U.S. National Debt - 1776 to 2015 - The How & Why

Milton Friedman, PhD Economist, Nobel Laurette (1912-2006)Our government spends, and spends, and spends, all of which is spent by borrowed money, created out of thin air, printed by the banks. All this debt is passed on to us, the people by way of our taxes, which do not even begin to pay the interest upon our national debt. This is all done by an unelected body of faceless bankers and investors that privately run the United States bureaucracy with no oversight and with impunity. 

Ever thought about why the Federal Reserve shouldn't be eliminated? 

Before you answer the question, understand the historical facts.

After researching the background facts involving the people within each of these historical events, parallel issues surfaced that evolved along with the chronology to explain why things happened when they did besides providing dry classroom rote answers for multiple question or true-false tests.  It is a fascinating glimpse into past events that deeply affect us right now and going into the future allow understanding a clearer picture of our journey toward a 2015 fiscal cliff with even higher taxes. Let’s start around the beginning of the United States in 1776.

In 1755, Alexander Hamilton was born to Rachael Fawcette Levine, named Alexander Levine, of Jewish lineage, in St. Croix, the West Indies. After changing his name from Levine to Hamilton and his geographical situs to the United States, on December 14, 1780 he married Elizabeth Schuyler and into the Rothschild family—the banking scions then and now.

In 1791, Alexander Hamilton had successfully convinced George Washington to sign a Bill for a twenty year charter for the First National Bank.  Over 70 percent of the central bank was owned by foreigners, and notes that Britain was the primary source of capital for the U.S during this era. Given that the U.S. relied on British capital, and British banks were dominated by the Rothschilds, it's safe to say the family had a substantial stake in the First National Bank.

In 1811, when United States Congress was voting over renewing the twenty year charter of First National Bank, it failed in a very close vote. Nathan Rothschilds issued a blistering ultimatum that either the charter is approved or the United States will enter War of 1812 with disastrous results. So, he then 'instructed' the British to “Teach these impudent Americans a lesson. Bring them back to Colonial status.”  Since the United States needed to get bank financing to fight in the war, it caused the debt to go up again. In that same year, in 1812, the Rothschilds supposedly legitimized their U.S. banking interests using Moses Taylor, another Rothschild agent, who founded the National City Bank of New York, as an extension of the Rothschild banking conglomerate. National City Bank would later become Citibank.

At the wars end, total public debt increased from $45.2 million on January 1, 1812, to $119.2 million as of September 30, 1815. 

In 1816, desperate to cover the debt, President James Madison authorized the creation of the Second National Bank of the United States. 

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the Rothschild brothers conducted important transactions on behalf of the governments of England, France, Prussia, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Naples, Portugal, Brazil, various German states and smaller countries. They were the personal bankers of many of the crowned heads of Europe. They made large investments, through agents, in markets as distant as the United States, India, Cuba and Australia.

In 1819, the Panic of 1819 was the first major peacetime financial crisis in the United States followed by a general collapse of the American economy persisting through 1821. The fueled by the unrestrained issue of paper money from banks and business concerns. The Second Federal Bank itself was deeply enmeshed in these inflationary practice.

In 1910, the Federal Reserve Plan in U.S. banking and currency laws had been formulated in a secret meeting on Jekyll Island off the coast of the U.S. state of Georgia. Senator Nelson Aldrich, R - RI, and other well connected financiers attended it to essentially gave full control of this financial system to private bankers.  Woodrow Wilson, a Progressive Democrat and socialist, later became President (1913 -21), actively supported this legislation.

In 1913, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, which gave its power to coin our nations money to a group of bankers. The record shows that there were no Democrats voting "Nay" in the Senate and only two in the House. Although the President nominates the Chairman of the FED, the banks themselves are not beholden to Congress, they have never been audited.

In 1929, Bankers by their own admission were responsible for the Stock Market Crash which led to the Great Depression.

One of the heads of these banking dynasties which control the Federal Reserve Bank was Mayer Amschel Rothschild (23 February 1744 – 19 September 1812) who was a German banker. He was the founder of the Rothschild family international banking dynasty that became the most successful business family in history and is ranked number seven in the world. Rothschild once said, “Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes it’s laws.”

These bankers knew that if they controlled a nation's money supply, they controlled the nation. H. L. Birum Sr. once said, “The Federal Reserve Bank is nothing but a banking fraud and an unlawful crime against civilization. Why? Because they “create” the money made out of nothing, and our Uncle Sap Government issues their “Federal Reserve Notes” and stamps our Government approval with NO obligation whatever from these Federal Reserve Banks, Individual Banks or National Banks, etc.”

FACTOID: As long as our nations currency was tied to gold, the FED could only print as much money as we had in gold to back it up. If you look over the course of our nation’s history, there were few periods of sustained inflation. These usually followed periods of war, but our country returned to normal after a short time afterwards.

In 1933, The U.S. money supply expanded and increased when FDR took us off the gold standard that gave the FED the green light to print as much money as they wish. A Democrat majority in both chambers of Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. It also gave Congress the ability to ask for unlimited amounts of money to fund projects, as they could borrow now, pay later with no regards as to how much gold there was to back up their spending.

Since then inflation has been on the rise, the price of gold has quadrupled, and the buying power of the dollar has steadily diminished.

Economics 101 Lesson: The monetary principle of "the Velocity of Money" is a simple concept, yet is an extremely convoluted and complicated process in practice. Economists call it “velocity,” or how quickly money cycles through the economy measured by the average frequency with which a unit of money is spent in a specific period of time and is often calculated as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) divided by the money supply - stay with me, it should be clearer after you see the example below.

So, for example, in a very small economy, a farmer and a mechanic, with just $50 between them, buy new goods and services from each other in just three transactions over the course of a year

• Farmer spends $50 on tractor repair from mechanic.
• Mechanic buys $40 of corn from farmer.
• Mechanic spends $10 on barn cats from farmer.

So, then $100 changed hands in the course of a year, even though there is only $50 in this little economy. That $100 level is possible because each dollar was spent on new goods and services an average of twice a year, which is to say that the "Velocity of Money" was 2/Yr.

Therefore, the "Velocity of Money" explains why printing money can lead to a virtual flood of currency in the marketplace to devalue the worth of the dollar. It spurs inflation that attacks everyone's pocketbooks with higher cost since it takes more bills to pay for goods and services - Congratulations, you just passed a Economics 101 test.  LOL!

Alan GreenspanIn 1987, Alan Greenspan stepped in as the Fed Chairman, 1987-2006, and had this to say about the gold standard, “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation." … "This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”

During Greenspan's tenure, however, deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions was championed by him as he worked voraciously for the banking interest to further reduce and eliminate government safeguards to banking rules devastating to the stability of markets according to him. His plans for banks self-policing themselves with billions of profits at stake, in retrospect, decidedly set up financial markets for future turmoil which Greenspan could have helped to avoid catastrophe for the taxpayers, but then again he is just another banker too.  

Fed Chairman Ben BernankeIn 2006, Alan Greenspan then stepped down as the new Federal Reserve Bank Chairman, Ben Bernanke took office. Subsequently, Bernanke, as the Fed Chairman, he was instrumental in the infamous Fed Reserve taxpayer loans to U.S. banks for bail outs during the 2008 Wall Street financial crisis due to their real estate derivative market transactions. 

In 2008, George W. Bush signed off on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, the US Treasury which invested hundreds of billions of funds into financial institutions. Meanwhile, only $8.6bn were directed at the "troubled assets" of distressed homeowners, and some funds were abused; TARP's legacy was disturbing because it had nothing to do with indemnifying taxpayer losses instead was for bailing out financial institutions losses. 

This was another classic bureaucratic case of the Fed Reserve Bank bailing out the Washington politicians on both sides with taxpayer funds in the name of "horrible financial ruination for the country." They just don't say it's really their asses they saved for financial investment party donors, not we the people. Then again, the world banking market bought those derivatives too, which includes Europe, Greece, Egypt, Russia, et. al. who was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund, IMF, who the United States funds the most as a member donor. Do you get the stark, dark picture here, you "stupid voter"? (A Gruber word)

"Derivatives" are the bundling of junk-rated, sub-prime, borrowers' house loans into investment packages. They are then sold to other financial institutions globally as viable, solid interest income generating loan instruments for bank asset portfolios. In turn, those portfolios can be sold again by banks to their customers for investments where more profit is "derived" from those real estate derivative packages.

The weak link here is when the under-qualified, sub-prime borrower defaults on their loans that they become worthless. That is why the push from President Clinton to sign in 1999 into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which further stripped down loan restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac federally guaranteed bank loans for risky borrowers was dubious from the start as it pushed unqualified buyers into houses they could ill-afford. However, it was a way to buy more votes with a huge segment of the U.S. population that is an influential voting block--minorities and low-income home buyers. The truth is that both the Clinton and later the Bush administration did nothing by further enforcing reduced lending standards to stop this housing bubble to burst.

In 2014, Janet Yellen succeeded Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve. Yellen, who was chairwoman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, was previously vice chairwoman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Her liberal policies continue on with more self-serving Fed Reserve Bank administration of our politicians and governmental decisions. 

The publication below began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily newspaper. The Jewish Daily Forward has had a long standing in the Jewish community in New York as an outlet of liberal policy analysis. It reports on various leaders, events and news items. It proudly declares Janet Yellen as the first woman to lead the Fed Reserve Bank since its inception a century ago. This article certainly is a testament to our country's diversity in leaders whether it's their sex, religion or political beliefs. 

It’s worth remembering that there is a concept in Jewish thought called chazakah: When something happens three times like Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen it can be considered permanent. Applied to the Federal Reserve, it would suggest an impossibly firm grasp on a degree of power the likes of which the Jewish people have never known--only time will tell.