[Guest]

Please reserve 30 minutes to watch it. Its truly an eye opening, shocking video which taught me a lot.

[gvg]

Woah. I had no idea. I wondered why people hated the Fed. It's private?

And nobody knows whoo really owns it? Ridiculous.

By the rich for the rich. I see.

But I need it exlained some more.

First off, why can't the gov. just cut ties with it? (This is probably a stupid question, but snce it's unconstitutional, i wonder why they can't.)

This did teach me a bit though. If I find the time, I'm going to look through it again to try and better understand it.

And I don't know if this was explained in the video, but how did America become fed? Does the fed own EVERY bank?

[Guest]

right, the federal reserve is neither federal nor a reserve.

it manipulates the value of the currency by printing as much as it sees fit.

while it's true the congress chooses the chairman of the fed, and can audit it, there are very specific rules about what it can't audit. (in particular, it can't audit any deals with foriegn banks.) the primary reason the government can't get rid of the fed, or at least isn't likely to any time soon, is that it relies on it for the vast majority of its funding. where do you think obama got the trillions he's spending? of course, this process won't last for much longer, the world is quickly reaching a point where it will no longer accept the dollar as currency. when that happens, all hell breaks loose. and the us government wil be in quite dire straights.

the is a story by mark twian about a boy who manages to get other boys from the neighborhood to paint a fence for him and pay him for the honor of doing so. what america has achieved is nearly the some thing. but people are wising up to this fact. you can fool some people all the time, you can fool all people some of the time, but you can't fool all people all the time.

[peace*out]

I saw that ^^

and thought of this:

im sorry if its been linked before...

[Guest]

I haven't made time to watch the video yet, but it sounds rather alarmist. We have to remember that this is the Internet that we are talking about, so we know how trustworthy anything we find on it really is.

Refamiliarizing myself with the history of the Fed, I glanced at the Wikipedia entry, just to get a hint of the nature of the controversy. The article's rather dry, but the first couple sections do a good job of explaining the history behind the central banking system in the US. You don't really get a sense of the criticisms that the video must cover from that article, though. You have to dig into the Criticism of the Federal Reserve page to get more information about that and it's pretty dry too.

I would suggest that people keep in mind that the validity of the Fed is something that is the opinion of the video's creator and not necessarily an accurate representation of the facts. People have been calling the Fed "unconstitutional" since its inception in 1913 and they have been complaining about the Constitutionality of the central banking system since it was first created by the First Congress in 1791. However, proponents of a central banking system have been continually vindicated by case law, so it seems unlikely that anyone's going to win on that argument anytime soon.

I would agree that there are legitimate criticisms of the Fed and there are commonsense reforms that probably could be implemented, but to abolish the Fed outright seems an extreme and foolish idea. It's always best to fact check your sources and make sure that the arguments made are in agreement with the data. The Wikipedia entry has a pretty good synopsis of the way that the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 came to be, with its hybrid public/private designation, so I do think that it's a good starting point.

My understanding from what I've read is that the Fed doesn't "own" the member banks, more of the other way around (though the member banks don't really have much say in the Fed's policy). From the article, about 38% of US banks are members and as a requirement for membership, they have to buy stock in the Fed. The stock returns a flat 6% dividend per year and it can't be bought, traded or sold.

The Federal Reserve was created by an act of Congress, so we can't just "cut ties" with it, since the Congress created it. It doesn't "create" the currency; it's still minted/printed by the government, but the government does sell the money to the Fed at cost to be distributed and regulated. It could be destroyed by an act of Congress, but no ones in a hurry to do that other than the Libertarians like Rand Paul. Apparently the Republicans in the House have decided to throw a bone to the Libertarians by letting Paul waste his time trying to kill the Fed as Chairman of the Banking Committee. The House is unlikely to put any such bill to a vote and it would probably never even get out of committee, even with Paul at the helm. If it somehow managed to pass the House, it would never have a chance in the Senate and I'm certain that it would face a Presidential veto as well.

To anyone who thinks that the Fed is unconstitutional or that it is bad for the US economy, I'm curious what you would suggest should replace it. Like it or not, global monetary policy is strongly influenced by the Fed and abolishing it would have far-reaching consequences on the whole world banking system. Which is one reason I find it unlikely that the dollar will fail as a currency in the near future. China and other countries own so much of our debt, they would be loath to see the dollar collapse. If we default on our loans to them, they are out a lot of money too, which would bring down their economies in turn. It's in everyone's economic interest to keep the dollar stable. (Other than terrorists and other anti-governmental agents, of course. ) So no one's in a hurry to supersede the dollar.

The talk of returning to "gold-backed currencies" and such like is just pie-in-the-sky and basically ways for people selling gold to make off like a bandit ripping off gullible people. For anyone buying gold from most of these sellers, the price would have to continue its meteoric rise for 5+ years before they would see a net positive in their "investment." In particular, if you're being offered gold in the form of gold coins, it's almost certainly a scam as they will take even longer to reach the point of profitability than gold bullion. If you invested in gold decades ago or such like, you're sitting pretty right now, but anyone who's trying to get in on the gold boom right now is wasting a lot of money. It violates the principle of "Buy low, sell high."

And keep in mind Stephen Colbert's wise words, "We know gold is intrinsically valuable because it's shiny." I'm sure that those African kings that lived 300 years ago would be thrilled with the price of salt today. After all, they built their entire economy on it since it was so valuable back then. Money and value is a human construct, so things will only retain their value for as long as people find them valuable. You don't see anyone trading in salt or wampum today, do you? So there's no guarantee that anyone will want to buy your gold in 50 years.

[gvg]

Well, I don't know much about the Fed, but the idea of a private bank owned by the richest people/families/companies in the world haveing anything to do with US money.... makes me nervous.

[Guest]

Well, I don't know much about the Fed, but the idea of a private bank owned by the richest people/families/companies in the world haveing anything to do with US money.... makes me nervous.

As I understand it, the Federal Reserve is controlled by the Board of Governors and the Chairman (Ben Bernake at this time and Alan Greenspan before him) and they have the most say in how the Fed operates. They are all appointed by the President and at least the Chairman (though I think all of them) are approved by the Senate. The heads of each of the regional branches also get a vote, though only five of them at a time and I'm not sure how they are selected.

So it's not exactly a private bank and it will only really be controlled by the richest people in the world if the Chairman and the Board allow it to be so controlled. So if another Andrew Jackson came along, he could appoint someone who would be hostile the Fed's mission and to those rich interests about whom you're worried. He might have a hard time getting that sort of person confirmed by the Senate, but he could nominate such a person.

There's more I was going to say, but as it's all speculation on my part, I don't really feel comfortable offering the opinion without a little more research. Though I will say that I think that the hysteria about the Fed is misplaced. I suspect that many of the richest individuals in the country would be perfectly happy to see the Fed die, though I'm not certain of that. I still haven't watched the video and maybe I'll be a true believer once I've taken a look, but I don't really expect so.

[Guest]

i guess i should state i am a libertain or at least watch ron paul and agree with many of his ideals.

i partly agree, an immediate end to the dollar would be very detrimental to the world, but not nearly as deteremental as it would be to the U.S.

as for what could take its place, in truth you can use anything as currancy. gold, sliver, oil, butter, clam shells, even a fiat currancy isn't all bad under the right conditions. the primary question is: who produces the currency that the government accepts as a payment of tax? do private interests have that right or does the government? and it's historically true that whever private intests have printed that currency, wars, destruction, joblessness, etc. ensued. when the government had control, much more peaceful, much more prosporous.

the government doesn't own the printing presses that are currently making money. the fed buys treasury bills from congress (a loan) with this money. this is where the govnernment gets the vast majority of its funding.

and the more the fed prints the less valuable each dollar is. so yes it's a tax. an "indirect" tax, but a tax.