Reddit mentions of Banking And Currency And The Money Trust

You never responded to my reply to your previous comment where you incorrectly stated that there were no private owners of the federal reserve.

As you pointed out there and here, the Federal Reserve is owned by member banks, which are private. In short, this is a cartel, or trust, of private banks that own our Central Bank. As one of the many opponents of the Federal Reserve pointed out at the time, Congressman Charles Lindbergh:

>This [Federal Reserve Act] establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow 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.

― Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., Lindbergh On the Federal Reserve 1923 (renamed from The Economic Pinch, found online here) Edit: I can't find the quote attributed above in the online edition (which is the problem getting quotes from these websites that aggregate quotes), but I think it must come from his 1913 book, "Banking and the Money Trust." It certainly is consistent with his writings though.

See also Lindbergh's other books, Banking and Currency and the Money Trust (1913), and Why Your Country is at War (1917 ( "There is a sinister influence at work in our country, which if it is not checked, intends to completely undermine the original purpose of the formation of our government...and to bring all the world into one control and one system, which for purposes of deception of the plain people, they would call a "world democracy", but which in fact it is their plan to make the rule of the wealth grabbers, maintained by simple organization of themselves and disorganization of the masses, pitting the masses against each other... The few now desire to cut off every possible avenue of escape from industrial slavery for the masses.)

I also don't accept your representation that the Federal Reserve Act was popular. The question of whether to have a privately held central bank was one of the most contentious political issues from the beginning of the country. This contentious history has been obscured in our modern consciousness and standard history lessons. There were many people spitting mad about the Federal Reserve Act, like Charles Lindbergh, for good reason. [Just starting to look at his book, "The Economic Pinch", available online, and I see he describes the process of passing the legislation and his committees investigating the money trust, and I intend to read more on it.]

Also, the public does not control the Federal Reserve System, as you imply. At least it doesn't have total control, and in practice it's more like a marriage of convenience between the banking cartel and the politicians where the politicians agree to let the banking trust do what it wants and pretend to have oversight. The banking cartel on the other hand gets to point to the theoretical control the public has over it, as you do, as political cover.

Here is how the government pretends to oversee the Federal Reserve:

>There are 12 voting members of the FOMC [the committee that decides the most important policies]: the seven members of Board of Governors and the presidents of five of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks. . . .

>The appointment procedures for both the members of the Board of Governors and Reserve Bank presidents are designed to minimize the influence of politics on the FOMC. . . .

>Each Reserve Bank president is appointed for a five-year term by his/her Bank's board of directors, with the approval of the Board of Governors. Six of the nine directors, in turn, are chosen, not by politicians, but by the banks that belong to the Federal Reserve System, and three are chosen by the Board. . . .

Note that it was set up to give the Federal Reserve great independence (and indeed Congress has granted the Fed an expanded oversight role into more than just monetary policy . . . it could regulate the shadow banking system if it wanted to, for instance, or regulate usury).

Also note the varying layers that create obfuscation about who really runs things. There's the Board of Governors, the FOMC, the Reserve Bank Presidents, the Reserve Bank's Board of Directors, then of course the member banks in turn will have Presidents and Board of Directors, etc. It doesn't really matter which banks and individuals have an over-sized role in controlling the bank trust, because most of the member banks have similar interests.

Grandest_Inquisitor: ^^original ^^reddit ^^link

You never responded to my reply to your previous comment where you incorrectly stated that there were no private owners of the federal reserve.

As you pointed out there and here, the Federal Reserve is owned by member banks, which are private. In short, this is a cartel, or trust, of private banks that own our Central Bank. As one of the many opponents of the Federal Reserve pointed out at the time, Congressman Charles Lindbergh:

>This [Federal Reserve Act] establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow 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.

― Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., Lindbergh On the Federal Reserve 1923

See also Lindbergh's other books, Banking and Currency and the Money Trust, and Why Your Country is at War written in 1917 ( "There is a sinister influence at work in our country, which if it is not checked, intends to completely undermine the original purpose of the formation of our government...and to bring all the world into one control and one system, which for purposes of deception of the plain people, they would call a "world democracy", but which in fact it is their plan to make the rule of the wealth grabbers, maintained by simple organization of themselves and disorganization of the masses, pitting the masses against each other... The few now desire to cut off every possible avenue of escape from industrial slavery for the masses.)

I also don't accept your representation that the Federal Reserve Act was popular. The question of whether to have a privately held central bank was one of the most contentious political issues from the beginning of the country. This history has been obscured in our modern consciousness and standard history lessons. There were many people spitting mad about the Federal Reserve Act, like Congressman Lindbergh, for good reason.

Also, the public does not "control" the Federal Reserve System, as you state. At least it doesn't have total control, and in practice it's more like a marriage of convenience between the banking cartel and the politicians where the politicians agree to let the banking trust do what it wants and pretend to have oversight. The banking cartel on the other hand gets to point to the theoretical control the public has over it, as you do, as political cover.

Here is how the government pretends to oversee the Federal Reserve:

>There are 12 voting members of the FOMC [the committee that decides the most important policies]: the seven members of Board of Governors and the presidents of five of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks. . . .

>The appointment procedures for both the members of the Board of Governors and Reserve Bank presidents are designed to minimize the influence of politics on the FOMC. . . .

>Each Reserve Bank president is appointed for a five-year term by his/her Bank's board of directors, with the approval of the Board of Governors. Six of the nine directors, in turn, are chosen, not by politicians, but by the banks that belong to the Federal Reserve System, and three are chosen by the Board. . . .

Note that it was set up to give the Federal Reserve great independence (and indeed Congress has granted the Fed an expanded oversight role into more than just monetary policy . . . it could regulate the shadow banking system if it wanted to, for instance, or regulate usury).

Also note the varying layers that create obfuscation about who really runs things. There's the Board of Governors, the FOMC, the Reserve Bank Presidents, the Reserve Bank's Board of Directors, then of course the member banks in turn will have Presidents and Board of Directors, etc. It doesn't really matter which banks and individuals have an over-sized role in controlling the bank trust, because most of the member banks have similar interests.