Funny that we are talking about interest rates on another thread. I just saw this article on Bloomberg.com about the Fed and European Central Bank and how they each deal with the threat of high energy prices: Bloomberg

A few quotes:
Oil shocks are, in a word, stagflationary: On the one hand, they can increase prices throughout the economy, hastening inflation and justifying tighter monetary policy; on the other hand, they can clamp down on consumer spending, damp growth and provide a rationale for monetary easing.
Earlier this month, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan raised eyebrows about oil prices driving inflation concerns when he said ``the persistence of the rise in energy prices is a worrisome element in the cost picture.''
First, while some analysts point out that investments in conservation and a growing knowledge sector have made our economy less energy-dependent -- energy consumption per dollar of real gross domestic product has fallen 46 percent since 1973 -- that only tells part of the story.

Oil-Dependant
Over the same period, we have also become far more dependent on foreign sources of oil, which means profits from price increases are siphoned off by foreign producers, not recycled back into the American economy. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates that net oil imports have actually risen as a percentage of GDP from 0.9 percent in 1970 to 1.2 percent in 2003, suggesting the impact of oil prices on U.S. real income is, if anything, slightly higher than in 1970.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P108996.asp

Interesting article on what the Federal Reserve was saying publicly in 1999 before the internet stock bubble and saying privately in their meetings. The minutes of the meeting are released 5 years after the fact. We are now able to see what Alan Greenspan said back then in private.

Considering the likely bubble in housing prices, it would be interesting to know what they are saying in private today.

There was an old lady
who swallowed a fly...

anyway the article points to this site
http://www.federalreserve.gov/fomc/transcripts/

Now imagine if the names "Citicorp" or "Wells Fargo" appeared on your currency....wouldn't you be just a little bit curious how a private bank (and cartel) got to hold all that power?

Read "The Creature from Jekyll Island" Remember when "legal money" meant something? "Legal tender"? And it didn't mean 'fiat (by decree) money', backed in nothing (except YOUR FUTURE TAXES?)? Here's a few images to get you thinking...



















Hopefully, this has been educational for you. As the last vestiges of real money slip away, into an even more manipulative form ('electronic money'...your 'debit card'...even more money will be skimmed off the top from you...and guess who owns VISA/MASTERCARD? Yup. The Banks. Or, more precisely, the major private banks that make up the Federal Reserve...

Americans need to take back the issuance of their own currency...WITHOUT INTEREST!!!!!!

In the word of Andrew Jackson, we should say: "You are a den of vipers! And, by God, I shall root you out!!"

"JACKSON AND NO BANK" Revoke the Federal Reserve Act!

Secrets of the Federal Reserve

*watchs the tin-hat-o'meter aka the bs meter go off the scale..*

Remember, that currency you carry is not money, it's debt, and it's impossible to pay off the national debt. Why? Because then ALL of the currency we hav now would have to be called in. That currency IS debt.

Furthermore, it is IMPOSSIBLE to pay back ALL that is owed, since if X currency was issued, then X + Y% interest needs to be payed back, since it was issued as DEBT with INTEREST. Where does Y% interest come from? Good question. It doesn't exist. You have compete against everyone elese to pay YOUR SHARE of Y% back, and someone's going to lose, I assure. It comes from SOMEONE'S bankruptcy, and the foreclosure of real goods. Furthermore, what fractional reserve banking means is that banks can loan out way more than they have to loan, like 90%! Quite a racket.

My educational experience was fairly extensive yet this was NEVER taught, of course, and you'll almost never see it on TV, radio, or anywhere else but in certain books, and here, on the internet.

Seriously, if you would just tell me what part of what I said is untrue, instead of laying out a blanket dismissal without ever so much as a specific rebutttal. Thanks

read a history book.
the federal reserve bank is not a cartel, its a nessary system for a large country to work. before the fed came along each privatly owned bank made their own curency and the farther you went from the bank the less it was worth.(becuase the farther you went the less people heard about the bank you got it from). the federal reserve bank then started to print and stamp the offical u.s. curencey so people like you and me can go from new york to a small town in new mexico without even echangeing a dime between private banks to have usable money.
right now they are in charge of keeping the system flowing by printing replacement money to replace worn out bill's (one dollar bills last about a year the others last on average about 5 or more when you incress the denomination.) and coins.
if ou don't like the federal reserve bank, you can always opt out and go get some liberty dollars(backed by silver) instead of cooking up some theory that ranks up there with the 3 foot tall lizard like aliens trying to take over the world and the hollow earth junk.

The Federal Reserve IS a private for profit central bank. This topic came up a few days ago, and someone else posted a link to this documentary which I found to be very informative.

http://www.indybay.org/uploads/moneymasters1.wmv

http://www.indybay.org/uploads/moneymasters2.wmv

It's 10 years old, but still gets the point across. Nothing has changed really between then and now. It is 3 and a half hours long, and goes back thousands of years to explain the creation of money, and different type of monetary systems. Current banking systems can be traced back 300 years to the Bank of England, another privately owned bank with a deceptive name. Watch that movie before you make jokes about tin foil hats. Wealthy and powerful men have been working to become wealthier and more powerful since the dawn of time. They hit the jackpot with central banks.

This one's for you, True Kaiser...how appropriate...

"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think."
~ Adolf Hitler

The rest you should find interesting....


"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce."
~ James A. Garfield
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"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws."
~ Amschel Mayer Rothschild - 1838
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"A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks."
~ John C. Calhoun

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies...The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the Government, to whom it properly belongs."
~ Thomas Jefferson
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"If the people only understood the rank injustice of our Money and Banking system, there would be a revolution before morning."
~ Andrew Jackson
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"The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but is the Government's greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest."
~ Abraham Lincoln

If our nation is ever taken over, it will be taken over from within."
~ President James Madison
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"The growth of our nation and all its activities are in the hands of a few men."
~ Woodrow Wilson
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"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of government power, not the increase of it."
~ Woodrow Wilson
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
~ Arthur Schopenhauer


"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it."
~ General Douglas Macarthur, 1957

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
~ Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural
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"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
~ Thomas Jefferson, American Declaration of Independence

"Yes, many people will die when the New World Order is established, but it will be a much better world for those who survive".
~ Henry Kissinger
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"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order."
~ David Rockefeller
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"The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control.... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent."
~ Congressman Larry P. McDonald, 1976, killed in the Korean Airlines 747 that was shot down by the Soviets
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"There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself."
~ Senator Daniel K. Inouye - Iran Contra Hearings
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"Welcome to the "grande baille" of the New World Order"
~ George Bush, Sr. (September 11th, 1990)

"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think."
~ Adolf Hitler
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"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death."
~ Adolf Hitler
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"The great masses of people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. Especially if it is repeated over and over."
~ Adolph Hitler

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
~ Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
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"Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
~ Hermann Goering, Nazi leader

"Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will pledge with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the "Unknown". When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government."
~ Henry Kissinger Evians, France - 1991 Bilderberg Conference

"Those who wish to be ignorant and free, believe in something that never was and never shall be."
~ Thomas Jefferson
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"Those who are willing to trade freedom for security deserve neither freedom nor security."
~ Benjamin Franklin
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"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes."
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Here:

Famous Quotations Regarding Liberty and the real PTB

Do we need central banks? Yes. Do they have to be privately owned? NO. The Fed is privately owned. Period.

Here, here, someguy. I watched that documentary TWICE. It should be required viewing by all Americans. It is that important and revealing.
There was nothing the least bit outlandish, it was all very straightforward, but the upshot of the totality of it all was DEVASTATING. Quite literally, every American has been CHEATED.

TrueKaiser, watch the video. Do a little reading about it. Seriously.
You'll be "mad as hell and not want to take it anymore!"

Exactly! What's so nutty about not wanting to have a central bank owned by an oligarchy, TK? THAT'S nutty, if you ask me.

Most Americans wont recognize Garfield's name. No, he's not that cat from the cartoons. He was a President back in the late 1800's. His term lasted all of two weeks or so. Why? He was assassinated. Here's a short list of US Presidents that opposed a central bank before the Fed, and opposed the Fed after its creation.

Andrew Jackson - attempted assassination.
Lincoln - assassinated.
Garfield - assassinated.
Kennedy - assassinated.

Coincidence?

Andrew Jackson strongly opposed central banks, and killed the first one in the US. Someone tried to kill him but both muskets misfired. Jackson promptly kicked the guy's ass. The wood be assassin later said powerful bankers from Europe put him up to it. Jackson was censured in Congress by politicians bought by bankers. Lincoln learned a valuable lesson about the creation of money to finance the Civil War. He was going to put the final nail in the coffin of privately owned central banks. Instead he was killed, and succesors partially undid the damage caused by Jackson. Garfield's entire platform was reform of the monetary system, and opposition of privately owned central banks. He didn't last long. Woodrow Wilson's entire presidency was thanks to european bankers. Wilson is the one who signed the Federal Reserve into law. He later said it was the biggest mistake of his entire life, and that he had signed the country away to the bankers. Kennedy is the only president I know of who dared to say he was going to get rid of the Federal Reserve after it was created. We all know what happened to him. Magic bullets and a lone gunman.

Right.