100 Years Is Enough: Time to Make the Fed a Public Utility
100 Years Is Enough: Time to Make the Fed a Public Utility
Posted on Dec 22, 2013
By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt
December 23rd, 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve, warranting a review of its performance. Has it achieved the purposes for which it was designed?
The answer depends on whose purposes we are talking about. For the banks, the Fed has served quite well. For the laboring masses whose populist movement prompted it, not much has changed in a century.
Thwarting Populist Demands
The Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913 in response to a wave of bank crises, which had hit on average every six years over a period of 80 years. The resulting economic depressions triggered a populist movement for monetary reform in the 1890s. Mary Ellen Lease, an early populist leader, said in a fiery speech that could have been written today:
Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. . . . Money rules . . . .Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. . . .
We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out.
That was what they wanted, but the Federal Reserve Act that they got was not what the populists had fought for, or what their leader William Jennings Bryan thought he was approving when he voted for it in 1913. ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/100_years_is_enough_time_to_make_the_fed_a_public_utility_20131222
= new reply since forum marked as read
in fact, you wouldn't be able to loan money.
We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out.
It would be the government making loans, not private individuals/businesses. Why should individuals have that kind of power over another? To foreclose, to collect interest, to hold the power of 'the purse'? They may not be 'fair'. They may not take other factors into consideration, and only focus on the money... greed does that to people, I hear. 
Think about it, wouldn't it be great? You could get your car loan, and your tag and registration done in the same office. Your home mortgage, your home owners insurance, and your mail forwarded to the new address all at the same place. Not the same time, for sure, you would have to go stand in the separate lines, and someone will be with you as soon as the next clerk comes available. 
It wouldn't be right for the government to throw people in jail for not paying their debts, that's medieval. We don't want a nation filled with debtor prisons... I guess society will just have to absorb the costs. Raise taxes, cut expenses to people who don't neeeeeed it, and forgive the loans/debt.
Oh, wait, I know. This can all be resolved through tax subsidies. Based on a borrower's AGI, they would receive a credit up to and including 100% of the loan 'payment'. If a tax payer has the means to pay the loan, but doesn't, then they would face penalties through the IRS. That takes foreclosure out of the picture, and makes the jail time a matter of tax evasion.
That was the entire point of...
We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out.
I wonder if this line of reasoning could be expanded to other areas.
I'll have to think on it and get back to it later. Gotta turn in, have a doctor's appointment early tomorrow. 
