers most." - Abraham Lincoln.

Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day. – Thomas Jefferson

Money, Banks and Democracy

For a tutorial on the nature of money and banking, see the excellent film: Money As Debt. You can find it on Google Video.

Money As Debt

For a critical look at Friedmanite economics, see Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. (2007 book, film, interviews on Democracy Now!)

The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism - Democracy Now!

Other sources:

John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption" - Democracy Now!

Self-Described Economic Hit Man John Perkins: "We Have Created the World's First Truly Global Empire" - Democracy Now!

Free Market Fantasies, by Noam Chomsky 1/5

Monopoly Men (Federal Reserve Fraud)

Ron Paul on Federal Reserve, banking and economy

Ron Paul Challenges the Federal Reserve

Ron Paul of Texas - The End of Dollar Hegemony

Noam Chomsky - Emerging Framework of World Power

The Secret History of the CIA - John Stockwell

Former CIA agent Philip Agee on Permanent War

The Corporation

Life and Debt - Globalization and Jamaica

Noam Chomsky - Class War (Part 1)

America : Freedom to Fascism - Director's Authorized Version

The Power of Nightmares: BBC Dissects War on Terror - Part 1: Baby it's Cold Outside

*****“The End of America”: Naomi Wolf Warns U.S. in Slow Descent into Fascism - Democracy Now! |

“Liberal Democracy is moving toward a form of corporate dictatorship" - John Pilger on Propaganda, the Press, Censorship and Resisting the American Empire

Big Ideas That Changed The World : Democracy-Tony Benn

Smedley Butler and the Business Plot

How corporate America nearly destroyed democracy in the United States in 1933

It is unsurprising that powerful vested interests in business and government, as well as many within the media and academia who are devoted to these powers, attempt to shape perceptions, distort or conceal information, and do so with considerable success, even in relatively free and ostensibly democratic societies. What is almost amazing, however, is that at least one event of the greatest significance in the past one hundred years, was successfully erased from history and the peoples' awareness almost completely. I am talking about the little known "Business Plot" of 1933, in which a number of the most powerful of the American business elites, including individuals from General Motors, Prescott Bush, grandfather of George Bush Jr., J.P. Morgan and the Rockefeller dynasty, attempted to seize the White House by military coup, and to install a fascist regime in America. Americans as well as people across the Western world, indeed, the world as a whole, should know about his dark scheme by the business elite to destroy democracy, a scheme which would have been successful but for the integrity and courage of U.S. Major-General Smedley Butler.

We are extraordinarily fortunate that the business elite chose the wrong man for the job - that Smedley Butler, very intelligently, listened to the plotters' plans and went along with them long enough to find out who was involved, and then went immediately to Washington, and testified before Congress as to the atrocity which was being planned by some of the most powerful U.S. citizens and business "leaders."

This was the last straw for the highly decorated General. He wrote what should be required reading for all high school students, "War Is A Racket," in which he declared he has been a "gangster for capitalism" for over thirty years, on three continents. After having been corporate America's man for so long, leading the charge to secure territory, resources, cheap labour and markets for U.S. business interests, he was asked to go one step further in the betrayal of his conscience, and perform the same function at home: destroy democracy and install a business-friendly dictatorship. His stomach turned, his conscience revolted, and the rest, is history - or it would be, if it had not been erased.

In order to correct this dark and dangerous silence, it is important that Smedley Butler's tale now be told. In his own words:

“The U.S. has routinely destroyed democracy throughout the globe while its leaders spout words about spreading democracy.

“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 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. 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.

“During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

– Major-General Smedley Butler, 1933.


"According to retired Representative John W. McCormack, former Speaker of the House, if the late Major General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps had not been a stubborn devotee of democracy, Americans today could conceivably be living under an American Mussolini, Hitler, or Franco.

"An ironic aspect of the conspiracy General Butler unmasked is that few Americans have ever heard about it, or even know anything about the general.

"Former Speaker McCormack told the author, “In peace or war he was one of the outstanding Americans in our history. I can’t emphasize too strongly the very important part he played in exposing the Fascist plot in the early 1930’s backed by and planned by persons possessing tremendous wealth.”

"The crucial events of the plot to seize the White House unfolded between July and November, 1933, with hearings before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee begun in New York City on November 20, 1934. On November 26 the committee released a statement detailing the testimony it had heard, and its preliminary findings. On February 15, 1935, the committee submitted to the House of Representatives its final report, verifying completely the testimony of General Butler.

"There is strong evidence to suggest that the conspirators may have been too important politically, socially, and economically to be brought to justice after their scheme had been exposed before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee of the House of Representatives. The largely anti-Roosevelt press of the New Deal era scotched the story as expeditiously as possible."
(From The Plot To Seize the White House, by Jules Archer)


The story resurfaces:

In July of 2007 an American investigative journalist, John Buchanan, broke through more of the fog surrounding these largely buried events of critical importance to our understanding of both history and on-going political-economic realities of power in society. What he found was that in addition to the details already outlined here, it is established beyond any doubt that Prescott Bush, George Bush Jr's grandfather, was indeed involved in this grim and sinister plot. After this reporter again broke through the icy chill of silence and forgetfulness, a U.K. newspaper picked up the story, the Guardian, followed by the BBC, which did a full documentary on the subject. Since that one brave and determined journalist sought and found the truth, and unearthed the story in July 2007, there has been a growing revelation and interest surrounding this most astonishing, or at least, striking of events. Smedley Butler should be read and honoured, and the Business Plot both studied, and more importantly, learned from. The next coup against democracy may not be so direct, but no less dangerous. The price of freedom is in truth, eternal vigilance. This is neither paranoia nor "conspiracy theory" but simply a clear and honest understanding of history.

Research summary:
J. Todd Ring
(Free use with attribution)

(My apologies for the primitive formatting of this article. I'll polish it later. Content first.)


Articles, videos and books:


The White House Coup - BBC Documentary: US Business elite attempt to install fascism in America, 1933

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml


The Plot to Seize the White House, by Jules Archer

http://www.wanttoknow.info/plottoseizethewhitehouse
http://www.amazon.com/Plot-Seize-White-House-Conspiracy/dp/1602390363/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-3462640-4229555?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173652210&sr=8-1


By the way, the Bush family really does have a history of fascist sympathies and Nazi collaboration - something we might want to know: (Search "John Buchanan" Bush YouTube, if this link is deleted)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D6fxyOtVeI


In Search of History - The Plot to Overthrow FDR - History Channel

http://www.amazon.com/Search-History-Plot-Overthrow-Channel/dp/B000FKP0NM/ref=pd_sim_b_img_2


War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti-Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0922915865/ref=pd_cp_d_2?pf_rd_p=316286001&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000FKP0NM&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=13W9ZK7QKVFS2SMPXX4C


Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813109574/ref=pd_cp_d_3?pf_rd_p=316286001&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000FKP0NM&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=13W9ZK7QKVFS2SMPXX4C