G. Edward Griffin has spent years researching the super-secret private banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve System (FED). In his opening address on the subject of “The Creature From Jekyll Island,” Griffin reviewed the history of the creation and the purpose for the creation of the FED. Griffin makes it clear that while the meeting on Jekyll island South Carolina in 1912 was ultra-secret, the details are available to those willing to dig deep enough to find them.

He tied the creation of the FED to the emerging view of competing large corporations that the way to accomplish common goals of the industry was the formation of cartels. The FED is no different from other large business cartel except that it involves the banking industry and not just local banks but national and international banks.

So why would the privately owned and competitive banks want to partner with government? Griffin explained that the purpose is to keep the cartel from acting as an “enforcer” keeping rogue members of the cartel from breaking away from the group. He gave an example of how the dairy cartels got government to pass laws regarding minimum pricing which would require the jailing of dairies not complying with minimum pricing regulations.

What do each of the parties, government and banks, get from the agreement? Politicians get easy access to the  money they need to spend on new government programs through the sale of bonds and increased national debt from banking cartels while the cartel gets the power to create “money” ex nihilo- from NOTHING! The cartel can do this because the government puts its tax revenue deposits into cartel banks thus allowing the creation of the money from nothing on the basis of “fractional reserve” banking. This obviously a perfect partnership, from political and banking perspective. It is a nightmare for the public who watches the value of its money lost through inflation as a form of taxation.

Griffin explained that this is the reason for the gigantic bank bailouts of this and last years. Politicians simply cannot let the system collapse which would actually be in the best interest of the public in general because it would require a complete re-start of the system and the exposure of the participants. Whether or not the economy lapses into inflation or deflation is irrelevent, according to Griffin, because slaves really don’t care what type of methods are used to keep them in economic bondage, they simply want out of the situation but have no control any longer over it. Griffin explained that as long as we continue to accept the existence of government subsidies and handouts the deeper into that bondage we will sink. Only whe the American public demands an end to government intrusion into their lives including demanding econonomic freedom and independence.

As a postscript Griffin said that it was imperative that we end the FED!