Wonderland
There is an insidious force among us. It hides in plain sight. Its sprawling fingers have crept their way into your neighborhood. At this very moment, you are its slave. It owns you. Year after year, it suckles away, fattening itself off of your hard work, perpetuating the greatest financial con in history.

The bank.

Yes, that bank. Your bank.

"Not my bank", you say. "They've always kept my money safe, and they've paid me interest while doing it! How can I be slave to my bank when they are the ones paying me?"

Welcome to Wonderland. In order to see the truth, you must step outside the looking glass.

Fractional-reserve banking using a fiat currency backed by a Central Bank.

It is the scheme to end all schemes. Nothing is more destructive. Nothing is more profitable. Quite literally. Don't believe me? Never even heard of fractional-reserve banking? Don't know what a Central Bank does? If ignorance is bliss, stop reading. Once you journey down this rabbit hole, the world around you will never look the same.

Making Money
Still here? Good. Let's try to wrap our minds around the paradox that is fractional-reserve banking.

Banks don't keep your money safe. That's why they pay you interest. They don't hold your money. They loan your money. This is called fractional-reserve banking. They put 10% (or less) of your money in their vault and loan the remaining 90%. They make interest on the loan and pay you a smaller rate of interest.

Doesn't seem too bad, right?

Unfortunately, there is no free lunch in this world. Loans entail risk. If the banks debtors don't pay their loans back, and you happen to want your money...it isn't there. Other people got there first, the 10% reserves are gone, and the vaults are empty. Oops. You've lost it all. You've learned the hard way that the 3% interest you've been making year after year wasn't free money after all. Your "deposits" were actually loans. The only reason you were earning interest is because you were assuming the risk of a potential 100% loss (at least that's the way it used to be).

Sad, but still somewhat sensible, right? If you wanted zero risk, you shouldn't have loaned your money. If you hadn't loaned your money, you wouldn't receive interest. Instead, you would have to pay the bank a fee for keeping 100% of your money safe and sound in a vault.

Look closer.

You make interest by risking your money. The bank makes a higher rate of interest. What does it risk?

The bank risks...nothing. The bank risks only its potential to make additional profits in the future. The bank derives its entire income from loaning borrowed money. A bank can open for business with $0, nothing but an empty vault, and begin making a steady stream of income by loaning money borrowed from depositors. The depositors assume 100% of the risk. In the event of bankruptcy, the depositors lose all of their money. The bank loses its stream of income and what it started with...nothing. An empty vault.

Ready to turn back? Don't. The fun is just beginning.

Try to follow me here.
I deposit my life savings of $10,000 at Bank A. My bank uses my $10,000 to create $90,000 in "new" loans and a corresponding $90,000 in "new" deposits out of thin air. This is done using the magic of fractional-reserve banking with a 10% reserve requirement.

The bank puts $1,000 of my money it its vault, and loans the remaining $9,000. That loaned money is then deposited by the debtor (or whoever he pays with his loan) in a bank. It doesn't matter if it's the same bank or a different bank. The bank puts 10% of this "new" money in the vault. It loans the remainder. Once again, this loaned money finds its way back to a bank in the form of deposits. 10% of that amount is put in the vault and the process is repeated. So it goes, with each successive loan and deposit getting smaller and smaller approaching zero. At the end of the process, the banks are collecting interest on $90,000 in imaginary funds created out of thin air.

Now remember, all of this newly created money has been lent out at interest Sweet sweet interest. Let's say 5%. In the above example, $4,500 interest is "earned" during the first year. Banks toss their dogs a bone and pay 3% interest to their depositors. They are left with $1,500 pure profit. The banks earned 15% of my original life savings (the only real money deposited) in one year. They never risked a single penny of their own money. In fact, they never had any money. All they had was my money. That plus the right to counterfeit. The $1,500 profit is theirs to loan to additional debtors (resulting in $15,000 in total additional loans and deposits). Or, the profit is simply distributed to the owners of the bank.

Banks never risk their own money because they don't have any money.

All risk is assumed by depositors. No more than 10% of people can request their money from any given bank at any given time. The money simply isn't there. Fears that a bank might be involved in malinvestment (making unproductive loans) can balloon into a "bankrun" (or at least they used to). Depositors rush to withdraw their money before it disappears, thus ensuring that the bank will collapse. Fear at one bank can spread to another bank. Sometimes these fears are very VERY justified, but in order for banks to continue their role as profit-making machines, they must devise a way to artificially alleviate the fears of depositors.

Enter the Queen of Hearts.

The Lender of Last Resort
The mechanism bankers found to artificially alleviate the fears of depositors is called the Central Bank. In the United States, it's called the Federal Reserve using the fiat currency of Federal Reserve Notes, commonly referred to as dollars. The Federal Reserve is a bank for banks. All deposit institutions collectively pool their 10% reserves at the Federal Reserve. Via the FDIC, the Fed can now insure individual deposits against total loss in case of a bank failure (recently raised to $250,000 per depositor per bank). If one bank fails, the Fed dips into its reserves to pay back depositors. If you've ever wondered why all banks seem the same, it's because all banks are the same. They are tentacles of the single Central Bank.

Risk is now shifted from bank depositors (lenders) to the populace as a whole. People who have money in (loaned to) banks are very happy. They make a steady stream of interest and never assume any risk, at least none they can see. Little do they know, they've started down a one-way path leading to inevitable poverty for themselves or their progeny, and worse, the destruction of liberty, democracy, and the American ideals we all know and love.

The Service to End All Services
Banks play the most critical role in any economy. Individually, people are tightly restricted in the number of investments available to them. Banks allow people to work as a collective, pooling money and gaining access to a vast plethora of investment opportunities that would be otherwise inaccessible. This is an irreplaceable service and is what allows economies to grow. It is also why the role of banks is so incredibly critical to any economy. They determine the flow of funds. They determine the flow of investments.

Banks decide if money will be spent over here or over there. Banks decide if money will be invested doing this in this way or that in that way. In order for banks to do their job properly there must be a free market mechanism in place to keep them in check. This natural free market mechanism is...anybody?...bank runs and bank failures. While a bank run might seem horrible for depositors (lenders), it is actually a requirement for a healthy functioning economy using fractional-reserve banking to grow. It is the mechanism the free market uses to slaughter unproductive, inefficient, greedy, corrupt, worthless banks making unproductive, inefficient, stupid, ridiculous loans. Bank runs and failures are healthy.

Bank runs and bank failures protect the economy against prolonged periods of malinvestment by any given bank. If a bank makes bad loans that aren't productive and can't be paid back, word spreads, a bank run is initiated and the imaginary money that was created to make the bad loans is wiped out in the form of customer deposits. The beautiful symmetry of Mother Nature in action.

The Central Bank's destruction of this free market mechanism required to keep banks in check ensures that the proper functioning of banks within our economy, the most critical function within our economy, is completely and utterly destroyed. With it goes the free market. With a Central Bank, banks no longer risk even their potential to make profits in the future. Their profits are guaranteed, no matter how bad they may be at performing the vital service of determining where funds should flow within an economy.

Banks can invest in 1000s of dot com startups for which there is no real demand, instead of focusing on more prudent investment in the internet's most promising features. Banks can invest in the same tired gas-guzzling cars and planes, instead of competing to find newer, ever more efficient means of transportation. They can invest in the same unsustainable sources of energy like Oil and Ethanol, instead of focusing on more sustainable sources like not-Oil and not-Ethanol. They can invest in building homes to lend at prices that borrowers could never possibly afford to pay, instead of only building homes that people can afford and focusing on housing production that is more and more efficient. Year after year, decade after decade, malinvestment is not just encouraged. Malinvestment is guaranteed. The necessary market mechanism to prevent it from occuring has been artificially supressed by the Central Bank.

The Federal Reserve is welfare for bankers. Banks are guaranteed a never-ending stream of funds flowing from the Central Bank at artificially low interest rates. Unhindered by restrictions of the free market, banks are free to finance a never-ending stream of lazy, tired, or greedy loans that should be (need to be) better directed elsewhere.

Banks have ceased to provide to society the service for which they receive their profits. Instead of being forced to constantly seek out the best and most productive investments, they are able to lazily invest in the same tired business models year after year, never pushing the envelope any further than absolutely required. Or, even worse, they are simply encouraged to seek deliberately unproductive investments as a way of making the highest possible rate of interest and profit (sub-prime loans, credit cards, derivatives, etc.) Without the Fed coddling banks, banks would be forced, as they were in past centuries, to seek only the most productive forms of investment. Otherwise, they face the risk of competition, bank runs, bank failures, and an end to their never-ending profits. The Federal Reserve artificially removes that risk by cartelizing the banking industry and providing a never-ending supply of funds available at artificially low interest rates. The result is never-ending inflation, a never-ending supply of malinvestments, and no free market mechanism to restore balance.

The Hidden Interest
Banks don't sell goods.
Banks don't provide services.
Banks don't take risk.
Banks do make profits.

We collectively pay for these profits. We pay this price receiving nothing in return. We are slaves to this ever present obligation. It doesn't matter how enormous your net worth may be. If you hold Federal Reserve Notes, you pay the piper every year. Every year, your Federal Reserve Notes lose a certain % of their value. You pay this interest, like it or not, realize it or not.

Every year, x% of your entire net worth is taken. x% this year. x% next year. On and on and on. This is not a tax paid to the government. This is a tax paid to banks and bank owners. It is the amount of value your dollars lose due to increased money supply, inflation. This increase in the money supply is created by banks collecting interest on a never-ending stream of imaginary money loans. Some call it inflation. Some call it embezzlement. Bankers call it earned income.

Of course, politicians have access to the printing press as well. Each year, politicians, faced with the impossible task of balancing the Federal budget, inevitably find themselves forced to "borrow" money from the Federal Reserve. This money is conjured out of thin air, it is added to the "National Debt," and it appears on the U.S. Treasury's accounts as if by magic. Politicians spend the money in whatever way they think might placate the public and keep them in office. Bankers could care less. Any new money that the U.S. Government "borrows" from the Federal Reserve is injected into the economy and multiplied at least 9 times through fractional-reserve banking. If the government injects, hmm, say, an imaginary $700 billion...that imaginary $700 billion is multiplied to $6.3 trillion over the coming years. The real effect on the money supply is an additional $6.3 trillion! All of it based in the original debt of the U.S. Government, all of it earning interest by a bank. The fact of the matter is...your dollar is worth nothing but the promise of the U.S. Government and private borrowers to pay back a debt that, collectively, they can never ever ever pay.

Loans work well within an economy only when the total interest paid on each and every loan is equaled or exceeded by an increase in the real value of goods or services available in the economy. For example, a "good" loan (for the economy) would be lending money to buy seeds and grow food. A "bad" loan would be lending money to buy McDonald's hamburgers. For an economy to be healthy, the number of "bad" loans need to be equalled or exceeded by the number of "good" loans. This is impossible with fractional-reserve lending backed by a central bank. Real value cannot be created fast enough to sustain the amount of exponential growth required to balance the exponential increase in money supply resulting from the exponential increase in real money interest being charged on an exponentially increasing number of imaginary money loans. The result is exponential inflation and lowered purchasing power. This is paid by all holders of the fiat currency. Rich communities are barely effected. Middle class communities are continually forced to struggle. Poor communities are continually decimated. Inflation kills the poor.

Despite this absurdity, Wonderland can sustain itself...for a time.

At first, workers and businesses in the economy are able be productive enough (as a whole) to create enough value to pay the interest and their taxes and the cost of inflation and still have enough left over to keep alive, procreate, and create more debtors. Success! However, for this to occur, mining, farming, energy, technology, weaponry, the whole of the economy must grow exponentially, or collapse under the burden of exponentially growing debt. Anyone who believes an economy can grow exponentially while trapped in a finite space is delusional. No matter how extraordinary the dream, Alice will eventually wake.

All the more troublesome, is that the dollar's value comes from purely psychological factors. So, if money supply is growing at a vastly greater rate than the actual amount of total wealth, products, and services, the price inflation you experience from year to year might vary based on how much confidence people (around the world) have in holding dollars. Money supply might increase big while GDP and GNP might increase only slightly. You would expect to feel significant price inflation, but you might not...at least not right away. Because psychological factors encourage foreign and domestic owners to collectively hoard dollars, you might not feel any inflation at all. However, there is nothing but psychology preventing a worldwide bankrun on dollars, a massive extraction from banks and dumping on the markets. This would cause sudden, unexpected, worldwide hyperinflation for the dollar.

Inflation is an increase in the money supply. Price inflation is one of the long-term consequences. It can be postponed years, even decades, but not forever.

[In 2006, The Federal Reserve stopped publishing reports on real money supply (M3) growth, the broadest measure of money supply and key factor in determining ultimate price inflation.]

The National Debt
The national debt is...

A direct, inevitable, and intended result of the Federal Reserve. It is caused by the Central Bank's destruction of the free market mechanism meant to control malinvestment. It is the accumulated cost of that malinvestment. It is accumulated losses that have been artificially removed from the shoulders of banks and their lenders (depositors) and placed on the backs of the American people. Instead of being paid as it occurs (via bank runs, bank failures, and lenders' losses) it is accrued as debt. It is accumulated inflation that has yet to be paid. Your dollar is worth one dollar today plus the promise to pay that accumulated inflation at some point in the future. Each year the decrease in value of your dollar is just interest paid on the principal. The principal is the National Debt. It grows exponentially, and it will eventually be paid.

Unfortunately, the FDIC is not a magic wand. "Abracadabra. All of the risk you depositors (lenders) used to take in order to receive interest on your loans is gone. Now let's party." Wrong. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. All of the risk and the cost of that risk still exists and is building over time. Instead of paying for and correction malinvestment as it occurs, the cost is continually accrued and malinvestment is encouraged, like a growing ocean pushing against a man-made dam.

It is short-term gratification for current generations. It is a bailout for bad investors and duped "savers" in exchange for exponential debt, inevitable collapse, and eventual totalitarianism for future generations. This is the New Deal. This is the FDIC. This is the Central Bank. This is the Federal Reserve. And this is the National Debt.

People look at the national debt and say, "Dear God in heaven! I didn't spend that money! That's not my responsibility. I don't know how that number got so big, I don't know why its getting exponentially bigger, I don't know who is going to pay it, and I don't know how they're going to do it...now let me go count my Federal Reserve Notes." Ignorance is bliss...while it lasts.

Or, maybe they think things are going to change. "Someday our elected officials are going to get their act together. Someday they're going to balance the budget. They're going to be able to pay the interest and start paying down the principal." Never. Not in a million years. The National Debt will never be paid down by the government, because an exponentially increasing National Debt is the inevitable consequence of the Federal Reserve System. The only way to pay the debt is with more debt or inflation and a decrease in the value of your Federal Reserve Notes.

Property As Debt
Simple ownership of a dollar bill is acceptance of debt obligation. This is hard to understand because it's counterintuitive. Most people think of dollar bills as property, as a store of wealth. In fact, the exact opposite is true. They are destroyers of wealth. Acceptance of a dollar bill is acceptance of a hidden debt obligation. If you're like me, you might try calling dollar bills Federal Reserve Notes to help wrap your mind around this unfamiliar concept of a dollar.

If you sell a chicken at the market for a $1 Federal Reserve Note, you assume that the $1 Federal Reserve Note you receive is and will be worth a chicken. You're wrong! Your $1 Note is worth a chicken this year. Next year, your $1 is worth maybe 0.97 chickens. The next year, 0.94 chickens. In ten years, 0.76 chickens. In twenty years, your dollar is worth half a frickin chicken! You take your dollar back to the market. "Give me a chicken," you say. "Give me another dollar," is the reply. "Two bucks for a chicken!" you exclaim, stunned. Seems like just yesterday you sold your chicken for a dollar. You probably miss the good old days.

On the other hand...

If you sell a chicken at market for a Morgan silver dollar, you get a wildly different result. You assume the silver dollar you receive is and will be worth a chicken. You're right! It's worth a chicken next year. It's worth a chicken in ten years. It's worth a chicken in twenty years. After 20 years, you go to the market. "Give me a chicken." "Ooh a Morgan silver dollar! That's worth two dollars. Here's your chicken." "Thanks," you say, somewhat puzzled. You eat well that night, pondering how 1 can be 2.

Simple ownership of a dollar bill is acceptance of debt obligation. You agree to pay an unknown amount, x% of the value of your dollar, every year. In contrast, a silver dollar is a commodity. It will adjust in value only if additional silver is mined from the Earth. The rate of silver inflation (the rate new silver can be mined from the Earth) never increases (in the long run), instead it constantly decreases and approaches zero. Silver is a finite resource, eventually all the silver that can be mined will be mined and silver inflation will be %0.

A widget that cost 1 Dollar in 1935 cost 15 Dollars in 2007.
A widget that cost 1 Morgan silver dollar in 1935 cost 1.1 Morgan silver dollars in 2007.
[use the Inflation Calculator and then compare to current prices of Morgan silver dollars.]

Can you imagine inflation that rarely fluctuates and steadily approaches zero!? We are coached to believe that exponential inflation is an inevitable monetary phenomenon. Ha! Not when Morgan silver dollars, Gold Eagles, platinum, palladium, rhodium, copper, nickel, iron, titanium, or any other hard assets are your money!

"Surrender your gold, or you will be fined and jailed!"
Surrender your gold? What a disgusting anti-American thought. What a despicable impingement on a person's natural rights. What greedy tyrannical dictator uttered these oppressive words? What Socialist country would mandate such a backwards policy? Communist China?... Red Russia?... I got it...the worst of the worst...Nazis. I hate Nazis. It must have been Nazis, right?

No? Well I give up. Enough with the games. Just tell me!

The United States of America. 1933. Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Picture this:
You never liked banks, but you always saved. You're employer paid you with gold coins...Double Eagles...beautiful coins, and worth $20 each, nothing to sneeze at back in the day. You could have spent them on extravagant foods. You could have spent them on travel, or booze, or gambling, or any number of immediate pleasures. But you didn't. You saved them. Year after year. You had a vault, and year after year, you saved. In 1933, you had 1,000 Double Eagle gold coins, $20,000, a respectable savings at the time. This would buy you about $350,000 worth of goods and services in modern dollars.

Unfortunately for you, in 1933 the government threatened you with prison, and you were forced to trade your 1,000 gold coins for $20,000 in dollar bills...Federal Reserve Notes...paper. If you put those bills in your vault as if they were gold, today your $20,000 in dollar bills would be worth...you guessed it...$20,000, a pittance in modern dollars.

Fortunately for you (or so you thought) you didn't have to put your bills in a safe. You're government told you, "It will be safer to put the bills in a bank. That way you won't have to worry about protecting your vault, you'll earn interest, and, amazingly, you'll never risk losing your money. Those pesky things called bankruns? No need to worry, we put a stop to that." They promised you're money would always be guaranteed.

"Wow," you thought, stunned by your good fortune. "I don't need this safe anymore? They're going to pay me interest? And I don't have to assume any risk?"

"Hell yes I'll keep my money in a bank!"

You put your $20,000 in the bank, assured it will be safe and feeling very smug that you'll now be making a steady 3% stream of interest without taking any risk.

Wearing a grin from ear to ear, you sit back and watch your money grow.

Fast forward 75 years. Present day. You're savings has grown to $175,000. You're amazed. You never did a thing. Never added a penny. Never made a decision. Never even thought about it. You started with $20,000 and now you have $175,000. Zip-de-dee-do-dah!

Then, one day, you start reminiscing about your old gold coins. They were pretty to look at after all, and, for some strange reason, you kind of miss them. For sentimental reasons, you see if there are any available to buy on the internet. There are.

$800. That's the melt value for one coin (0.9675 oz. fine gold). Because they are 75+ years old, they also have collector's value. You see that it's impossible to buy one for under $1,000. Many examples, in fact, are selling at auctions for $2,000 all the way up to north of $40,000 a piece. "What?!?!" you think to yourself. If each coin is worth at least $1,000, and you had 1,000 of them, your old coins are now worth at least...$1,000,000!!!! "How can this be!?!?!?" you think. "I traded my coins for $20,000 in paper. I earned interest for 75 years! Yet, despite that constant growth all the way up to $175,000, what I thought was amazing growth, it was nothing, absolutely nothing when compared to the $1,000,000 I would have right now, sitting in a vault, safe and sound, if only I'd been allowed to keep my coins! Oh, the humanity!"

It's called getting fleeced. You didn't "earn" interest all those years. You paid inflation. Despite the interest you received (which you now find insulting), your notes (in the long run) bought less and less and less gold each and every year.

And guess what? You're not done. The national debt is inflation yet to be paid. It is immense. Even more important than the national debt is the fact that much of the dollar's value is purely psychological, built from the assumption that the dollar is a sturdy currency, that it's "good as gold," as it used to be back when you traded in your coins. (Not any more.) This faulty assumption is what has allowed the dollar to spread throughout the world and become the "reserve" currency for a vast number of countries. If the psychological factors artificially propping up the dollar fail, your entire savings will buy next to nothing. Such is the price of tyranny.

Perfect Slaves
Slavery in America is nothing to be surprised by. Our country was founded with the concept of Liberty, and yet, for nearly 100 years after her birth, we stood idly by, tolerating the idea that certain people were not people but slaves. The twisted logic used to justify this notion sprang from the assumption that because they were "different," they weren't "people," they were "animals." Since animals didn't have Liberty, they could be owned as property and used. Of course, as decades went on and society became better acquainted with these "animals" they realized that, in fact, they weren't animals, they were human beings with the exact same thoughts, feelings, emotions, and basic humanity as everybody else. Once this became widely realized, secession or war was inevitable. Enslaving animals was one thing. Enslaving people was something different entirely and simply incompatible with the ideas of Liberty and America.

Slavery, however, exists in many forms.

Its hard to put yourself in the head of a slave owner, but in order to understand the history of our country, you must. Slave owners spent generations growing their riches solely from the work of their slaves, their "property." Their great-grandfathers did it. Their grandfathers did it. Their fathers did it. It was tradition, it was their way of life, and they felt it was their right. In order to justify their own existence, they forced themselves to truly believe that slaves were animals. They believed it to their core, and they felt entitled to the benefits of slavery, the benefits of property.

Imagine the frustration and the fury you would feel, as a slave owner, if someone tried to take away your property and tell you your way of life, your family, the way you'd achieved your fortunes, and the very core of your being, was wrong and evil. You would boil over with rage. Suddenly, your property, your slaves, are free to roam about your countryside and do as they please. They can own their own property. They can save. They can start businesses. A few of them might even get rich like you! Your slaves, your property!? Rich like you!? Unacceptable. The disdain, the resentment, and the itching desire to get your slaves back would be overwhelming. Fast forward 150 years, and still we find that the vast majority of our poorest communities and our prison population is comprised of minorities.

Why? There is a reason, but it's hard to detect.

It might be tempting for people who have succeeded within the system to write the failure of poor populations off as something inherent in their "characteristics." This type of uninformed thinking is what allows prejudice to linger in our society. "Why don't those people just stop screwing around, and get some damn jobs!" people might say. "They must be lazy, or stupid, incompetent, or helpless. This is the only explanation," they think to themselves. This is, after all, America. With work, anyone should be able to prosper.

There is a reason minority communities (or any lower working class wage-earning communities) fail to progress year after year, decade after decade, but it is not because of a vague collective characteristic.

The real reason is a new type of American slave was born. The public would never again stand for whips and guns. Instead, a system was adopted to allow the wealthiest among us to remain slave owners and maintain their parasitic way of life...building wealth from the work of others. It would be done without the public's knowledge or consent, and, this time, they wouldn't call it slavery. They would call it The Federal Reserve, and they would call it inflation.

Inflation is, literally, a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. That's it.

"No, no," you might say, "inflation is just a natural occurrence within a healthy economy. It helps an economy grow, and it effects everyone both rich and poor"

Wrong, wrong, and wrong again.

This is the great illusion that has been pushed on the American people and blindly accepted as truth. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Inflation is the sign of a diseased economy. It is a sign of corruption, oppression, and tyranny. Any attempt to explain otherwise is rooted in fallacy or simply an attempt by tyrants to keep their serfs in line.

You see, most people think that in order to save money...you just need to save money. Put it in your savings account and watch it grow. This is the great trick. It is the lie that was forced upon ex-slaves, minorities, immigrants, and lower class communities. They were taught 1 is 1 within a system where 2 is 1. "Saving" money in a "savings account" isn't actually saving! It's the exact opposite! It's spending! Because the rate of interest paid on your money NEVER exceeds the rate new money is being created, you actually lose money every year you keep it "safe" in a "savings" account!

If you understand this, you're in on the game. Typically, the richer you are, the more you understand the system. The vast vast majority of people, however, unfortunately, simply do not get it. The poorest, least educated, least privileged among us are guaranteed not to understand.

In order to not only maintain, but actually build wealth in The Federal Reserve system, one absolutely must invest, not save. You must always lend or spend your dollars, never hold them. There is no other option. The stock market, up and coming businesses, something, anything...the only way to save is to invest. The wealthier you are, the greater your investment opportunities. Up until recently, it wasn't all that difficult to earn an 8+% rate of return through investing in safe, steady stocks. Rich people are more likely to understand that this is absolutely essential if they want to maintain and continue to build their wealth. They realize that, because inflation is at least 3%-5% a year, a mere 3%-5% rate of return isn't enough to grow your money, it's just enough to maintain your current worth (if you're lucky and price inflation is only 3%-5% which, unless you believe Federal Reserve CPI stats, it's not). Therefore, in order to actually earn money, they see that they must make more than 3%-5% and are sure to always be invested in something that will allow them to do so.

Rich people NEVER "save". Rich people invest, and rich people lend. If rich people want to "save," they buy real things. Only poor and middle class people "save" in a "savings" account. This is why, year after year, decade after decade, they rarely progress. Rather, they manage to tread water or they continually slip behind, beaten back by the tides of inflation, unable to build their savings into anything significant and unable to get ahead.

As the system perpetuates, the middle class must frantically try to continue their artificially steep uphill climb. No matter what they do, they find inflation voraciously nipping at their heels as they struggle to move up or even just maintain their status quo. Some fight through, but most don't, and, ever so slowly, eventually they are all beaten down.

Money is Funny
How could such a corrupt system survive for 100 years? It's hard to believe, isn't it? But money is a funny thing. For some people, there is a desire to grow their property, influence, and power at a continuous rate.
If they have $100,000, they want to make 15%.
If they have $1,000,000, they want to make 15%.
If they have $100,000,000, they want to make 15%.
Doing so (outside of Wonderland) would be impossible without consistently risking a major percentage of your entire net wealth year after year after year.

Continually assuming this risk would ensure that, eventually, you would be on the losing side of a bet and the majority of your net worth would be extinguished.

The great trick is figuring out how to make the same %15 profit without assuming the same level of risk.

Impossible?

Nope. We already know how.

1) Risk other people's money instead of your own.
2) Collect real money interest on imaginary money loans.
3) Suppress the Free Market mechanism for preventing malinvestment.

Fractional-reserve banking artificially propped up by a Central Bank!! The Federal Reserve! Bankers kill many birds.

1) They use the Central Bank to spread the risk of loans to the populace as a whole without risking any of their own wealth.
2) They use the Central Bank to, quite literally, lend and collect interest on money that doesn't exist.
3) They use the Central Bank to artificially suppress the free market mechanism of bank runs which keeps an economy healthy, forces them to seek only the most productive forms of investment, and restrains their ability to make unfettered profits.

Old-style slaves were too much trouble anyway, always pestering the masters about why they must work all day so the master can sip lemonade. Wonderland is the perfect solution. Give the slave the illusion of freedom and opportunity. In addition, ensure his future servitude with a system where his own imagined prosperity can be sustained ONLY through exponential productivity and exponential payments to the masters. Stop being exponentially productive and whatever you've managed to save with your work will disappear at the rate of 3.5% a year (if you're lucky). Individually, the slave must be exponentially productive just to maintain his own status quo. Collectively, the slaves must be exponentially productive or they lose everything. The masters sip lemonade and watch their kingdoms grow.

Allowed to progress, due to finite resources and unfettered malinvestment over the years, the natural inevitable result of such a system is complete collapse. Imaginary wealth is distributed among %99.99 of the populace. The remaining %0.01 of the populace is left with control and/or influence over the remaining %100 of real wealth. You, and me, and anyone else whose buying power is in Federal Reserve Notes is left with nothing. The chosen few, the eye of the pyramid, is left with the rest. Land, precious metals, buildings, energy, technology, weaponry...everything real.

Put It In Perspective
Fractional-reserve banking backed by a co-opted government (via the creation of a Central Bank) using fiat currency is sustainable only through...

Exponential growth of...

1) Consumption
2) Capital goods
3) Extraction and destruction of natural resources
4) Buildings (new and/or re-constructed)
5) Amount of food produced
6) Amount of energy produced
7) Number of people participating (Using the currency, not living in the physical country. People can be brought into the system with imperialsm, war, population growth, importing goods, or any combination.)
8) Number of debtors
9) Size of their debts
10) Amount of interest paid on those debts
11) Profits "earned" by bankers (not to be confused with lenders, who assume risk)
12) Finally, the concentration of fiat wealth and, more importantly, real wealth into the hands of a smaller and smaller percentage of the population

Sound sustainable to you? This corrupt system could, theoretically, sustain itself within an infinitely large world. But the Earth is not an infinitely large world. The Earth is a tiny blue marble.

Imagine a race of people living in a bubble. As they expand the bubble, they all have more space. "Let's party!" they say. The bubble grows and grows and grows and...pop. Party over.

Imagine a virus in my body. The virus starts with 1 cell. It moves on to 4. Then 16 cells. 64 cells. 256. 1024. As it expands, the virus is living the good life. Exponential growth. But my body is a limited space. As the virus spreads, it overwhelms me. Eventually I die, and... so does the virus. It's greed leads to it's own demise.

The problem the U.S. faces is that a process like this, once begun, can be stopped ONLY with a very painful contraction and re-organization. This is hard, if not impossible, for most participants to accept, but the laws of The Universe, the laws of Mother Nature, and the laws of The Free Market show no mercy in the long run. This has been building for 75+ years. The longer it is postponed, the more severe the inevitable pain will be and the larger the percentage of the population it will effect.

Hoping to fight this truth, this simple and natural law of the universe, is like jumping off a cliff with the hope of fighting gravity.

Don't Break Your Eggs
Learning about the economic trap you've been born into is enough to make a person angry, or scared, or just plain sad. Its sad to think about throngs of Americans working hard throughout their lives. Day in. Day out. Week after week. Year after year. America's "prosperity" has been built with their hard work. They deserve rewards for their time and effort, and they feel like they have been rewarded.

Maybe they've nurtured savings accounts. Maybe they've saved enough to be able to invest. Maybe they're steadily making payments towards someday owning a home. Maybe they have accounts planning for their children's education or their own retirement some day.

You might feel like whatever you've earned and saved is protected from excess risk. Maybe you have thirty stocks. Various bonds. Various savings accounts. You may think you're well diversified. Wrong. Your savings are in one thing. FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES. That's it. Full exposure. All your eggs are definitely in one basket. One whose bottom will inevitably fall out, and with it everything you've ever worked for. If (or rather when) the bubble pops, you'll be left with your land (if you own it), your house (if you own it), your car (if you own it), and any property you may have accumulated (if you own it). That's it.

Diversify. Cheap cheap land, precious metals, rare coins, cars, horses, collectibles, guns, fancy marbles, pretty things, ANYTHING with it's own intrinsic value and the potential to appreciate (not depreciate!) in value over time. Anything real. Not Federal Reserve Notes. Not fiat money. Not paper. Not numbers on a screen.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket, and NEVER put all your eggs in Federal Reserve Notes!!!

The New Tree
America is a tree. Like all trees, it grows from a seed. The Founding Fathers sensed that above all else the single most important factor in determining the type of tree was the type of seed. Everything grows from the seed. In fact, the tree is the seed. The two are one and the same. They sensed there were two and only two types of seeds. The first was Tyranny, the seed used to plant nearly every tree in human history. The second was a neglected seed they called Liberty.

The Revolution was against the old, oppressive, innefficient tree of Tyranny. In the end, such trees always failed. Great empires, enormous, seemingly strong trees were always eventually brought to their knees. Built from tyranny, they inevitably grew weak, unbalanced, tainted, diseased, and hollow, and eventually they always crumbled.

Our forefathers intuitively grasped that the alternative, liberty, was the only way to grow a strong, full, flourishing, healthy tree. One which would never collapse and could grow forever.

The Founding Fathers also sensed that the ultimate defense of liberty was a sound monetary unit. The entire economy, the entire society, the entire nation is grown from that single seed. The monetary unit represents one half of every single transaction that occurs within an economy. Goods, services, labor, charity, or taxes, every economic agreement between individuals involves it.

The Revolution was a revolution against manipulated money, paper money, fiat money. The Founding Fathers understood that unsound, corrupt, fiat money is the seed of Tyranny. They understood that any system which grows from such a corrupt seed would be inherently infected with corruption. The roots, the trunk, the branches, and the leaves would all be tainted.

Liberty was the solution. And sound money was the key. Money that, no matter what, could never be manipulated to benefit any one group over any other group. A sound monetary unity. This, the Founding Fathers understood, was the key to everything. It was the seed of Liberty.

So they wrote explicitly in Article 1 Section 10 of our Constitution No money shall be legal tender other than Gold or Silver! No fiat money! None! They wrote it explicitly.

They went even further. To ensure the message of the revolution spread throughout the entire populace, they took the one word, the most important word, the concept that made the entire tree healthy...Liberty, and they stamped it on every single monetary unit. Every penny. Every dollar. Every eagle. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. They printed the concept of the seed on the seed itself. No matter who you were or where you were within the system, you would be exposed to Liberty. You would realize that you were free. Your work, your efforts belonged to you. In their entirety. You were a slave no longer. From now on, no king could lay claim to your work, your property, your life, or your pursuit of happiness, whatever it might be. Your life was yours to do with as you pleased. No one owned even the tiniest sliver of your liberty, no matter how rich, or wise, or powerful they might be. It was the key to everything, and they wanted everyone to know it.

Kill the Beast
It's time for a new revolution, it's time for sound money, it's time again for Liberty, and it's time to cut the fat in America.

We've forgotten what Liberty means and why it's so important. The concept has become as meaningless as the worthless scrap metal trinkets, the "coins," on which it is now stamped.

The true nature of the Federal Reserve system must be exposed to the American public, and collectively we must, once again, slaughter the great beast. The prospect might seem daunting. In fact, nothing could be simpler. Cut out the middleman. Cut the fat. The Federal Reserve is a mechanism to spread the risks associated with economic growth to the American people as a whole while keeping the profits associated with that risk flowing straight to private banks, the wealthiest among us. It is the exact same seed of Tyranny our forefathers so desperately tried to warn us of. It's time we remember the beautiful, loving, generous, sexy lady they found to protect us: Liberty.

The Federal Reserve must be killed. Legal tender laws must be repealed. This, and this alone, will free America from bondage. Inflation would be a thing of the past. Central bank fueled malinvestment would be eliminated. The ability to profit from borrowed money during war would disappear. The never-ending concentration of wealth would be reversed. The Federal Reserve, The Central Bank, the mechanism of inflation, oppression, corruption, and tyranny must be slaughtered once again.

The answer seems so simple. It must be too simple. It's not.

Banks will not cease to exist, but their days of enslaving the American people will. Our concept of a bank must change.

For Americans that trust the goverment, The U.S. Treasury could easily set up protected low-cost savings accounts for the American people similar to those currently facilitated by the FDIC. Imagine Fort Knox for individuals. Of course, the "money" in these accounts would be real (gold,silver,platinum,palladium,copper,nickel,etc.), not fiat, and convertible from paper to metal at any time. With the death of The Federal Reserve, private banks would no longer be able to artificially reassure their own private investors (depositors). In order to convince people to deposit with them (lend to them), they would need to earn trust the old-fashioned way, year by year. If they faltered, if they made bad loans, if they invested unwisely then, just like any business, they would fail. Their depositors (lenders) would lose their money, unfortunate for lenders but pure bliss for America. It's Lady Liberty in action. It's business. It's the Free Market. It's the real America.

The U.S. Treasury can provide all of the benefits and the "safety" that The Federal Reserve currently provides, but they can do it for the benefit of the American people and liberty NOT the benefit of private banks. It's time to end the Fed.

Got Liberty?

Trust In God, but don't trust one is one.