G.
Edward Griffin
is a writer and documentary film producer with many
successful titles to his credit. Listed in Who’s
Who in America, he is well known because of his
talent for researching difficult topics and presenting
them in clear terms that all can understand. He
has dealt with such diverse subjects as archaeology
and ancient Earth history, the Federal Reserve System
and international banking, terrorism, internal subversion,
the history of taxation, U.S. foreign policy, the
science and politics of cancer therapy, the Supreme
Court, and the United Nations. His better-known
works include The Creature from Jekyll Island, World
without Cancer, The Discovery of Noah’s Ark,
Moles in High Places, The Open Gates of Troy, No
Place to Hide, The Capitalist Conspiracy, More Deadly
than War, The Grand Design, The Great Prison Break,
and The Fearful Master.
Mr. Griffin is a graduate of the University of Michigan
where he majored in speech and communications. In
preparation for writing his book on the Federal
Reserve System, he enrolled in the College for Financial
Planning located in Denver, Colorado. His goal was
not to become a professional financial planner but
to better understand the real world of investments
and money markets. He obtained his CFP designation
(Certified Financial Planner) in 1989.
Mr. Griffin is a recipient of the coveted Telly
Award for excellence in television production, a
Contributing Editor of The New American magazine,
the creator of the Reality Zone Audio Archives,
and is President of American Media, a publishing
and video production company in Southern California.
He has served on the board of directors of The National
Health Federation and The International Association
of Cancer Victors and Friends and is Founder and
President of The Cancer Cure Foundation. He is also
the founder and president of Freedom Force International.
How It REALLY Happened
The Creature from Jekyll Island
by G. Edward Griffin
Excerpts
from Chapter One specifically addressing
the creation of the Federal Reserve System.
The
secret meeting on Jekyll Island in Georgia at which
the Federal Reserve was conceived; the birth of
a banking cartel to protect its members from competition;
the strategy of how to convince Congress and the
public that this cartel was an agency of the United
States government.--...were seven men who represented
an estimated one-forth of the total wealth of the
entire world.
1.
Nelson W. Aldrich, Republican "whip" in
the Senate, Chairman of the National Monetary Commission,
business associate of J.P. Morgan, father-in-law
to John D. Rockefeller, Jr.;
2.
Abraham Piatt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of the
United States Treasury;
3.
Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the National City
Bank of New York, the most powerful of the banks
at that time,representing William Rockefeller and
the international investment banking house of Kuhn,
Loeb & Company;
4.
Henry P. Davison, senior partner of the J.P Morgan
Company;
5.
Charles D. Norton, president of J.P. Morgan's First
National Bank ofNew York;
6.
Benjamin Strong, head of J.P. Morgan's Bankers Trust
Company;and
7.
Paul M. Warburg, a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Company,
a representative of the Rothschild banking dynasty
in England and France, and brother to Max Warburg
who was head of the Warburg banking consortium in
Germany and the Netherlands.
In
1913, the same year that the Federal Reserve Act
was passed into law, a subcommittee of the House
Committee on Currency and Banking, under the chairmanship
of Arsene Pujo of Louisiana, completed its investigation
into the concentration of financial power in the
United States. Pujo was considered to be a spokesman
for the oil interests, part of the very group under
investigation, and did everything possible to sabotage
the hearings. In spite of his efforts, however,
the final report of the committee at large was devastating.
It stated:
Your
committee is satisfied from the proofs submitted,
even in the absence of data from the banks, that
there is an established and well defined identity
and community of interest between a few leaders
of finance...which has resulted in great and rapidly
growing concentration of the control of money and
credit in the hands of these few men...
When
we consider, also, in this connection that into
these reservoirs of money and credit there flow
a large part of the reserves of the banks of the
country, that they are also the agents and correspondents
of the out-of-town banks in the loaning of their
surplus funds in the only public money market of
the country, and that a small group of men and their
partners and associates have now further strengthened
their hold upon the resources of these institutions
by acquiring large stock holdings therein, by representation
on their boards and through valuable patronage,
we begin to realize something of the extent to which
this practical and effective domination and control
over our greatest financial, railroad and industrial
corporations has developed, largely within the past
five years, and that it is fraught with peril to
the welfare of the country.
The
purpose of this meeting on Jekyll Island was...to
come to an agreement on the structure and operation
of a banking cartel. The goal of the cartel, as
is true with all of them, was to maximize profits
by minimizing competition between members, to make
it difficult for new competitors to enter the field,
and to utilize the police power of government to
enforce the cartel agreement.
In
more specific terms, the purpose and, indeed, the
actual outcome of this meeting was to create the
blueprint for the Federal Reserve System.--
The
first leak regarding this meeting found its way
into print in 1916. It appeared in Leslie's Weekly
and was written by a young financial reporter by
the name of B.C. Forbes, who later founded Forbes
Magazine. The article was primarily in praise of
Paul Warburg, and it is likely that Warburg let
the story out during conversations with the writer.
At any rate, the opening paragraph contained a dramatic
but highly accurate summary of both the nature and
purpose of the meeting:
Picture
a party of the nation's greatest bankers stealing
out of New York on a private railroad car under
cover of darkness, stealthily hieing hundreds of
miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch, sneaking
on to an island deserted by all but a few servants,
living there a full week under such rigid secrecy
that the names of not one of them was once mentioned
lest the servants learn the identity and disclose
to the world this strangest, most secret expedition
in the history of American finance.
I
am not romancing. I am giving to the world, for
the first time, the real story of how the famous
Aldrich currency report, the foundation of our new
currency system, was written.--
In
1930, Paul Warburg wrote a massive book - 1750 pages
in all - entitled "The Federal Reserve System,
Its Origin and Growth". In this tome, he described
the meeting and its purpose but did not mention
either its location or the names of those who attended.
But he did say: "The results of the conference
were entirely confidential. Even the fact there
had been a meeting was not permitted to become public."
Then in a footnote he added: "Though eighteen
years have since gone by, I do not feel free to
give a description of this most interesting conference
concerning which Senator Aldrich pledged all participants
to secrecy."--
In
the February 9, 1935, issue of the Saturday Evening
Post, an article appeared written by Frank Vanderlip.
In it he said: "Despite my views about the
value to society of greater publicity for the affairs
of corporations, there was an occasion, near the
close of 1910, when I was as secretive - indeed,
as furtive - as any conspirator....I do not feel
it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition
to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception
of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System....We
were told to leave our last names behind us. We
were told, further, that we should avoid dining
together on the night of our departure. We were
instructed to come one at a time and as unobtrusively
as possible to the railroad terminal on the New
Jersy littoral of the Hudson, where Senator Aldrich's
private car would be in readiness, attached to the
rear end of a train for the South....
Once
aboard the private car we began to observe the taboo
that had been fixed on last names. We addressed
one another as "Ben," "Paul,"
"Nelson," "Abe" - it is Abraham
Piatt Andrew. Davison and I adopted even deeper
disguises, abandoning our first names. On the theory
that we were always right, he became Wilbur and
I became Orville, after those two aviation pioneers,
the Wright brothers....The servants and train crew
may have known the identities of one or two of us,
but they did not know all, and it was the names
of all printed together that would have made our
mysterious journey significant in Washington, in
Wall Street, even in London. Discovery, we knew,
simply must not happen, or else all our time and
effort would be wasted.
If
it were to be exposed publicly that our particular
group had got together and written a banking bill,
that bill would have no chance whatever of passage
by Congress.--
As
with all cartels, it had to be created by legislation
and sustained by the power of goverment under the
deception of protecting the consumer.--
As
John Kenneth Galbraith explained it:
"It
was his [Aldrich's] thought to outflank the opposition
by having not one central bank but many. And the
word bank would itself be avoided."--Galbraith
says "...Warburg has, with some justice, been
called the father of the system."
Professor
Edwin Seligman, a member of the international banking
family of J. & W. Seligman, and head of the
Department of Economics at Columbia University,
writes that "...in its fundamental features,
the Federal Reserve Act is the work of Mr. Warburg
more than any other man in the country."--
Another
brother, Max Warburg, was the financial adviser
of the Kaiser and became Director of the Reichsbank
in Germany. This was, of course, a central bank,
and it was one of the cartel models used in the
construction of the Federal Reserve System. The
Reichsbank, incidentally, a few years later would
create the massive hyperinflation that occured in
Germany, wiping out the middle class and the entire
German economy as well.--
...A.
Barton Hepburn of Chase National Bank was even more
candid. He said:
"The
measure recognizes and adopts the principles of
a central bank. Indeed, if all works out as the
sponsers of the law hope, it will make all incorporated
banks together joint owners of a central dominating
power." And that is about as good a definition
of a cartel as one is likely to find.--
...it
is incapable of achieving its stated objectives.--
...why
is the System incapable of achieving its stated
objectives?
The
painful answer is: those were never its true objectives.--
Anthony
Sutton, former Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution
for War, Revolution and Peace, and also Professor
of Economics at California State University, Los
Angeles, provides a somewhat deeper analysis. He
writes:
"Warburg's
revolutionary plan to get American Society to go
to work for Wall Street was astonishingly simple.
Even today,...academic theoreticians cover their
blackboards with meaningless equations, and the
general public struggles in bewildered confusion
with inflation and the coming credit collapse, while
the quite simple explanation of the problem goes
undiscussed and almost entirely uncomprehended.
The Federal Reserve System is a legal private monopoly
of the money supply operated for the benefit of
the few under the guise of protecting and promoting
the public interest.--"
The
real significance of the journey to Jekyll Island
and the creature that was hatched there was inadvertantly
summarized by the words of Paul Warburg's admiring
biographer, Harold Kellock:
"Paul
M. Warburg is probably the mildest-mannered man
that ever personally conducted a revolution. It
was a bloodless revolution: he did not attempt to
rouse the populace to arms. He stepped forth armed
simply with an idea. And he conquered. That's the
amazing thing. A shy, sensitive man, he imposed
his idea on a nation of a hundred million people.--"
Click
here to read Chapter 10, THE MANDRAKE MECHANISM
