All wars are Bankster wars. Always

万得福

Today, January 13, back in 1808, is the birthday of one Salmon Portland Chase, who was secretary of the Treasury (1861–64) in Abraham Lincoln's wartime cabinet and sixth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court (1864–73).

"Bob," you might ask, "what does that have to do with us today?"

Let me explain by way of a story you may not be completely aware of...

Jay Cooke was an unremarkable businessman with a brother in the newspaper industry and a close friend in Senator Salmon P. Chase.

Cooke's brother used his media influence to lobby for Chase's nomination for Treasury secretary, a position which Chase eventually secured.

After Chase was elevated to secretary of the Treasury, Jay Cooke opened his own investment bank, Jay Cooke and Company.

This was 1861, during the "Civil War," which should properly be called the War of Northern Aggression. Chase expected each state to outfit and pay for its own troops. Forbes.com reminds us, "May 15, 1861, was the day when Pennsylvania called up 10,000 men, and authorized the sale of $3 million worth of bonds bearing interest at six percent."

But who would buy the bonds that were to be sold to raise the $3 million ($105 million in today's dollars)?

Well, "it was Cooke who sold those bonds by mixing commercial and patriotic appeal, by looking beyond the borders of Pennsylvania to the investors of all the non-seceding states, thus creating a new national retail market in state bonds, and by using the new technology of the cheap mass-marketed newspaper to powerful effect."

Cook did such a good job that in 1862, Chase used his power as Treasury secretary to grant Jay Cooke and Company a monopoly privilege on the underwriting of all U.S. public debt.

No sooner had Cooke secured the monopoly of government bond underwriting than he teamed up with his associates, Secretary of the Treasury Chase and Ohio's Senator John Sherman, to drive through a measure that was destined to have far more fateful effects than greenbacks on the American monetary system: the national banking system.

It was called the National Banking Act, bitterly opposed by President Lincoln, but Chase and Sherman drove the new system through under the cover of "necessary due to war" ... but it was designed to alter the banking system permanently.

It did away with the free-market system of decentralized and individual banks commonly issuing their own paper notes that could be redeemed for gold. Another unfortunate truth is that the "gold standard" began to be scrapped long before Nixon and 1972. As did many capitalistic principles in favor of control by the few...

Death of the free market

The popular story is that these notes were difficult because there were so many different kinds, and because information on a bank's lending practices and general behavior was confined mostly to locals, it would have been difficult to know which banks' promises to redeem their notes were trustworthy, and which were not.

The real story is that free enterprise was at work, and the system worked, and worked for years... until Chase and Cooke established a monopoly so that jay Cooke could underwrite the U.S. public debt and create a massive, perpetual demand for it – and kill off free enterprise in the name of lining the pockets of a few elite bankers with influence.

With passage of the National Bank Acts of 1863-64, the federal government took over the production of paper money — but NOT it's issuance — and national banknotes replaced private banknotes.

Private notes were taxed out of existence (sound familiar? Cashless society? Digital dollar, anyone?)

The legislation was radical

Thousands of freely established state banks were eliminated by essentially forcing them to become "national" banks and eliminating their profitable note-issuing business. A new category of elite banks was authorized to issue the new legal tender that was required to be backed by U.S. Treasury bonds.

Once he had the sole power to underwrite public debt, Cooke turned his eye to creating a demand for that debt.

The National Banking Acts destroyed the previously decentralized and fairly successful state banking system, and substituted a new, centralized, and far more inflationary banking system under the aegis of Washington and a handful of Wall Street banks...

The wartime ground was to set up national banks, which were so structured as to necessarily purchase large amounts of U.S. government bonds to back the new paper notes.

Patterned after the "free" banking systems, this tied the nation's banks with the federal government and the public debt in a close symbiotic relationship ... because it allowed, for the first time, a private corporation the authority, and to successfully issue tender to be legal throughout the United States ... seemingly "backed by the U.S government" but in reality, issued by banks, that made all the money from it, and "backed" i.e. the risk taken on, by citizens of the United States.

Of course, it could not become known that the purpose of these laws and elite banking systems was to offload all banking risk onto the citizens of the United States. This had to be obscured... and it was, using another scheme: The income tax.

Money hoax

Let me quote to you from Merrill Jenkins' "The Money Hoax,"

"...in a little booklet by the IRS called Our Federal Tax System... It's publication 462. This was a January ‘71 revision. It says, ‘Finally, in July, 1862, President Lincoln signed into law the most sweeping revenue-producing measure in the nation's history to that time. The new law provided for progressive taxation for levees on incomes and for tax withholding." 1862. Now, how come you've been led to believe [the income tax] started in 1913?
"Maybe they didn't want you to look up and see why it was started back there and what some of the problems were they had with it.
"In 1863, the secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase, was granted power to hire employees for the purpose of detecting fraud. They had the Gestapo back there then.
"You see, I've been telling people about income tax for quite some time ... [it] was introduced at that time as a control measure. You understand? That the function of the Federal Reserve was to expropriate the wealth of the people. That was one of the first things it was to do and that in order to keep competition from the marketplace by the people with money so that there would not be an exposure of what was going on, that they needed the income tax to control. But I have to go back to the IRS book here ... to show you that that purpose was recognized fairly early and not that what most people are lead to believe that the income tax is so the government can get money to spend, which you all believe, I'm sure. But it's not true.
"Above all, they insisted on taxation as a means of regulating the economy. That's right in [the IRS book]. ‘It was used for the regulation of the economy.' If you wanted to make slaves out of everybody — now understand that Lincoln put this thing through in 1862 because he was involved in the Civil War. He was involved in the Civil War which was supposedly to free one ethnic group from slavery but actually, the whole thing was designed to bring about the slavery of everybody. That's what it was designed to do."
[Ed. Note: We created an exclusive Financial Survival Guide based on the principles Merrill Jenkins laid out in his now hard-to-find 1971 exposé mentioned above. It's called The Great Money Myth: The Secret Source of Our Financial Crisis — and How to Survive the Coming Depression. To get a copy, visit this page.]

Monetary slavery

All monetary systems founded upon the creation and regulation of credit by a central bank are the basis for authoritarian systems. We call some communist, some national socialism, some fascism and some democracy. It is a semantics game — you take your choice. But one and all are based upon the Marxian economic theory, "from each according to his ability and to each according to his need."

If I could create money and buy your labor with it, you would be my slave, no matter what you think. The Chinese do not want to be slaves. Hence, they have created their own money and no longer with the dollar to rule over them. Russia, a country with a GDP roughly equal to Italy's at this point, is at war to create wealth.

All wars are Bankster wars. Always.

There are many ways to extend the life of paper money by controlling information, and that is what the Banksters, the Fed, and the IRS are in the business of: control.

The monetary authorities suppress the price of gold as long as they can; they manipulate public perceptions with a fabricated consumer price index (CPI); they remove monetary indicators like M3; and they constantly talk about "managing inflation." They control the media; and, yes, they constantly talk about the debt ceiling and limiting the national debt. They talk about the trade imbalance.

All this is spurious nonsense, as anyone listening can hear the (now digital) money printing presses roll in the background around the clock. Note that the government and its politicians never talk about the depreciation and loss of purchasing power of your paper money.

With the debasement of the currency goes the debasement of society.

Yours for the truth,

Bob Livingston