The current Federal Reserve is so huge its income off of its investments exceeds our annual Income Taxes.  As I understand it this money just gets reabsorbed into more investments making the Federal Reserve grow exponentially.  At some point the Federal Government will end up having a majority share of every American company on the Stock Exchange and we will be defacto Socialists with the Govt controlling all major industry.

At what point do we as a nation say enough is enough?  I think the founding fathers got it right when they called for a seperation of church and state.  With all the special interest groups buying our politicians I think there should be a seperation of Government and Industry as well.  

I dont mind paying taxes if I need to but right now as it stnads there is no need for any taxes of any kind.  We could pay no income tax, no sales tax, no nothing and the Government would still operate smoothly and even have a surplus to keep stocking back.  Why do we as a nation stand for this?  Why cant we just get our politicians to pay off the national debt and maintain a Federal Reserve based on a percentage of the GNP?  If I am way off base somewhere please correct me as I keep asking questions and these are the answers I keep coming up with.

I think the Fed and the private control over money and credit by international banks is the most fundamental problem the US and the world faces.

It really is unconstitutional and was approved by Congress in a very sly and underhanded way on Christmas Eve in 1913.

I was taught that the Fed was a very benign and good system as an undergraduate, but actually seeing it in action it seems to cause more problems than it solves. But it's so big now, the interests that control it are the most powerful people in the world, it will always be here.

WHO CARES? IT'S PLAYOFF TIME!

... at least, I bet that'd be the response from any group of people large enough to do anything about the problem.

You see thats the problem as long as we can post "Id hit it" or watch the playoffs or drink beer noone cares that the government is performing strong armed robbery on ALL its citizens!  Do you mean to tell me its OK for the govt to take thousands of dollars away from you as an individual not because they are needed but just because they can?  Hey why dont all of you just match the IRS taxes you pay and send em over to me since its no big deal.  This is no different than the mob making you pay for "protection" which is a thinly veiled threat.  How is our own government different?

The false assumption here is that the Federal Reserve is part of our government.  In fact, it is NOT.  It is a private institution, largely owned by foreigners.  The term "Federal Reserve" was originally coined in order to create the impression that it was a U.S. government entity.  So, as you pointed out, the owners of the Federal Reserve are in fact slowly but surely taking over the country.

SO then who "owns" the federal reserve and where does their money come from?  Why are they called the federal reserve?  This is a new one to me.  I do know that the state of Texas where I live has a reserve big enough to do away with all our sales tax and noone seems to care.  It is definantly owned and operated by the Texas State Government.

The Federal Reserve is owned by a consortium of banks and bank shareholders.

They create money out of thin air by open market activities (buying and selling debt in the form of Tresuries) and fractional banking reserves in banks across the country.

So is that why my uncle who was an employee of Aurther Andersen and is now a CFO of a mjor energy company and makes like $400k  a year really didnt give a shit when I brought this up to him?  His responce was "Yeah thats about right" and walked off eating his holiday grub in his new half million dollar home.

Just how is this a "reserve" anyway?  I was under the impression that we funded the reserve and it was under control of a Govt appointed individual (A. Greenspan) and that it could be used as a reserve for the federal governtment.  Id appreciate a deeper understanding as I can never seem to get straight answers out of people in the know.

The Federal Reserve Bank is a system that was put together to facilitate fractional banking and monetary stability.

The Federal Reserve Bank is a lender of last resort for the banks.  They can borrow from the Federal Reserve at the fed funds rate and then turn around and lend that same money out at the prime rate or better, making a neat profit.

The "reserve" also refers to capital reserves that a bank must keep in its vaults in order to cope with depositors asking for their money, or loans going south.

You see, the neat thing about banking is that just because your depositors deposit X amount of money, doesn't mean you are limited by that quantity to loan out (which is where the bank earns its profits).  The bank can lend many times more than what they have in the vault. So bankers can make profits on money that really isnt there and they dont really own. It also injects more money into the economy and increases economic activity. It works fine as long as all the depositors dont all demand their money bank from the bank at once.

That was a not-uncommon occurance in the old days. With the Federal Reserve System, member banks could borrow money from the Fed to cover insufficient reserves for depositors demanding their money back.

The Federal Reserve mandates to the banks how much money they can lend out in relation to the money they're required to keep as capital reserves.  When the Fed wants to tighten the money supply, it lowers this multiplier.  When it wants more liquidity, it increases the bank multiplier.

Devl,

What exactly do you propose to do about it?

I see this as I see many other problems in America. The "bad" laws were slid in under the wire and on the coat tails of other "good" laws. And now have been on the books for so long It's about impossible to change them.

Example... Prayer in schools. The Christians scream and yell about that one, WHERE WERE THEY WHEN IT WAS BEING VOTED ON? One lady started the whole movement to get prayer taken out of schools. ONE LADY!!!!! Same with alot of the gun laws, they start out as little insignificant laws that we as Americans are trained to think..."well I can get AROUND that". So instead of holding our representatives responsible for the bad laws they pass we just mumble a bit and figure out ways around them. This is how our rights to own and bear arms IS going to be taken away from us. SLOWLY, one small step at a time.

Somebody else posted a thread asking why people who disobeyed gun laws thought they were OK, and it was equated to civil disobedience. WHAT A JERK. If everybody in this country simply and blindly obeyed all the gun laws in this country, we'd already be just like the U.K. and Australia....NO GUNS at all.

This (civil disobedience) is not enough anymore. It's time we started having marches on Washington. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. And I'm not talking about walking in downtown Washington D.C. with weapons proudly displayed (or am I?) but I am talking about MAKING our voices be heard. Write your Congresman, local and state represtatives. Get involved in the voting process, HELL, run for office.

If you want to complain, have a plan or stop complaining.

So the federal reserve is kinda like me buying stock on margin.  Only problem was I ended up losing all my 50k in savings because I got repeated margin calls and could not cover them fast enough.  

Oh and my plan is to run for office and do away with the state sales tax in Texas.  Think I can win election on that platform?  How about the boost to the economy from legalising drugs and taking funds away from the criminals and diverting thos funds to prevention and drug treatment?  56% of the criminals in prison are there on drug related chrages.  It would make room for more REAL criminals like murders, rapists and bank robbers.  Ha noone will listen to that kind of logic.  I think I will just sit in my corner and polish my guns now.

Hmm... I figured someone would've blamed the Jews by now...

HEY NOTHING TO SEE HERE, I TOOK A BANKING CLASS ONCE FRACTIONAL BANKING BLA BLA PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN YOU GUYS DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT JUST BEND OV.. I MEAN UH THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE FEDERAL RESERVE.  NOW DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY OR I WILL EXECUTE ALL OF YOU WITH A GUNSHOT TO THE HEAD.

He asked what the Fed was, who owned it, and how it worked.  So I told him.  WTF is your problem?

I distrust the government as much as anyone, but establishing the Federal reserve was the smartest thing Congress has done in the past 200 years.  

What congress establishes it can also dismantle.

Would you rather have the 435-odd members of Congress voting on monetary policy? Get a grip - they couldn't even keep their own checking accounts balanced.  

What establishment would you put in its place?

DevL:

I strongly recommend, if you have the opportunity, to take a class on international monetary policy if you have a college around you that offers it. You'll gain a much greater knowlege of how the various mystery organizations function and exactly what they do and why they do it.

The Fed has been very successful controling the money supply in a very complicated economy. The last 10 years or so they've become very entangled with the government and tried to maintain political instead of economic goals. As a result we're locked into some interest rates right now that may have stimulated the economy but are daily pouring tons of money when it could be argued hundreds of billions of dollars in value may have been destroyed at the same time.

The federal government has no business controlling the money supply because their answer will always be "more money" to make sure they get reelected. I'm afraid the recent mismanagement is going to force us to go equally high in another "X" years causing more pain than we're in now.

The national debt is a whole different issue. The rate right now is so low that it doesn't make much sense to pay it off. That can change quickly though if people decide to stop buying t-bills or don't have the money to do it, but so far that's unlikely.

A quick look at the debt shows that the government itself owns 42% of it's debt (ie, the Farm Credit Insurance Fund owns a bunch of notes and bills).

If you owed about 3 times your yearly income in long-term debts, and 42% of that was owed to
yourself... and it was all at rate lower than what your savings accounts returned, would you be worried? Odds are unless you own your home you are in this position yourself, except your savings accounts aren't positive to your lending rate...

Which results in inflation!  For those younger members, you remember the horrible inflation in the late 70's and early 80's.  It was bad unless you were a property owner.  For the older members, the stories of the inflation in pre-WW II Germany were horrifying.  In 1921, there were about four marks to the dollar.  In Nov 1923, it was about four [i]billion[/i] marks to the dollar.  The threat of inflation makes handing control of the money supply to a group without public accountability acceptable to many.  As pogo said, "What establishment would you put in its place?"  You have to remember that any complaint you may have about the current system could be made worse if Congress decided to change things.  Can you tell I'm a pessimist?z

This is exactly what I have been advocating, and yes [b]with guns[/b] if we aren't being heard without them. Right now we have NO marches of any kind, no organization of any kind (we pay groups like the NRA who are only about self-perpetuation).

We need to take a page out of the Martin Luther King movement: organize, boycotts, and marches.

ORGANIZE into a potent lobbying force.

MARCH on your state / federal capital demanding gun laws be scrapped [b]or else[/b].

BOYCOTT any and all companies that discriminate against gun owners. Enforce this boycott with no exceptions.

If a bunch of unarmed blacks that most of the country hated can get discriminatory laws off the books, why can't we?

that's what bugs me most about the US's market system.  the fed *decides* the prime interest rate, effively *choosing* what the dollar is going to be worth on any given day.  it all seems arbirary.  it also bugs me that it's a private corporation deciding the value of the dollar, and how much exists, instead of the market as a whole, the american people, or even the government.

Since interest rates are governed by expectations of inflation and inflation is governed by the money supply, why not have a computer run the money supply? Just announce that the money supply will grow by 3% every year, regardless of any other conditions. Then let the banks competitively assess the risks of lending money and set their interest rates accordingly.

This is Milton Friedman's idea.  "Money is too important to be left in the hands of central bankers."

Gone would be the recessions caused by either overdoing or underdoing monetary policy to cope with economic expansion or contraction, which has made the Fed responsible for every recession since the Depression.