Jim Marrs - Rule by Secrecy - The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freema

"One is tempted to marvel at the [emperor's] audacious power and the subservience of his subjects who endured such an outrage," wrote author Griffin, "but our smugness rapidly vanishes when we consider the similarity of our own Federal Reserve Notes. They are adorned with signatures and seals; counterfeiters are severely punished; the government pays its expenses with them; the population is forced to accept them; they— and the 'invisible' checkbook money into which they can be converted— are made in such vast quantity that it must be equal in amount to all the treasures of the world. And yet they cost nothing to make. In truth, our present monetary system is an almost exact replica of that which supported the warlords of seven centuries ago."

But today it is the bankers, not warlords, who profit from money and they have created an incredible mechanism for doing so: the Federal Reserve System.

Anyone seeking to prove the existence of conspiracies in America need look no further than the origin of our present central bank. Here is a welldocumented conspiracy involving the very names tied to modern secret societies.

The early American colonists had printed small quantities of paper money and were prospering. Benjamin Franklin explained, "In the colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Script. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers... In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one."

The English parliament, at the urging of the Bank of England, put a stop to this colonial prosperity with passage of the Currency Act of 1764, which prohibited the printing of currency. The colonists were forced to accept notes from the Bank of England. Franklin and others claimed it was this outlawing of debt-free money which caused economic depression and widespread unemployment precipitating the American Revolution.

The very idea of a central bank run by professional hankers has been a contentious issue since the founding of the United States. The arguments for and against a central bank can be seen in the debates of Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

Hamilton believed in strong central government and a central bank overseen by a wealthy elite. "No society could Succeed which did not