December 23, 1913.
That's the fateful day the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.
That law changed the course of the 20th century for the worse. Immediately after, World War One was initiated, followed by the roaring 20s, the Great Depression and World War Two.
All four transformative periods in Western culture, economics, and politics would not have been possible without the private financial power of the Federal Reserve which went hand in hand with the growing military and commercial might of the United States.
Overnight the most powerful nation's money supply and issuance of credit was transferred to a banking cabal with the stroke of a pen. The Bank of England on steroids was created. America ceased to be a sovereign nation with full control of its finances. A global financial empire came into being that has had endless appetite for war and collective social engineering.
Unlimited war making would not be possible without unlimited money printing. And it's not just the Federal Reserve. The modern state's ability to print money and wage war is ungodly. The fiasco in Ukraine is the latest example.
Raising an army without gold was unheard of for most of human history. Kings were subject to the laws of finance and the laws of war. No gold, no war. Now, beggars and clowns like Zelensky are in the place of kings and paper of gold.
What's more humane---a king's army looting a conquered city or a modern state printing currency and taxing its citizens to death to sustain an unpopular war?
The temptation of paper money is bad enough, but at the same time the evil of taxation on income was introduced in 1913. It started small and only targeted a few. But, the power to tax and create money with ease, once introduced, is hard to abstain from.
Goethe warned of the corrosive effects of paper money. In Faust Part II it was Mephistopheles's idea to use paper money to solve the kingdom's economic woes. But the Devil himself couldn't conceive the power of money printing by the bankers and by the modern state.
