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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums100 Years Is Enough: Time to Make the Fed a Public Utility
Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the bestselling Web of Debt. In The Public Bank Solution, her latest book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally
http://ellenbrown.com/2013/12/22/100-years-is-enough-time-to-make-the-fed-a-public-utility/#more-6959
100 Years Is Enough: Time to Make the Fed a Public Utility
(A few excerpts taken from Brown's Blog, must reading IMHO) Posted on December 22, 2013 by Ellen Brown
In The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon, published in 1973, Congressman Jerry Voorhis wrote of this concession:
It was done, quite obviously, as acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve Banks were acting on the one hand as a national bank of issue, creating the nations money, but on the other hand charging the nation interest on its own creditwhich no true national bank of issue could conceivably, or with any show of justice, dare to do.
In 1977, Congress gave the Fed a dual mandate, not only to maintain the stability of the currency but to promote full employment. The Fed got the mandate but not the tools, as discussed in my earlier article here.
It may be time for a new populist movement, one that demands that the power to issue money be returned to the government and the people it represents; and that the Federal Reserve be made a public utility, owned by the people and serving them. The firehose of cheap credit lavished on Wall Street needs to be re-directed to Main Street
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Imagine that? A banking system that enriches Main St. by solving debt/taxation, budget woes, eliminates austerity, promotes growth and sustainability that actually enriches the nation as a whole, not just the 1%? Wow...how novel, a system that might actually empower this nation? Who knew....the solution has been there all along, instead we are shock doctrined to death while the new slavery replaces the old and they want this poison to go global with TPP. Why aren't we demanding the change we need is in our banking system, the Fed serves only the 1%.
Time for a new populist movement, indeed. This is why Occupy had to be squelched...it was always about this battle, from days of old, to the present. ALWAYS.
We need Congress to give a mandate to the Fed in 2014. It's time they get off their asses.
arendt
(5,078 posts)Response to arendt (Reply #1)
mother earth This message was self-deleted by its author.
mother earth
(6,002 posts)It's not the BS of hope and change we've been spoon fed into believing "something" might actually get done.
This country is being gutted before our eyes. With TPP we are on the fast track to hell.
(Sorry, my earlier post was a repeat.)
questionseverything
(9,631 posts)from the article....Rebating the interest to the Treasury was clearly a step in the right direction. But the central bank funded very little of the federal debt. Commercial banks held a large chunk of it; and as Voorhis observed, [w]here the commercial banks are concerned, there is no such repayment of the peoples money. Commercial banks did not rebate the interest they collected to the government, said Voorhis, although they also buy the bonds with newly created demand deposit entries on their booksnothing more.
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nationalizing the fed sounds so radical.....should we be pushing for commercial banks to "rebate"...full disclosure here,i am good with nationalizing the fed but would some "rebate" system from the commercial banks get us the same result and be easier to build a movement for?
mother earth
(6,002 posts)However, it gives you a fuller understanding of why we are where we are.
History is repeating itself and will continue to do so until we change.
hunter
(38,264 posts)Partly the Fed was set up to push aside the "gold is money" twits, the same twits who complain about "fiat currency" now.
After a hundred years of the Fed, I'm starting to think it's time to move beyond money. Measuring all economic activity by a single currency seems absurd to me, and by now it ought to be damned clear to everyone that huge environmental and social inequities are not accounted for even in the most "liberal" Keynesian economic systems.
Food, safe comfortable shelter, universal literacy, appropriate medical care, and freedom of speech and association ought to be the first order of any government. Anything beyond that is gravy. There are probably many ways of accomplishing such a thing without digesting every human activity down to some dollar "value."