A Brief History of Banking in America
IN 1787, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson: “All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in the Constitution, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.” This downright ignorance is probably worse today. The vast majority of Americans do not understand that the consortium of private banks that constitute the Federal Reserve System create money and charge interest for it. Instead of money being a token of exchange, it is a profit-making instrument in the hands of a few. This system of what the author E. Michael Jones calls "state-sponsored usury" necessarily leads to debt slavery, centralized government and monopolistic control of the press. The American colonists went to war to protect their right to make and control the money supply. That freedom was later relinquished by the American government. “In the Colonies we issue our own money," said Benjamin Franklin. "It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one.” Here is brief history of banking in America by Alain Pilote, which I offer as a primer on the subject. Pilote wrote in 1985: The bankers' dictatorship and their debt-money system are not limited to one country,…
