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View Full Version : Its important to criticize the central bank for the right reasons




hugolp
11-12-2010, 09:59 AM
I was on reddit (I know I know) and I saw this: http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/e53w7/dont_trust_the_internet/

Bestof is a reddit channel that promotes good reddit comments. And this time the recommended comment was one defending the central bank from an article. And the worse thing is that the recommended comment is right. The article was based on some of the history that the chartalists (Hellen Brown, Money Masters) explain, and its not true. This makes the whole anti-Fed movement look very bad.

This is the comment:


This quote is a hoax:

3 In 1763, Benjamin Franklin was asked by the Bank of England why the colonies were so prosperous, and this was his response....
"That is simple. In the colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Script. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers.
In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one."
Franklin never said this at all. It is comes from a hoax that Congressman Binderup (of the Constitutional Money League) circulated in the 1930s. Also, the word is "scrip", not "script", and it wasn't called "colonial scrip" until many decades later.
This item is inaccurate:

4 The Currency Act of 1764 ordered the American Colonists to stop printing their own money. Colonial script (the money the colonists were using at the time) was to be exchanged at a two-to-one ratio for "notes" from the Bank of England.
The act prevented the issuing of legal tender money, that is, money that a creditor was forced to accept. British merchants didn't like being forced to accept money that was worth much less when they got paid then when they originally extended credit.

5 Later, in his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin explained the impact that this currency change had on the colonies....
"In one year, the conditions were so reversed that the era of prosperity ended, and a depression set in, to such an extent that the streets of the Colonies were filled with unemployed."
Those words are not in his autobiography. It's again from the Binderup Hoax. You can search Franklin's Autobiography at Project Gutenberg or Google Books and you can search everything Franklin wrote t the Franklin Papers web site.

22 Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot Andrew Jackson, but he survived. It is alleged that Lawrence said that "wealthy people in Europe" had put him up to it.
I've never found evidence that Lawrence said that. He did claim that he was the rightful heir to the crown of England and that all the powers of Europe would rally to his aid. He believed that Jackson had been after him since Lawrence was a boy and that he was conspiring with Lawrence's brother-in-law. And other paranoid ravings.

26 The central bankers of Europe were not pleased. The following quote appeared in the London Times in 1865....
"If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become endurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains, and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe."
This is an absurd hoax from the 1890s. Just read it. It's preposterous!

27 Abraham Lincoln was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth on April 14th, 1865.
Which, of course, had nothing to do with central banks.

29 James A. Garfield became president in 1881, and he was a staunch opponent of the banking powers. In 1881 he said the following....
"Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce...and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate."
This one is rich! Garfield was a hard-money Republican; he was a friend of the banks. The first sentence of that quote is based on something Garfield said in Congress in 1880. He was arguing against Congress creating money. I haven't found any evidence of the second sentence before the 1990s.

30 President Garfield was shot about two weeks later by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2nd, 1881. He died from medical complications on September 19th, 1881.
Once again, this had nothing to do with banks.

34 Congress voted on the Federal Reserve Act on December 22nd, 1913 between the hours of 1:30 AM and 4:30 AM.
35 A significant portion of Congress was either sleeping at the time or was already at home with their families celebrating the holidays.
The Federal Reserve Act was carefully considered over months (and other reforms had been considered over the previous few years). Some congressmen had left early, but by far most were there to vote. The bill passed the house overwhelmingly, 298-60. It passed the Senate 43-25. If the absent Senators had voted, there would have been at least 54 for votes for passage.

36 The president that signed the law that created the Federal Reserve, Woodrow Wilson, later sounded like he very much regretted the decision when he wrote the following....
"A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men ... [W]e have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world--no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men."
Wilson never regretted creating the Federal Reserve. These quotes are from 1912, when Wilson running for President. He was arguing for the Federal Reserve.

sevin
11-12-2010, 10:09 AM
Ummm....

What?