Dr. Jekyll Island And Mr. Formaldehyde
Bruce Collins
February 15, 2007
"Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures;
and that when I reached years of reflection,
and began to look round me, and take stock of my progress and position in the world,
I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life."
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
In 1910, a group of powerful financiers traveled to Jekyll Island with the goal of controlling the money supply of the United States. Wearing deceptive duck hunting gear and clothing as the train chugged away from the station, they quickly dispensed of their costumes upon arrival and spent a little over a week at a JP Morgan owned resort, devising a diabolical plan. Led by Nelson Aldrich (the father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller), the small, elitist group gathered together with the intent of ruling over men through debt creation. Their monster was an institution they would name the Federal Reserve.
A plan must have a coordinated attack from several fronts in order for it to be successful. From stage left came John Maynard Keynes, an economist of socialistic persuasions with the kooky idea that government deficit spending was a good thing.
We’re all Keynesians now!” proclaimed President Nixon, a member of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations, as he took our country off of the gold standard and began the tumultuous demise of the fiat U.S. dollar.
After the dollar was decoupled from gold and the Fed was allowed to print money at will, we have seen our dollars devalued by over 90%. While this is a sobering fact, it is even more distressing that the average person on the street has no idea what causes the inflationary price increases all around them. Such has been the media and political cover up of the intentional theft of American wealth.
John Maynard Keynes would agree.
He wrote:
The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”
The economist that the United States embraced years ago is admitting in this statement that the government, and the Federal Reserve, confiscates wealth through inflation!
In fact, the power to create inflation and deflation rests with the Federal Reserve- it’s in the creation or tightening of liquidity!
Mr. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, along with his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, have been very successful at carrying the tradition of muddying the waters and calling it Progresso.
Now, before I begin, let’s frame the high esteem that has been placed on these men. Alan Greenspan is known in the media as the Maestro, a man who has been granted almost mythical status in the economic world. At this point, Bernanke also has been perched on a gargoyle-like pedestal not too far below.
In the sixties, the Maestro was a strong gold proponent who stated, “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.” Yet, during his tenure as Fed Chairman, Mr. Greenspan seemed to agree with Keynes that gold was simply a “barbarous relic”.
It was Greenspan who fueled the many booms over the last decade and a half with the most notable being the latest frenzy, the housing bubble. Greenspan and the Fed kept interest rates at 1%, allowing ridiculous speculation and loose credit to go on far too long. Over the next few years, we will be paying for this, particularly in the subprime arena, in massive foreclosures, personal bankruptcies and unforeseen banking calamities.
In his short time as the current Federal Reserve Chairman, Mr. Bernanke has also dodged the true nature of inflation. Embracing doctored CPI numbers, with misleading indicators and outrageous hedonics, which do not reflect true inflation, the Fed has done their best to mask the rising costs that seem painfully obvious to the man or woman on the street. They also conveniently did away with reporting M3, which determined money supply and was used by analysts to understand liquidity and inflation in the economy.
In a particularly bizarre statement in February 2004, the Maestro suggested that homeowners switch out of fixed rate mortgages into the cheaper adjustable rates. Jim Grant, the publisher of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, told the San Francisco Chronicle, that it was "the strangest bit of advice ever to be proffered by an American central banker."
It wouldn’t make sense to the typical observer why a former gold proponent would suggest Americans switch out of a fixed rate into a fluctuating rate. These adjustable rates that Greenspan was promoting are now coming due at much higher payments than if someone had stayed in the steady fixed rate of 2004.
It doesn’t make sense.
Unless, of course, you understand the first few paragraphs of this column!
and that when I reached years of reflection,
and began to look round me, and take stock of my progress and position in the world,
I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life."
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
In 1910, a group of powerful financiers traveled to Jekyll Island with the goal of controlling the money supply of the United States. Wearing deceptive duck hunting gear and clothing as the train chugged away from the station, they quickly dispensed of their costumes upon arrival and spent a little over a week at a JP Morgan owned resort, devising a diabolical plan. Led by Nelson Aldrich (the father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller), the small, elitist group gathered together with the intent of ruling over men through debt creation. Their monster was an institution they would name the Federal Reserve.
A plan must have a coordinated attack from several fronts in order for it to be successful. From stage left came John Maynard Keynes, an economist of socialistic persuasions with the kooky idea that government deficit spending was a good thing.
We’re all Keynesians now!” proclaimed President Nixon, a member of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations, as he took our country off of the gold standard and began the tumultuous demise of the fiat U.S. dollar.
After the dollar was decoupled from gold and the Fed was allowed to print money at will, we have seen our dollars devalued by over 90%. While this is a sobering fact, it is even more distressing that the average person on the street has no idea what causes the inflationary price increases all around them. Such has been the media and political cover up of the intentional theft of American wealth.
John Maynard Keynes would agree.
He wrote:
The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”
The economist that the United States embraced years ago is admitting in this statement that the government, and the Federal Reserve, confiscates wealth through inflation!
In fact, the power to create inflation and deflation rests with the Federal Reserve- it’s in the creation or tightening of liquidity!
Mr. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, along with his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, have been very successful at carrying the tradition of muddying the waters and calling it Progresso.
Now, before I begin, let’s frame the high esteem that has been placed on these men. Alan Greenspan is known in the media as the Maestro, a man who has been granted almost mythical status in the economic world. At this point, Bernanke also has been perched on a gargoyle-like pedestal not too far below.
In the sixties, the Maestro was a strong gold proponent who stated, “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.” Yet, during his tenure as Fed Chairman, Mr. Greenspan seemed to agree with Keynes that gold was simply a “barbarous relic”.
It was Greenspan who fueled the many booms over the last decade and a half with the most notable being the latest frenzy, the housing bubble. Greenspan and the Fed kept interest rates at 1%, allowing ridiculous speculation and loose credit to go on far too long. Over the next few years, we will be paying for this, particularly in the subprime arena, in massive foreclosures, personal bankruptcies and unforeseen banking calamities.
In his short time as the current Federal Reserve Chairman, Mr. Bernanke has also dodged the true nature of inflation. Embracing doctored CPI numbers, with misleading indicators and outrageous hedonics, which do not reflect true inflation, the Fed has done their best to mask the rising costs that seem painfully obvious to the man or woman on the street. They also conveniently did away with reporting M3, which determined money supply and was used by analysts to understand liquidity and inflation in the economy.
In a particularly bizarre statement in February 2004, the Maestro suggested that homeowners switch out of fixed rate mortgages into the cheaper adjustable rates. Jim Grant, the publisher of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, told the San Francisco Chronicle, that it was "the strangest bit of advice ever to be proffered by an American central banker."
It wouldn’t make sense to the typical observer why a former gold proponent would suggest Americans switch out of a fixed rate into a fluctuating rate. These adjustable rates that Greenspan was promoting are now coming due at much higher payments than if someone had stayed in the steady fixed rate of 2004.
It doesn’t make sense.
Unless, of course, you understand the first few paragraphs of this column!
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