Jekyll Island, 2010

"Yet debt is the Viagra of a growth economy in middle age. It provides an appearance of robust function when in reality we are borrowing ourselves into a financial hole."

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A little news blip that is noteworthy, both for its historic relevance and for its future significance. Last week, the Federal Reserve held a 100 year anniversary meeting on Jekyll Island, the site of the infamous 1910 "secret meeting", where plans were drawn up for a central banking bill. (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-08/fed-s-jekyll-island-forum-considers-lessons-of-history-for-monetary-policy.html). What they came up with at that "secret meeting" was called the "Aldrich Plan", and would become the basis for the Federal Reserve Act, passed a few years later. The idea of even having a central bank at all was opposed by many for various reasons. The United States had, after all, gone for decades without one. Some opposition cited Aldrich's close ties with J.P.Morgan and John D. Rockefeller Jr, his son in law. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System - under "Federal Reserve Act" ) Still others were opposed because it "gave full control" to "private bankers", creating fear "it would become a tool of certain rich and powerful financiers in New York City."

No, last week's Jekyll Island meeting was not so secretive as the 1910 meeting. In fact, it even made the news. The deeply entrenched (too big to fail???) institution we call the FED even made the gesture of publicizing their presumable agenda, flaunting fancy terms like "quantitative easing". But this is all voluntary PR. The fact remains that they are a secretive organization. The FED still, to this day, enjoys an utter lack of transparency. Its officials are unelected and unaccountable. "Audits" of the FED have always been either nonexistent or toothless window dressing that did nothing, right down to the current administration, which proclaims (suddenly) to support a FED audit. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37003798/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/) The problem is, they didn't support the original version which had teeth, which would have provided transparency for what the FED is doing overseas with foreign governments, central banks and financial institutions. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTjuZAQjj-0&feature=youtube_gdata). In other words, more window dressing to help maintain the illusion that all is well in Neverland. Distracted by the partisan rancor, the masses find it easy to ignore the elephant in the living room, even though it has direct bearing on their own future, and more importantly, their children's. Few seem to mind that our national debt is headed into the stratosphere, largely due to the actions of the FED. Just last week the FED pumped another 600 billion into the economy. That's another 600 billion onto our national debt. Bear in mind, the FED owns more of the US national debt than any other entity. (http://www.cnbc.com/id/29880401/The_Biggest_Holders_of_US_Government_Debt?slide=16) Which begs the question, is the FED really 'federal", a part of our government? So then do we owe all that money - to ourselves?

In 1916, shortly after the Federal Reserve Act was passed, Bertie Charles Forbes (founder of Forbes Magazine) wrote:

"Picture a party of the nation's greatest bankers stealing out of New York on a private railroad car under cover of darkness, stealthily riding hundred of miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch, sneaking onto an island deserted by all but a few servants, living there a full week under such rigid secrecy that the names of not one of them was once mentioned, lest the servants learn the identity and disclose to the world this strangest, most secret expedition in the history of American finance." ...

"The utmost secrecy was enjoined upon all. The public must not glean a hint of what was to be done. Senator Aldrich notified each one to go quietly into a private car of which the railroad had received orders to draw up on an unfrequented platform. Off the party set."

Paul Warburg - of Kuhn, Loeb, & Co, a creme de la creme investment bank founded in 1867, having all the usual elite business associations (Rockefeller, Morgan, Harriman, etc ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhn,_Loeb_&_Co.)

Col. Edward Mandell House - who would go on to found the Council on Foreign Relations, yet another secretive, round table group where big corporate interests meet privately with political leaders in a colossal conflict of interest that could hardly be more obvious. The fact that politicians continue to this day dodging questions about the CFR just might be some indication of the CFR's continued relevance. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEnuhSScLgc&feature=related) In fairness,I should say "some politicians", not all ... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV_AML16tC8&feature=related).

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"I was as secretive, indeed I was as furtive as any conspirator. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would have been wasted. If it were to be exposed that our particular group had got together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congressâ€¦I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System."

Frank A. Vanderlip - Attendee of the Nov 1910 Jekyll Island meeting and president of the National City Bank of New York, from his autobiography, "From Farmboy to Financier" (1935) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Federal_Reserve_System , under "The National Monetary Commission" )