Ellen H. Brown in her remarkable book, ed|AT|edcowansgreatideas.com Email address" title=-- target="_blank">The Web of Debt, reveals numerous periods in which people have gone around the bankers to fund a period of prosperity. The first American to recognize the power of money in circulation was Ben Franklin, known as "the father of paper money." He wrote and printed in 1729 a pamphlet titled, "A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency," and he soon had a contract to print colonial script for the colonies of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, and New Jersey, producing prosperity for these colonies. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire all printed excessive amounts of script, bringing inflation and currency devaluation.
The financial problems of these latter four colonies infuriated the Crown enough that by 1764 the Parliament passed the ed|AT|edcowansgreatideas.com Email address" title=-- target="_blank">Currency Act that made it illegal for the colonies to print their own money. They were forced to pay all future taxes to Britain in silver or gold. If you didn't have these precious metals, and very few did, you had to borrow from the bankers at interest.
One year later the streets of America were filled with beggars as they had been in London when Franklin visited in 1764, his first trip to Europe, to protest the Currency Act. Most of the colonies resumed circulation of their script, which was a sore spot with the British, but the colonists used colonial script because it brought prosperity. Growing dissatisfaction simmered thirteen years before it boiled over as the Revolutionary War. When it ended, the "Continental" of the Continental Congress wasn't worth much, but it had financed a war against the greatest power on Earth and had won the respect and awe of the entire world.
I mentioned previously that Lincoln saved his young nation $4 billion in interest by printing $400 million in ed|AT|edcowansgreatideas.com Email address" title=-- target="_blank">silver certificates (greenbacks) from the U.S. Mint instead of borrowing from the bankers. Consider this summary of Lincoln's total accomplishments, again quoting from The Web of Debt:
"His government built and equipped the largest army in the world, smashed the British-financed insurrection, abolished slavery, and freed four million slaves. Along the way, the country managed to become the greatest industrial giant the world had ever seen. The steel industry was launched, a continental railroad system was created, the Department of Agriculture was established, a new era of farm machinery and cheap tools was promoted, a system of free higher education was established through the Land Grant College System, land development was encouraged by passage of the Homestead Act granting ownership privileges to settlers, major government support was provided to all branches of science, the Bureau of Mines was organized, governments in the Western territories were established, the judicial system was reorganized, labor productivity increased by 50-75%, and standardization and mass production were promoted worldwide."
PUBLIC CENTRAL BANK - Reclaiming Our Central Bank and Monetary Policy President Lincoln could have borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from the banks, or he could do what the Constitution says the government should do when it needs more money in cir
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Such is the power of money in the hands of creative, industrious people, and we need the same today. Obama, as head of the Executive Branch, needs to instruct the Secretary of the Treasury to print ed|AT|edcowansgreatideas.com Email address" title=-- target="_blank">U.S. Treasury Notes of at least $2 billion to pay for the rebuilding of American infrastructure. All of the money--United States Treasury notes, greenbacks--would pay contractors and the workers for the construction and improvement of fund-starved projects in every state. Even if most of the money goes to improvements on existing structures, it is money well spent. What we need most are paychecks in the hands of the unemployed to be quickly spent on goods and services, generating a multiplier effect.
We need legislation to ed|AT|edcowansgreatideas.com Email address" title=-- target="_blank">nationalize the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury Department would assume its activities, the most important of which is money creation. Henceforth, only the Treasury would coin and print money, and all banks would have to use their own funds or borrow money from the Treasury Department at low interest. They could then lend it to borrowers just as finance companies, pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies, and securities dealers now have to do. Today most people mistakenly assume that banks also have to borrow money from the Fed. Instead, our largest banks are the Federal Reserve.
Ms. Brown then presents in over two hundred pages how to take back money creation from the banks and develop a banking system that serves the people. We have the option of many actions, but most importantly we must nationalize the Fed, turn its duties over to the Treasury Department, and thereby take control of American money creation. Money creation is the role of the United States Government, not the role of a gaggle of usurious banks.
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