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by dia80 5541 days ago
I listened to a lecture by the author of "The Creature from Jekyll Island" where he made some outrageous claims about the ownership of the Fed. I was trading US Govt. bond futures at the time and we went to some pains to understand the federal reserve system and to say he erred in fact is being generous. It was full of slavering nonsense, often with anti semetic overtones.

As a side point paper money is obviously extremely vulnerable if abused (see Zimbabwe) however the idea that your money supply should be dictated by mining is beyond primitive. Periods of rapid economic expansion will lead to deflation unless the state controls mining and has sufficient mineral reserves which then becomes the same thing as printing money.
3 comments
ynniv 5541 days ago
I haven't read "The Creature from Jekyll Island," but I have seen some good citations. It's probably better taken as an exposition of the motives of private central banking than an argument for a gold standard. The complication in US history comes from a private central banking cartel (the Federal Reserve) using the departure from a gold standard to their own profit. Through this (naive) lens, returning to a gold standard would help to keep monetary tricks in check.

Any modern currency reform should instead concentrate on public banking with a Fiat currency. This combination allows for controlled market expansion, with the everyday banking profits being distributed across the commonwealth. It should be noted that this would have no affect on the profits of investment banking, and would not require any substantial change to our current US Dollar economy.

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nomurrcy 5541 days ago
What kind of outrageous claims? (Just curious)

To me what is shocking is that most people thing the Federal Reserve (which is probably the most powerful institution in the country) is part of the government and not privately owned.

I work for a very large bank and most employees here think you're crazy if you tell them the Fed is a private bank.

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dpatru 5541 days ago
Can you cite some specific claims where the lecture was wrong?
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