FED Up: Founding Fathers, the Banking System, and the Federal Reserve
James P. Hodges, PhD
Cynthia F. Hodges, JD, LLM, MA
"Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and
of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned
to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers."
~ Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814
"If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and
banking system, there would be a revolution before morning."
~ President Andrew Jackson
In 1776, the American patriots declared independence from Great Britain and fought desperately for their freedom. They not only longed for political self-determination, but they also wanted to rid themselves of the financial noose the Bank of England had placed around their necks. Unfortunately, they were not able to permanently rid America of the international bankers who had infested it. Our current banking and economic crisis is, in some respects, a result of some of the same problems with which our Founding Fathers struggled.
Thomas Jefferson considered "[t]he system of banking [to be] a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens" (Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816). Jefferson warned that
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power of money should be taken from banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs. I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies."
(Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Monroe, January 1, 1815).
Jefferson lamented that private individuals - the bankers - were empowered to "regulate according to their own interests, the quantum of circulating medium for the nation -- to inflate, by deluges of paper, the nominal prices of property, and then to buy up that property at 1s. in the pound, having first withdrawn the floating medium which might endanger a competition in purchase..." (Thomas Jefferson to William C. Rives, 1819). Jefferson feared that "[t]he banks... have the regulation of the safety-valves of our fortunes, and... condense and explode them at their will" (Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1819).
Jefferson "sincerely believe[d]... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies..." (Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816). He said "[i]t is a cruel thought, that, when we feel ourselves standing on the firmest ground in every respect, the cursed arts of our secret enemies, combining with other causes, should effect, by depreciating our money, what the open arms of a powerful enemy could not" (Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, 1779).
Jefferson considered the Bank of the United States to be a serious threat to the Republic, and fought hard against it. According to Jefferson:
"[The] Bank of the United States... is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution... An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?"
(Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1803).
The banking Elite have been slowly implementing a global system of financial control accumulated in private hands. Those who control the issuance of money wield considerable power over national politics and policies. Mayer Amschel Rothschild said in 1828, "Allow me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who writes the laws." English Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, said in 1844 that "The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not
behind the scenes." According to U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Felix Frankfurter, "The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise their power from behind the scenes."
Jefferson explained that the banking system was creating an aristocracy in the United States that was at odds with the Republic:
"The bank mania... is raising up a moneyed aristocracy in our country which has already set the government at defiance, and although forced at length to yield a little on this first essay of their strength, their principles are unyielded and unyielding. These have taken deep root in the hearts of that class from which our legislators are drawn, and the sop to Cerberus from fable has become history. Their principles lay hold of the good, their pelf of the bad, and thus those whom the Constitution had placed as guards to its portals, are sophisticated or suborned from their duties."
(Thomas Jefferson to Josephus B. Stuart, 1817). David Rockefeller, a member of this "moneyed aristocracy" admitted to working against the Republic - and being proud of it - in his autobiography, Memoirs:
"For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. 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’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."
President Andrew Jackson considered such people to be "a den of vipers," and promised "by the Eternal God I will rout you out."
The robber barons have been able to steadily increase their domination over politics in various countries and even the global economy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote "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" (U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a letter written Nov. 21, 1933 to Colonel E. Mandell House).
The banking Elite's method of conquest is to usurp the power to create money from governments. The United States Constitution grants Congress the power to "coin Money [and] regulate the Value thereof" (Article I, Section 8). Unfortunately, Congress has allowed the private bankers to usurp that power to issue money and regulate its value.
In 1910, several of the world's leading bankers devised a central banking system for the United States. This system was to consolidate the power to issue and regulate the nation's money into the hands of a consortium of private bankers. This was by making the Federal Reserve the only entity that could legally introduce US paper currency into circulation. Congressman Charles A. Lindberg, Sr. complained that "[t]his Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President [Wilson] signs this bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalized. The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill." Henry Cabot Lodge also refused to support the bill. He said:
"Throughout my public life I have supported all measures designed to take the Government out of the banking business. This bill puts the Government into the banking business as never before in our history. The powers vested in the Federal Reserve Board seen to me highly dangerous especially where there is political control of the Board. I should be sorry to hold stock in a bank subject to such dominations. The bill as it stands seems to me to open the way to a vast inflation of the currency. I had hoped to support this bill, but I cannot vote for it cause it seems to me to contain features and to rest upon principles in the highest degree menacing to our prosperity, to stability in business, and to the general welfare of the people of the United States."
(Henry Cabot Lodge to Senator Weeks, December 17, 1913).
Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve became a reality in 1913 when the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law. President Woodrow Wilson lamented having done so. In 1916, he wrote:
"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."
Now, "The Federal Reserve (privately owned banks) are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen," according to Congressman Louis T. McFadden (Chairman of the U.S. Banking Currency Commission for 22 years).
Part of the problem is the dependence on paper money. Jefferson believed "Paper is poverty,... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself" (Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1788). He felt paper was too unstable and insecure:
"The evils of this deluge of paper money are not to be removed until our citizens are generally and radically instructed in their cause and consequences, and silence by their authority the interested clamors and sophistry of speculating, shaving, and banking institutions. Till then, we must be content to return quoad hoc to the savage state, to recur to barter in the exchange of our property for want of a stable common measure of value, that now in use being less fixed than the beads and wampum of the Indian, and to deliver up our citizens, their property and their labor, passive victims to the swindling tricks of bankers and mountebankers."
(Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1819). Jefferson described paper money as "froth and bubble":
"If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to anybody, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air... We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of 'a public debt being a public blessing,' and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper."
(Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813). George Washington was also against paper. He wrote: "Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice" (George Washington, letter to J. Bowen, Rhode Island, Jan. 9, 1787).
Jefferson advocated using coinage. According to him, "Specie is the most perfect medium because it will preserve its own level; because, having intrinsic and universal value, it can never die in our hands, and it is the surest resource of reliance in time of war" (Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813).
Jefferson offered a solution for restoring the U.S. banking system:
"Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs. It is the only fund on which they can rely for loans; it is the only resource which can never fail them, and it is an abundant one for every necessary purpose. Treasury bills, bottomed on taxes, bearing or not bearing interest, as may be found necessary, thrown into circulation will take the place of so much gold and silver, which last, when crowded, will find an efflux into other countries, and thus keep the quantum of medium at its salutary level. Let banks continue if they please, but let them discount for cash alone or for treasury notes."
(Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813)
President John F. Kennedy tried to implement Jefferson's solution by using silver coins. In 1963, he signed Executive Order 11110 which gave the Treasury Department the power to issue silver certificates as the base for U.S. currency. The idea was that once enough silver certificates were in existence, they would eliminate the demand for Federal Reserve notes.
President Abraham Lincoln had tried a variation on the theme, but he had stuck with paper. He had the Treasury Department issue "Greenbacks," which were non-interest bearing notes. He tried to change the system in this way, and hoped that "By Government creation of money, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest."
Unfortunately, both Kennedy and Lincoln were assassinated before their monetary reform policies could take hold and effect permanent change.
What, then, is the ultimate goal of the Elite bankers in brandishing so much power over our government?
If one is to believe insiders, then there is cause for concern for the continued existence of the Republic. Sen. George W. Malone of Nevada said in 1957 that there was a "preconceived plan to destroy the economic and social independence of the United States." This is part of the "march towards a world-government" that David Rockefeller has talked about. According to him, "[t]he supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the National auto determination practiced in past centuries" (David Rockefeller in an address to a Trilateral Commission meeting in June of 1991). Senator Barry Goldwater informed us in his 1964 book, No Apologies, that
"The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States.
The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate
the four centers of power--Political, Monetary, Intellectual, and Ecclesiastical."
Perhaps worse than a one world government is another dreadful possibility: enslavement. American Mercury Magazine warns "The invisible Money Power is working to control and enslave mankind. It financed Communism, Fascism, Marxism, Zionism, Socialism. All of these are directed to making the United States a member of a World Government ..." (AMERICAN MERCURY MAGAZINE, December 1957, p. 92).
Jefferson offers another solution out of this dilemma: the legislature must intervene. He says, "The evil has been produced by the error of their sanction of this ruinous machinery of banks; and justice, wisdom, duty, all require that they should interpose and arrest it before the schemes of plunder and spoilation desolate the country" (Thomas Jefferson to William C. Rives, 1819). Let us hope it is not too late...
For more information, I recommend the following video:
The Money Masters - How International Bankers Gained Control of America
It is described as a "historical documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure that rules our nation and the world today." From the description:
"The modern political power structure hasits roots in the hidden manipulation and accumulation of gold and other forms of money. The development of fractional reserve banking practices in the 17th century brought to a cunning sophistication the secret techniques initially used by goldsmiths fraudulently to accumulate wealth. With the formation of the privately-owned Bank of England in 1694, the yoke of economic slavery to a privately-owned "central" bank was first forced upon the backs of an entire nation, not removed but only made heavier with the passing of the three centuries to our day. Nation after nation, including America, has fallen prey to this cabal of international central bankers."
Watch interviews:
Cynthia F. Hodges, JD, LLM, MAAttorney at Law (WA)
Juris Doctor: South Texas College of Law (Houston, TX)
LLM (Environmental Law): Lewis and Clark Law School (Portland, OR)
Masters of Arts (Germanic Studies): The University of Texas at Austin
