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View Full Version : new Federal Reserve document mentions Ron Paul & G. Edward Griffin




emazur
10-07-2009, 09:54 PM
I found this today after hearing on the radio that the Kansas City Fed head said interest rates should be raised "sooner than later". I went to their homepage and found this by chance:
THE BALANCE OF POWER
The Political Fight for an Independent Central Bank,
1790 - present
http://www.kc.frb.org/publicat/balanceofpower/images/cover-thumbnail.jpg
http://www.kc.frb.org/home/subwebnav.cfm?level=3&theID=11113&SubWeb=1
I glanced over it and found this:

"Although the bill did not come forward until 1912, it had been under development for years, going back to a November 1910 meeting involving investment banker Paul Warburg and other on Jekyll Island, Ga. The then-secret meeting was organized by financiers and bankers who recognized the nation's need for a central bank and wanted to begin the process. Because they did not think the public would welcome a plan crafted by bankers, they made extraordinary efforts to keep the meeting secret, such as using only first names and telling others that they were on a duck hunting trip. Details of the meeting were made public years later and, as it turns out, the shroud of secrecy has made the meeting an especially popular target of Fed critics even today. One of the best-known written criticisms of the Fed, in fact, is G. Edward Griffin's 1994 book, The Creature from Jekyll Island.


Although the Fed received much criticism after the collapse of the stock market bubble, and the later housing bubble and financial crisis, the political pressure on the central bank has been relatively modest in recent years by historical standards. While Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke may face heated questioning from Congressman Ron Paul or Sen. Jim Bunning, it has been nothing on the scope of Wright Patman, let alone any of the major legislative efforts that changed the Fed in the 1930s.

There is only one other document I've found from the Fed that acknowledges the Fed was created on Jekyll Island. You can find that here:
"Paul Warburg's Crusade to Establish a Central Bank in the United States"
Michael A. Whitehouse
May 1989
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=3815

The Jekyll Island Expedition

One evening in early November 1910, Warburg and a small party of men from New York quietly boarded Sen. Aldrich's private railway car, ostensibly for a trip south to an exclusive hunting club on an island off the coast of Georgia.

In addition to Warburg and Aldrich, the others, all highly regarded in the New York banking community, were: Frank Vanderlip, president of National City Bank; Harry P. Davison, a J.P. Morgan partner; Benjamin Strong, vice president of Banker's Trust Co.; and A. Piatt Andrew, former secretary of the National Monetary Commission and now assistant secretary of the Treasury. The real purpose of this historic "duck hunt" was to formulate a plan for US banking and currency reform that Aldrich could present to Congress.

Even Warburg at first questioned the motives of this gathering, not knowing if he was included because the group knew what he preached and was interested in what he had to offer, or if he was to be involved as a conspirator in order to be muzzled. He soon saw that the Jekyll Island conference was pulled together because, as Warburg later wrote, Aldrich was "bewildered at all that he had absorbed abroad and he was faced with the difficult task of writing a highly technical bill while being harassed by the daily grind of his parliamentary duties."

The group was secluded on Jekyll Island for about 10 days. All the participants came to the conference with strong views on the subject and did not agree on the exact shape a US central bank should take. Vanderlip noted: "Of course we knew that what we simply had to have was a more elastic currency through a bank that would hold the reserves of all banks." But there were many other questions that needed to be answered. If it was to be a central bank, how was it to be owned: by the banks, by the government, or jointly? Should there be a number of institutions or only one? Should the rate of interest be the same for the whole nation, or would it be higher in a community that was expanding too fast and lower in another that was lagging? In what open market operations should the bank be engaged?