Tag Archives: The Creature from Jekyll Island

It’s Time For A Change

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s term expires in May 2026. It’s a shame that he will be in charge until then. He claims to be apolitical, but his actions tell another story. On Saturday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s term.

The article reports:

We hear constantly about the importance of the independence of the Federal Reserve. Fine: but what if the Fed isn’t independent of politics, it is just independent of, and hostile to, the administration that is in power?

Some think that is the situation now before us. Stephen Moore comments on Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s most recent pronouncements:

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was full of doom and gloom yesterday [Wednesday], forecasting 1.6% growth for this year and closer to 1.5% next year.

Was he talking about Afghanistan or the United States?

In the second quarter of this year, the U.S. economy grew by 3.3%, and with a few weeks to go in the third quarter, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is forecasting above 3% growth – twice Powell’s anemic rate.

…Powell never mentioned that real household incomes are up $1,100 for the first seven months of 2025.

He attacks Trump’s tariffs and more restrictive immigration policies as restricting growth – and he’s right on that. But he never mentions the Trump tax cut, the immediate expensing for capital purchases (which has spurred an investment boom), the deregulations that could save up to $1 trillion this year, or that Trump’s pro-energy policies have increased U.S. production of oil and gas to record highs, or that the area where job growth is way down is in government employment – which is GOOD for the economy.

So Powell is hostile to the administration’s economic agenda, and–perhaps–has positioned the Fed in opposition to it.

Stephen Moore notes:

There’s also something almost comical of a Fed chair who let inflation soar by 21% and promised it was all “transitory” now terrified of an inflation rate of less than 3% this year.

The article notes:

Then, of course, there is the Fed’s Taj Majal, construction of which I believe President Trump has stopped. But that is a minor point, compared to the possibility that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is actively trying to undermine America’s economic policies. That isn’t independence, it is partisanship.

If you are unfamiliar with the history of the Federal Reserve, please watch the video below about the history and purpose of the organization.

The Federal Reserve is not what we were told it is.

A Statement That Makes The Deep State Tremble

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The Federal Reserve is a misnamed sketchy operation. There is a book and a YouTube video called “The Creature From Jekyll Island” that explains the dirty tricks involved in the creation of the Federal Reserve and its true purpose. The Federal Reserve is neither federal nor a reserve. Auditing the fed is a really good idea that the fed has avoided for years.

On Monday, Hot Air posted an article quoting CNBC:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday suggested a review of the Federal Reserve that would go beyond the current controversy over building renovations and look at its overall function.

“What we need to do is examine the entire Federal Reserve institution and whether they have been successful,” Bessent said during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “Has the organization succeeded in its mission? If this were the [Federal Aviation Administration] and we were having this many mistakes, we would go back and look at why has this happened.”

The article also quotes Senator Rand Paul:

Dr. Rand Paul (R-KY) has reintroduced the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, famously known as “Audit the Fed” legislation to require a full audit of the Federal Reserve’s operations and increase congressional oversight of its decision-making. In conjunction with the bill’s reintroduction, Senator Paul also released the latest edition of his Waste Report, which exposed the Federal Reserve’s $600 million cost overrun on renovations to its Washington, D.C. headquarters—now projected to cost taxpayers $2.5 billion in total. The report underscores the lack of transparency and accountability at the Fed, which remains exempt from a full audit by Congress or the Government Accountability Office.

“No institution holds more power over the future of the American economy and the value of our savings than the Federal Reserve,” said Dr. Paul. “It’s long past time for Congress to stop shirking its duty and hold the Federal Reserve accountable.”

“It is Congress’ duty to hold the Fed accountable,” said Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). “For too long, the Federal Reserve has operated behind closed doors while making decisions that impact the American economy. Throughout my service in Congress, I have worked to audit the Fed, and this legislation is necessary to shine a light on the Fed’s operations and provide transparency to Congress and American taxpayers.”

The year 1913 was a horrible year for the Democratic Republic of America. That year gave us the federal income tax, the federal reserve, and the direct election of U.S. Senators. All three of those things need to go away.

The Latest Inflation Numbers

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When reading statistics about anything, remember that a good statistician can make numbers say anything he wants them to say. With that in mind, I think the June inflation numbers look really good.

On Tuesday, CNBC reported:

  • The consumer price index, a broad-based measure of goods and services costs, increased 0.3% on the month, putting the 12-month inflation rate at 2.7%, in line with expectations.
  • Core inflation picked up 0.2% on the month, with the annual rate moving to 2.9%, with the annual rate in line with estimates.
  • While the evidence in June was mixed on how much influence tariffs had over prices, there were signs that the duties are having an impact. Apparel and home furnishing prices rose, though vehicle prices fell.

…Excluding volatile food and energy prices, core inflation picked up 0.2% on the month, with the annual rate moving to 2.9%, with the annual rate in line with estimates. The monthly level was slightly below the outlook for a 0.3% gain.

Inflation in June 2022 was 9.1 percent, but began going down slowly after that. Somehow, though, even when the rate of inflation comes down, the price of everything does not go back to where it started.

The article concludes:

Amid the previously muted inflation ratings, Trump has been urging the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, which it has not done since December. The president has insisted that tariffs are not aggravating inflation, and has contended that the Fed’s refusal to ease is raising the costs the U.S. has to pay on its burgeoning debt and deficit problem.

Central bankers, led by Chair Jerome Powell, have refused to budge. They insist that the U.S. economy is in a strong enough position now that the Fed can afford to wait to see the impact tariffs will have on inflation. Trump in turn has called on Powell to resign and is certain to name someone else to the job when the chair’s term expires in May 2026.

Markets expect the Fed to stay on hold when it meets at the end of July and then cut by a quarter percentage point in September.

The Federal Reserve was established in 1913 for the purpose of concentrating America’s wealth in the New York City Banks (yes, I know that wasn’t what you were told). It needs to go away. For further information, see The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin.

Admitting The Obvious

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I have stated my views of the Federal Reserve numerous times. It needs to go. For an explanation of why I believe this, please watch this video. It is long, but worth the watch.

If I had any doubts about the politicization of the Federal Reserve, those doubts were confirmed by an article posted at Breitbart on Tuesday.

The article reports:

The Fed chair (Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell) once warned against using speculative forecasts to drive policy. Now he’s doing exactly that.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell made a quiet but extraordinary admission on Tuesday: if the Fed were following the actual data, it would be cutting interest rates. But it isn’t—because the Fed expects President Trump’s tariffs to raise inflation, and it’s choosing to act on that forecast instead.

“If you just look at the basic data and don’t look at the forecast, you would say that we would’ve continued cutting,” Powell told lawmakers. “The difference, of course, is at this time all forecasters are expecting pretty soon that some significant inflation will show up from tariffs. And we can’t just ignore that.”

That’s a remarkable departure from the Fed’s longstanding mantra of data-dependence. It also reveals the extent to which the central bank is allowing anti-tariff bias—and speculative inflation models—to override clear economic signals pointing toward looser policy.

The data are, in Powell’s own words, favorable to a resumption of rate cuts. Inflation has come down meaningfully. We don’t yet have the personal consumption expenditure index reading for May, but Harvard economist Jason Furman’s calculation based on CPI is that the three-month annualized rate is around 0.6 percent for headline inflation and 1.4 percent for annualized inflation. The year-over-year figure is two percent for headline, exactly at the Fed’s target, and 2.5 percent for core inflation.

The article reminds us of some of Powell’s recent mistakes:

In some ways, Powell’s decision to ignore current data in favor of tariff-driven inflation forecasts echoes a costly Fed error from the recent past. In 2021, the Fed insisted that inflation was “transitory,” even as prices surged month after month. Officials were guided not by what the data showed, but by what their models predicted—that supply chain pressures would ease and inflation would naturally subside. It didn’t. And the Fed was forced to scramble, hiking rates aggressively in 2022 and 2023 to restore credibility.

Reducing interest rates at this point would help significantly in the recovery of America’s economy. After four years of inflation, lower wages, and slow employment growth, Americans are ready for the Federal Reserve to be a help rather than a hindrance.

The Consequences Of Not Understanding Economics

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I am not an authority on economics. I am, however, a person who watches what goes on around me and sometimes learns lessons from what I see. Some economic principles are obvious enough to be learned that way.

In 2013, Forbes Magazine posted an article quoting a statement by then-President Obama on the subject of economic freedom. Economic freedom was not something President Obama believed in. President Obama acted on his belief that economic freedom was not a good thing, and the American economy suffered during his presidency.

The article quotes a speech President Obama gave in Kansas:

there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes–especially for the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

Well, have we tried this theory? A little history is in order here.

The article reminds us:

I pick 100 years deliberately, because it was exactly 100 years ago that a gigantic anti-capitalist measure was put into effect: the Federal Reserve System. For 100 years, government, not the free market, has controlled money and banking. How’s that worked out? How’s the value of the dollar held up since 1913? Is it worth one-fiftieth of its value then or only one one-hundredth? You be the judge. How did the dollar hold up over the 100 years before this government take-over of money and banking? It actually gained slightly in value.

Laissez-faire hasn’t existed since the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. That was the first of a plethora of government crimes against the free market.

…Obama absurdly suggests that timid, half-hearted, compromisers, like George W. Bush, installed laissez-faire capitalism–on the grounds that they tinkered with one or two regulations (Glass-Steagall) and marginal tax rates–while blanking out the fact that under the Bush administration, government spending ballooned, growing much faster than under Clinton, and 50,000 new regulations were added to the Federal Register.

The philosophy of individualism and the politics of laissez-faire would mean government spending of about one-tenth its present level. It would also mean an end to all regulatory agencies: no SEC, FDA, NLRB, FAA, OSHA, EPA, FTC, ATF, CFTC, FHA, FCC–to name just some of the better known of the 430 agencies listed in the federal register.

Even you, dear reader, are probably wondering how on earth anyone could challenge things like Social Security, government schools, and the FDA. But that’s not the point. The point is: these statist, anti-capitalist programs exist and have existed for about a century. The point is: Obama is pretending that the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society were repealed, so that he can blame the financial crisis on capitalism. He’s pretending that George Bush was George Washington.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It accidentally explains the reasons the economy has prospered under President Trump. I also strongly recommend reading The Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin for the story behind the creation of the Federal Reserve System.

 

 

So How Did The Federal Debt Do This Year?

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President Trump is a businessman. Regardless of whether you like him or not, he is a businessman, and successful businessmen are relatively careful about how they spend money, and how much money they spend. President Trump is no exception.

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about the impact of the Trump Presidency on the debt.

The article reports:

In spite of the fact that President Trump took over with nearly $20 trillion of debt and the related interest payments on the debt, and in spite of the federal reserve (fed) under Janet Yellen increasing interest rates by a full 1 percent since the election, President Donald Trump’s first year debt is $1.1 trillion less than Obama’s.

Here is the picture:

The article at The Gateway Pundit reports:

Right after Barack Obama was elected President, on December 16, 2008, the Federal Reserve (The Fed) lowered the Fed Funds rate by an entire percent, from 1% down to 0% . The Fed had not lowered the Fed Funds rate by such a large amount (1% ) since at least before 1990, if ever. The Fed kept this 0% rate for most of Obama’s eight years in office.

CNBC reported in December 2015 that President Obama oversaw “seven years of the most accommodative monetary policy in U.S. history” (from the Fed). The Fed Funds rate was at zero for most of Obama’s time in office. Finally, in December 2015 after the Fed announced its first increase in the Fed Funds rate during the Obama Presidency.

The only Fed Funds Rate increases since 2015 were after President Trump was elected President. The Fed increased the Fed Funds Rate on December 14, 2016, March 15th, 2017, June 14, 2017 and again on December 13, 2017. Four times the Fed has increased rates on President Trump after doing so only once on President Obama.

If the Federal Reserve was political and wanted to prevent Republican Presidents from successful economic growth and debt decreases, then the Fed would increase the Fed Funds rates during Republican Presidents’ terms while decreasing the Fed Funds rates under Democratic Presidents’ terms.

This appears to be exactly what the Fed is doing.

The article at The Gateway Pundit also notes that without the increases in the interest rate it is possible that President Trump would have a balanced budget to date.

Remember that the Federal Reserve is neither Federal nor a Reserve. It is a stranglehold on our economy held by a small group of extremely wealthy people who control our money supply. For those who are interested in learning exactly how we got the Federal Reserve, I strongly recommend reading The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin. It explains the chicanery that was involved in creating the Federal Reserve and how it was sold to the American people.

Why It Is So Hard To Get Anything Done In Washington

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The Federal Reserve is neither federal nor a reserve. It is the vehicle that moves money around the country. The fed controls interest rates and the money supply. There are some real questions as to whether or not the Fed accountable to anyone.

In 1994, the book The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin was published. The book tells the story of the creation of the Federal Reserve. It chronicles the secret journey from New Jersey to Jekyll Island (to create the federal reserve) in Senator Nelson Aldrich’s private railroad car by such luminaries as Abraham Piatt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of New York, Harry P. Davison, senior partner of the J.P. Morgan Company, and Benjamin Strong, head of J.P. Morgan’s Bankers Trust Company. I strongly suggest reading the book to discover how the Federal Reserve was passed through Congress and formed.

Fast forward to March 29, 2017. One America News Network is reporting that the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has approved a bill to allow a congressional audit of Federal Reserve monetary policy. Democrats have uniformly spoken out against the idea.

The article reports:

Republican President Donald Trump expressed support for audits of the U.S. central bank during his election campaign, but it remained unclear whether the White House would back the proposal.

Republicans proposed numerous bills during the Obama administration to open the Fed up to deeper scrutiny, arguing the added transparency would ensure the Fed was accountable and free of outside influence.

Currently, the Fed publishes detailed audits of its finances but it keeps the inner workings of its monetary policy deliberations secret, publishing transcripts of policy meetings only with a five-year lag.

The proposal approved on Tuesday would “put an end to that reign of secrecy,” said Representative Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who submitted the bill.

The House has already passed versions of the bill twice, with dozens of Democrats joining nearly unanimous Republican support in 2012 and 2014. Those versions of the legislation died in the Senate.

The article also cites the example of Representative Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, who voted for similar legislation in 2012 and 2014, but spoke against the current proposal because he fears political interference at the Fed.

It goes without saying that there will be a group of establishment politicians who will oppose an audit of the Fed. The Fed is another example of something put in place by politicians that has a major impact on the finances of every American, yet very few Americans know its history or how it works. It is probably one of the least transparent institutions in Washington. It is time to audit the Fed.