I already explained that you were distorting your own source. "Warburg's own description" is not "substantially different." His text refers to the mechanics being the same and then immediately declares that the major difference is control. If you think having the system controlled by a Board appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate is not fundamentally different from having the system controlled by an elite group of private banks, I'm mystified. But your insistence that there was no meaningful difference in the plans indicates just that.
As for Warburg not "rejecting it," I don't see why you think that's so damning. Warburg, the longtime advocate of reform, had the plan he drafted mostly enacted into law. Congress made some changes, yes, but Warburg's vision for modern central banking emerged mostly intact. Does it surprise you that he speaks so glowingly of the greatest achievement of his life in a monograph he wrote about the system he created? You're saying he couldn't have been pleased and proud unless he got everything he wanted, which is absurd. You're trying to spin this man's attempt at framing his own legacy into an admission that just isn't there.
Obviously you can because we have. Gold is fundamentally no different than paper--it only has value because people agree it has value. Why do we need to fix value to the existence of some physical asset if value can be managed in other ways? The reason people are actually suspicious is because it's unnatural and they don't understand what happens. Screen every bullshit film about the fractional reserve banking right here: it's an evil cabal that wrings profits from its vicious imagination. In reality, banks perform valuable services for us; they're at the heart of the worldwide transformation of human existence that capitalism has spurred.
Zimbabwe's problems aren't equivalent to what's going on in the United States, a fact I'm certain you already know. That country destroyed it's productive capacity by seizing and redistributing property to people who couldn't use it.
Those monied and powerful people already had control of the economy. Why do you suggest they have more control with the Fed than they did without it?
My argument was centered around Griffin's own words written in response to a professional criticism of his book, not Wikipedia. If you stand behind all of Griffin's claims, why aren't you doing a better job of defending them and exposing the truth? All the factual information that he tries to smooth over by waving his hands and crying fetid conspiracy hasn't been substantively discussed. Instead, you've focused on semantic arguments about whether the bills establishing the system were the same or not--as if that's the central issue rather than anything else Griffin said--misconstruing an original source in attempt to bootstrap your weak and obviously unrealistic position.
No I didn't. I substantively addressed multiple claims about the Fed in this very thread that are repeated in Griffin's book. And again, as I've repeated over and over, no one even tried to substantively take any of them on. Why? Because no one can--the claims were bullshit that everyone is too embarrassed to defend. Griffin's work is so suggestive, misleading, and outright dishonest that factual information erodes its very premises.
For example, since you're so insistent:
"His statement that “the Federal Reserve Act, placed control over monetary policy with a public body, the Federal Reserve Board, not with commercial banks” cannot be taken seriously. The Federal Reserve is not a public body in any meaningful sense of the phrase."
First of all, notice that Griffin didn't even address the claim. His critic states that the Federal Reserve Act gave control of monetary policy to the Board, not commercial banks; Griffin responds that the Federal Reserve is "not a public body." Ok. Great dodge--suspicion instead of addressing the fact that that the government-appointed Board, not the banks, control monetary policy.
"For example, let us assume for the sake of illustration that the bank pays 1.5% interest. Then it turns around and charges, let’s say 6.5% interest. That’s a spread of 5%. Although that’s a pretty good brokerage commission, it doesn’t sound exorbitant. But, here is another of those half-truths. Don’t forget that the bank uses each deposited dollar as a so-called reserve for creating up to an additional nine dollars in loans. It collects interest on these loans as well. Let us assume that the bank is not fully loaned up, as they call it, and has an average of only eight dollars in magic-money loans for every one dollar on deposit. In that case, it will collect 6.5% interest on all eight of those dollars. That means, based on each dollar placed on deposit, the bank will collect 52% in interest. After paying the original depositor the generous “competitive” amount of 1.5%, the bank actually receives a brokerage fee of approximately 50%. When Flaherty says that “This interest expense alone is a substantial portion of a bank’s operating costs and is de facto proof a bank cannot costlessly create money,” one can only wonder what banking system he is describing. It certainly is not the one in the United States."
I don't think Griffin's description of the multiplier is technically accurate to begin with, but I'll focus on the math. First of all, Griffin calculates his profit margin using the gross margin instead of the net, inflating it to 50% from the 40% it actually was. Now, let's look at Wells Fargo in 2012. The bank had an average of $1.34 trillion in assets but only $86 billion in revenue for the year, which means it got 6.5 cents per dollar in assets. After-tax income was only about $19 billion, or 1.4% of average assets. If Griffin is preaching the truth, shouldn't the banks be earning substantially higher revenues from their deposits?
The Federal Reserve is run by the Board of Governors. How do they run the system for their own benefit? I really need you to explain what they have to gain from collusion with the bankers, because I'm not understanding that point at all. It makes no sense to allege they're all acting for self gain if you can't identify any such gain.
You tried to smear Aldrich by suggesting that he profited substantially from the creation of the Federal Reserve, even though you didn't have any information on how much money he made--just non-management, non-shareholding titles--as if he wasn't already a prominent, wealthy banker who would have made a fortune anyway, regardless of what happened with the Fed. But I think people see right through that.
