Some History

Why Think Outside the Dollar?

By Mary Smith

America is not broken... but our money system sure is.

Imagine if Microsoft didn't have Apple for competition and only one option existed for a place to buy a computer. The idea of a monopoly is fundamentally un-American but the current money system, controlled by the Federal Reserve,  is the means by which are able to function as citizen consumers. The central banking system controlled by the Fed., enslaves average citizens under an ever-increasing burden of debt.

When we consider our current economic woes -- from the amount of debt the United States as a nation owes to foreign countries to the amount of money crushing individual Americans through credit card and student loan debt -- we are inclined to think this is a modern problem, caused by modern actions and modern global issues. In reality, it was a problem foreseen by our founding fathers, including John Adams, who wrote (quoted in Thomas Greco's book The End of Money. . .):

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress [social concerns] in America arise, not from the defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and currency." 

From 1837 to 1863 is known as the "Free Banking Era" in American economic history. The oversight of banking activities was turned over to the individual states and competition was allowed in the process of credit creation. Each bank was responsible for issuing their own currency and previous bank notes were redeemable for gold or silver. "Note brokers" profited off of exchanging currency from one state to another, as the value of different currencies decreased the further it travelled from its state of origin.

Free banking only came to a halt --not because it had failed as an experiment -- but because of the need for a centralized system due to the cost of the American Civil War.

The National Bank Act of 1863, in conjunction with other social, political and economic complexities of the post-Civil War era eventually set the stage for the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, in December 1913, establishing the Federal Reserve System as the recognized mode of national currency. There are well-documented irregularities associated with the formation of the Federal Reserve Bank  -- which is run by a contingent of private bankers who wield sole control over the ebb and flow of economies worldwide. Economist the late- Murray Rothbard said of its formation:

"The financial elites of this country, notably the Morgan, Rockefeller, and Kuhn, Loeb interests, were responsible for putting through the Federal Reserve System, as a governmentally created and sanctioned cartel device to enable the nation's banks to inflate the money supply in a coordinated fashion." (From Thomas Greco's book.)

President Woodrow Wilson -- who signed the Federal Reserve Act -- later came out in opposition to The New Freedom:

it, stating in his book

 "Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, 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 had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." 

 In the hundred years since the formation of the Federal Reserve, central banking has spread across the globe, flanked by powerful private investors. Economist and author, Thomas Greco writes in his book The End of Money "a collusion between the financial powers and the political powers." He argues that "the trend towards greater elite control has continued, though with a more diverse composition" than the original American and British financial elite, now expanding to include the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg groups alongside the families controlling the world's banking companies, including the Rothschilds.

Money that has allows only a select few to control the vast majority of the wealth at the expense of the people has brought us to the place where  we need to think outside the dollar.