another classic Gish Gallop, lay out 5 thousand wonkish claims and demand that each be refuted in turn, or youre right, you win, and everybody else is an asshole.
Why, was it hard to defend your claims the way you had them stacked up?
1 ) the federal reserve bank is corrupt, and was created on jekyll island by aldrich warburd morgan and rothschild
this claim is 100% true. the aldrich plan was the framework for the federal reserve, and the federal reserve we have today is exactly what aldrich and his cronies wanted, a private cartel with the power to print money, run in secret for it's own benefit. they just couldnt get it all in one bite. they had to ease it in slowly.
Warburg described his plan (he aldrich bill) as "Not Substantially Different" and this somehow becomes proof that the two plans ARE substantially different? warburg wanted private banks to have free unfettered control over all banking policy and all monetary policy which the federal reserve did NOT give him, but he was happy with it anyhow, because in less than 10 years the federal reserve and it's "Super Special Supreme Court of Bankers" were given the power to print money as they please and they NEVER were subject to any real oversight, and never will be. Closed Door Meetings and Secret Agendas. thats how the federal reserve rolls, and you cannot deny this fact as it is plainly true. the federal reserve cartel was crafted in secret by a cabal of bankers, passed through shenanigans, and signed by woodrow wilson who was BOUGHT AND PAID FOR by the banking lobby the federal reserve cartel was created from conspiracy secrets and lies, and has produced only more secrets, more lies and more conspiracies since it's inception.
Many elements of the Aldrich plan were adopted, primarily the mechanics of the system. Again, that bankers would come up with a competent design for a banking system seems reasonable to me, but I understand the source of your suspicions. Regardless, the Federal Reserve is
not "exactly what aldrich and his cronies wanted" because it
isn't what they wanted. They wanted to have total private control over the entire system for decades, and they basically gave themselves an antitrust exemption by setting capital requirements for banks to be eligible to join the mandatory National Reserve system. The private banks don't have the power to print money because monetary policy is in the hands of the Board of Governors, a group of scholars and public servants.
The Federal Reserve is subject to oversight. We elect the President and the Senate; the President chooses the members of the Board of Governors, and the Senate must confirm his nominees. We control who's sitting on that board if we choose to care. Similarly, we elect Congress, and Congress has the power to immediately amend the Federal Reserve Act as it pleases. Of course, we let the board serve long terms and make monetary policy decisions because we don't want to entrust Congress with something so essential. Why wouldn't you want monetary policy to be isolated from politics? Why wouldn't you want to give it to a group of seasoned professionals and thinkers versus the ignorant representatives of the unruly mobs?
2 ) the federal reserve's stated aim is to prevent boom/bust cycles. it has FAILED at this goal, and it therefore not doing what was intended.
this true. it is simply factual. the promises made to establish the central bank thats not a central bank have NOT been kept and thus the program is a failure (unless youre a banker, then it's perfect) thats why canada nationalized their central banking cartel and have never regretted doing so. our currency is the responsibility of congress, and it belongs to US not to the bankers who have been treating it as their own private piggy bank for 100 years.
That isn't the stated aim of the Fed; I don't think anyone believes boom/bust cycled can be
prevented. If you mean stabilized and better controlled, that would be closer to the goal. You're concluding that the Fed has failed because boom/bust cycles have occurred, but they only "failed" if the outcome was worse than it would have been in some other system. We can't measure any other system; we can't necessarily draw conclusions from ancient economic history that's so distanced from our present reality. No one can possibly say whether the Fed has failed or succeeded at making things better than they otherwise would have been.
Empirically, we can say that in the period after World War II things were more stable than they were historically. You want to call it growing pains in the past? Luck? The initial success in the Ponzi scheme? Whatever you attribute that reality to, the system has worked and here we are. Total collapse has been predicted many times before, and maybe it will come true someday...but maybe not.
3 ) the federal reserve is a private entity
You're going to have to explain that to me. The Board of Governors, which holds the true power, is a public body appointed in exactly the same way our courts and executive agencies are filled.
4) the federal reserve doesnt answer to the congress, they simply tell the congress how things are gonna be.
another simple factual statement. the president appoints the fed chairman, but once that twat is in, he cannot get rid of him without massive upheavals and economic collapse, which is the plan. the fed board is a secret suprteme court for our money, they run it as they see fit, and they cannot be dislodged without turning the country upside down through manufactured crisis and panic on wall street. they protect their positions of power by creating the illusion that they are somehow smarter than the rest of us who use math in the accepted manner, where 2-2 =0 not 2-2 = infinite wealth through borrowing and debt service.
Thank God they don't answer to Congress, as I already explained.
You're right about the Fed running our money as they see fit, but that doesn't mean its a super secret banker conspiracy. We're experimental subjects and our economy is the model; they've made all kinds of predictions about what might happen if they take certain actions, drawing on all previous human experience, and playing governor is their opportunity to implement those ideas. Of course it happens! But those are well-intentioned and thoroughly reasoned experimental ideas that were hotly debated by brilliant people before they were enacted. I trust that process more than I trust a body of non-experts dependent on popularity to keep their jobs. The board is supposed to be focused on the long term, not the short term, and their fundamental interest is in obtaining more prosperity.
5) "gold is the same as fiat currency and fractional reserve banking"
BULLSHIT. gold is a medium of exchange because it is valued, and for no other reason, thsi is true, but if the leafs of a maple tree were our currency, then anyone who had a tree could be "rich" and maple leafs wouldnt buy shit. gold is rare, it cannot be created, only extracted by labour, and it is permanent, while beads, pukka shell necklaces, wampum belts and tobacco leafs (all used as standard currencies in their day) can be fairly easily created, and as such they do not represent a stable currency. fiat money is based solely on the promise of the congress that they will keep the economy in order. this promise is one only a fool would accept. if the fed wanted to, they could double our supply of paper dollars tomorrow, and drive us into the same inflationary spiral as zimbabwe, which was caused by PRINTING PRESSES, not real-estate re-alignment. pretending zimbabwe's problems were the result of political deciosi0ons rather than careless currency printing is ridiculous. zimbabwe was awash in MILLION DOLLAR NOTES, and these notes didnt magically appear when they distributed land to the peasantry. they were printed up by foolish central bankers as a solution to the country's debt problems. in other words, Quantitative Easing.
Gold isn't as stable as you're trying to suggest it is. Regardless, why is it an advantage that gold can't be created and exists in a relatively fixed supply? Why does it matter that it can only be extracted by labor? Why does it matter that it's permanent? Gold is just a thing like so many other things, and it's not a useful thing at all. The realization that we need not be ruled by an arbitrary substance was a brilliant one, encouraged by all the problems we were having keeping that gold system afloat.
Obviously when you can easily create money that's prone to abuse, especially by politicians thinking in the short-term. Fortunately, the politicians don't make monetary policy decisions in the United States and can't decide to print as much money as they want. We leave that to experts and public servants who have dedicated their lives either to academia or serving us. I'm still waiting for you to explain to me why those people at the head of it all care at all about what happens to the banks. Have I asked three times now? And you haven't even tried to answer that because there is no sinister motivation underlying it all--you have no facts that could even hint at one.
As for Zimbabwe, I didn't claim there were no printing presses. When the government tinkered with the economy, agricultural production and manufacturing output very suddenly plummeted and never returned; international investment was stifled. Facts, and the result was economic chaos, which occurred before the hyperinflation did. The hyperinflation was a reaction, and obviously a horrible one. We have no such economic crisis; we have far less corruption (if you're cynical about that statement, just imagine what Zimbabwe must be like); and the scale of the Fed's operation is nowhere close to that seen in Zimbabwe. An economy is all about confidence: so long as people remain confident, you can do a lot of tinkering. When the economy has been destroyed, everyone is unemployed and unproductive, and the government's response is to flood the market with meaningless bills, there is no confidence.
6 ) "banks dont actually make money with their magic hat, through fractional reserve sorcery"
yes. they do.
if you need a hammer and ask to borrow mine, and i do not have a hammer to loan you, you cannot build a house. but banks can loan you "money" which does not exist through the magic of the federal reserve and their system of Make Believe. i cannot loan you $100 if i only have $50 in my pocket, but banks can. i cannot let you borrow my car if i have already loaned it to my cousin, but banks can. banks view money, property and in fact all of existence as a ledger entry, and ledger entries can be moved about, allowed to pass into negative numbers, then simply resume as if nothing happened when the numbers go back into positive territory. the real world doesnt work like that, and only bankers believe it can or should. if you grow dope like bankers make money, youll have dead plants, ruined soil and no dope, ever. if you forget to water your plants for a week, and then over water them for the next week, will your plants live? no. but your bank ledgers will be doing fine.
The flaw is easy enough to spot. Empirically, if I need a hammer and neither of us has one, I cannot build a house. Yet when banks create money, they facilitate economic activity that actually takes place. This is sensible enough: most people are incapable of evaluating investment opportunities and most people have no need to access all of their savings immediately. By depositing your money in a bank, you let the bank make risk decisions, putting your capital to work. Of course, your capital is also at risk, but because the bank has so many other loans, the risk is relatively small, and the cost can be priced into the interest rates charged on loans. Since people have no need to redeem all of their accumulated capital at the same time, the accumulation facilitates activity beyond what it otherwise would have while also decreasing the risk profile of that activity.
All that matters is that it works. We all owe a lot of gratitude to banking for giving us this wonderful world we live in now. You can't tell me we don't have it because obviously we do.
7 )" if that was true then banks would be making more money than they are claiming on their taxes...
"
DUH! how do multi-nationals avoid big tax burdens? offshore banking, offshore incorporation, and hiding profits in shell companies. thats what banks do best because thats what they are intended for, moving money around to maximize profits while minimizing risks (including taxes) you cannot deny the fact that when the rest of the economy was getting fucked in the ass, the banking sector was sitting pretty, and when washington bailed out their poorly managed insurance holdings their profits went even higher. banks do their best to not lose money. being successful at not losing money does not make them the right people to manage how and when our money supply is adjusted. it makes them the WRONG people to do that. banker are notoriously cautious with THEIR money but infamously careless with the money of others.
We're talking about an income statement, not a tax return. Based on Griffin's math, the banks should have many times the revenue they claim to have. You're talking about avoiding tax burdens? That's totally irrelevant to how much revenue they have. If I own a Bermuda corporation that holds investments, I have revenue from the investments in the US under US accounting rules regardless of whether I paid any tax domestic or foreign (which is why many large public companies have such low US federal income tax rates considering their net incomes). I'm not denying that some meaningful level of malfeasance is constantly taking place because I believe that's inevitable: there will always be a market for tax savings and willing providers, and there will always be ways to reduce repoorted revenue, reduce tax costs, and increase profit. But here you're trying to suggest that tens of trillions of dollars is slithering around in the financial system every single year so that Griffin's math makes sense? Come on now.
There's really nothing sinister about offshore incorporation and shell companies. The United States is a very strange country because it insists on taxing income earned in other countries regardless of the fact that tax had to be paid in those other countries (we're one of the only countries in the world that still does this). Consequently, a US company might face a total tax rate of 50% while a domestic company might face a tax rate of 25%. Obviously this disparity makes competition difficult. Recognizing the problem, we have tax credits that allow companies to defer paying US tax so long as the money is kept offshore, meaning the effective tax rate on foreign operations can be equivalent to the tax rate on domestic operations, so long as the money isn't repatriated. They aren't "avoiding their fair share" of the tax burden, just trying to be competitive with every other company in the world that's vying for the business of billions of people.
to $8.00/hour (Min calif wage in 2013) hour, im making MORE than i did in the 80's? thats some awesome math right there. 
