- In the late 1960s, you could buy four or five heavy bags
of groceries at a supermarket for about $17. Today, you can carry $17 worth
groceries in a plastic sack hooked around your little finger. Ever wondered
why the change?
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- It's simple. Our currency has been devalued. When a nation's
currency is devalued, businesses and professions can raise prices and fees
to compensate for the loss of value. It's the working men and women who
get the shaft.
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- America's money and credit system is deliberately confusing.
The people who designed it were logically afraid that if people understood
it, they would never put up with it.
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- Let's start with the money in your pocket.
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- You will notice that it is a Federal Reserve Note. It
is redeemable in nothing. It is backed up by nothing. Its exchange value,
or purchasing power, is determined by the volume in circulation in comparison
with the goods and services available at any given time. What makes the
scam possible are those 11 little words tucked away in small type.
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- "This note is legal tender for all debts, public
and private."
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- Without a legal-tender law, people could defend themselves
against devaluation by simply switching to gold or silver or even to a
more-stable foreign currency, such as the Swiss franc. In the early days
of the Republic, there were many different kinds of money in use.
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- The next step in figuring all this out is to realize
that the Federal Reserve System is a privately owned central bank. It was
made confusing deliberately. There are 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks,
each one private and owned by the commercial banks. As in George Orwell's
Animal Farm, all the Federal Reserve Banks are equal, but the New York
Federal Reserve Bank is more equal than the others are. It handles the
government bonds, and its president has a permanent seat on the Federal
Reserve Board. This board, whose members are appointed by the president,
is a quasi-governmental organization. More quasi than governmental, I assure
you.
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- So here is how your money is devalued. When Congress
wants to spend $50 billion more than it collects in taxes, it goes to the
Federal Reserve. The government gives the Federal Reserve $50 billion in
government bonds, and the Federal Reserve adds $50 billion to the government's
checking account.
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- Seems reasonable. But there is a catch. Where does the
Federal Reserve get the $50 billion to put into the government's checking
account?
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- It creates it out of nothing, with a keystroke. The bonds
and the interest due on them are paid for with taxes, which is to say the
sweat and labor of the American people.
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- In the meantime, to stay with our example, $50 billion
in new money has been put into the system. In addition to that, the Federal
Reserve can manipulate the economy. To put more money into the system,
always in the form of debt at interest, it lowers interest rates; to take
money out of the system, it raises interest rates.
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- But always the Federal Reserve acts in the interests
of banks -- not in the interests of the people or the country.
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- Ignorant reporters have recently elevated the current
Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, to folk-hero status. Nothing
is more absurd.
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- Still, as another American hero said, "Stupid is
as stupid does."
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