The U.S. dollar has not been worth anything for a very long time. As the saying goes, it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. As a matter of fact, the days when bartering was taking place more in this country than when money became a big factor, bartering for your goods and services was worth far more than money. To take it one step further, all currencies throughout the world that are no longer based on the gold standard are worthless. Why do I say that? How can I say that?

Money was created using the gold standard for the purpose of value. Gold Standard, in economics, is a monetary system where all forms of legal tender may be converted, on demand, into fixed quantities of fine gold, as defined by law. Until the 19th century, most countries of the world maintained a bi-metallic (consisting of two metals) monetary system. The widespread use of the gold standard during the second half of the 19th century was largely a result of the Industrial Revolution, which brought about an immense increase in the production of goods and widened the basis of world trade. The countries that adopted the gold standard had three principal aims: to facilitate the settlement of international commercial and financial transactions; to establish stability in foreign exchange rates; and to maintain domestic monetary stability. They believed these aims could best be accomplished by having a single standard of universal validity and relative stability; hence the gold standard is sometimes called the single gold standard.

The first country to go on the gold standard was Great Britain, in 1816. The United States made the change in 1873, and most other countries followed suit by 1900. With some exceptions, the prevalence of the gold standard lasted until the economic crisis of 1929 and the ensuing depression. Between 1931 and 1934, the governments of virtually all countries found it expedient or necessary to abandon the gold standard. This policy was partly motivated by the belief that the exports of a country could be stimulated by devaluating its currency in terms of foreign exchange.

In time, the advantage gained was offset as other countries also abandoned the gold standard. In the U.S., a policy of devaluation of the currency was initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Shortly after his inauguration in April 1933, the U.S. went off the full gold standard in favor of the “modified gold bullion standard.” Under this system, the circulation of gold coins is prohibited by law, but gold is still used in defining the value of the dollar, then set at 1/35 of an ounce of gold. In 1971 the U.S. suspended the free exchange of U.S. gold for foreign-held dollars and then devalued the dollar to 1/38 and in 1973 to 1/42.22 of an ounce of gold.

In 1975 the role of gold was further diminished when the U.S. government began to sell some of its holdings on the open market, making gold more of a commodity than a standard in the international monetary system. In 1978, in conjunction with reforms made by the International Monetary Fund, Congress formally removed the U.S. from the gold standard on an international basis. At the end of the decade no major currency was redeemable in gold.”

Then we went into a system called the Federal Reserve. The following are excerpts from the rules and regulations for the operation of the Federal Reserve.

Modern Money Mechanics

“The purpose of this booklet is to describe the basic process of money creation in a “functional reserve” banking system. The approach taken illustrates the changes in bank balance sheets that occur when deposits in banks change as a result of monetary action by the Federal Reserve System – the central bank of the United States.

The bank must be prepared to convert deposit money into currency for those depositors who request currency. It must make remittance on checks written by depositors and presented for payment by other banks (settle adverse clearings). Finally, it must maintain legally required reserves, in the form of vault cash and/or balances at its Federal Reserve Bank, equal to a prescribed percentage of its deposits.

The public’s demand for currency varies greatly, but generally follows a seasonal pattern that is quite predictable. The effects on bank funds of these variations in the amount of currency held by the public usually are offset by the central bank, which replaces the reserves absorbed by currency withdrawals from banks. For all banks taken together, there is no net drain of funds through clearings. A check drawn on one bank normally will be deposited to the credit of another bank.

Banks are required to maintain reserves equal to only a fraction of their deposits. Reserves in excess of this amount may be used to increase earning assets – loans and investments. Unused or excess reserves earn no interest. “Under current regulations, the reserve requirement against most transaction accounts is 10 percent. Assuming for simplicity, a uniform 10 percent reserve requirement against all transaction deposits, and further assuming that all banks attempt to remain fully invested, we can now trace the process of expansion in deposits which can take place on the basis of the additional reserves provided by the Federal Reserve System’s purchase of U.S. government securities.

If business is active, the banks with excess reserves probably will have opportunities to loan the excess 90 percent. Of course, they do not really pay out loans from the money they receive in deposits. If they did this, no additional money would be created. What they do when they make loans is to accept promissory notes in exchange for credits to the borrowers’ transaction accounts. Loans (assets) and deposits (liabilities) both rise by 90 percent. Reserves are unchanged by the loan transactions. But the deposit credits constitute new additions to the total deposits of the banking system.”

All of the above contains only excerpts from the actual Modern Money Mechanics manual, to have included any more would have been fruitless and very confusing. As we all know, our government tends to make up things as they go along and in order to make them seem appropriate and intelligent, giving us the impression that they are truly smart and know what they are doing, they tend to create documents that are thousands of pages in length. I believe they do this so that we won’t take the time to actually read all the crap that they have done to us as a nation.

What does all this gobbledy-goop mean? First of all, let it be said that a very famous historian warned us against the creation of the Federal Reserve. "I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."

-Thomas Jefferson

Also remember what John Adams said to us: ”There are two ways two conquer and enslave a nation, one is by the sword, the other is by debt”. Through the creation of the Federal Reserve which has spread in practice throughout the majority of banks in the world, is in fact, a system of modern slavery. I don’t mean to worry anyone here but, whoops! We did it again. Someone warned us of the great tragedies that would take place if we continued down a certain path and we didn’t listen to him. Think about it! Who do you really work for? The bank! Money is created in the bank and invariably ends up in the bank. They are the true kingpins, along with the corporations and government they support.

Money is created out of debt, and what do people do when they are in debt? They submit to employment to pay it off. But if money can only be created out of loans, how can society ever be debt free? It can’t, and that is the point. It is the fear of losing assets, along with the struggle to keep up with the perpetual debt and inflation inherent in the system, compounded by the inescapable scarcity within the money supply itself, created by the interest that can never be repaid, that keeps the wage slave in line. This of course creates the class system we have today where the middle and lower classes are continually working to pay off debt that for the most part doesn’t really exist, in order to support the elite benefiting from all the hard work and sacrificing the lower classes create for them. Debt is the weapon used to conquer and enslave a society, and interest is it’s prime ammunition.

What all of this means is that we did away with the gold standard, a standard that actually made our money worth something and created the Federal Reserve, which means that our money has no real value. If we follow all of the rules and regulations of the Modern Money Mechanics manual this is what basically happens.

Let’s say that our government decides that it needs to have 10 thousand dollars. It would go to the Federal Reserve Bank and say, “We need to have 10 thousand dollars and will provide you with 10 thousand dollars worth of Government Bonds to back it up with”. The Federal Reserve says, “We will accept that offer”. So our government prints up 10 thousand dollars worth of government bonds on worthless paper using wonderful graphics stating that these are government bonds. They then transfer these bonds to the Federal Reserve Bank. In return, the Federal Reserve Bank prints up 10 thousand dollars worth of money, that are also worthless but have wonderful graphics on them that signify that they are money, and give that to the government in exchange for the bonds.

Now, the government takes their 10 thousand dollars and deposits it in a bank. The bank accepts the worthless money and knows that it has to make sure that 10 percent of it is always available in reserve. Someone goes to that bank and wants to borrow the remainder, 9 thousand dollars at a rate of 6 percent, the bank agrees and gives the 9 thousand to the customer who then takes the 9 thousand and deposits it in another bank. That bank knows that it also has to reserve 10 percent of it as a reserve and then loans the other 90 percent to another customer at 6 percent interest, who then takes it to another bank for deposit. This goes on and on until the actual amount of money created from the initial 10 thousand becomes 90 thousand dollars, 90 thousand can be created from 10 thousand. This means that 9 times any deposit amount can be created out of thin air. Let me repeat that, out of thin air, it doesn’t even exist.

Through all of these transactions, one thing that you have to understand is, the government has no money, it has nothing to back up the 10 thousand dollar request it made from the Federal Reserve, as was made plain as day to us one day when a Congressman asked Mr. Paulson, head of the Federal Reserve, in a hearing about getting money for an enormous bailout. He was asked by this Congressman, “Where is the money going to come from?”. His answer was, “From the government.” He then was asked, “Who is the government?” His reply was, “The American people.”

This does not happen with the actual printing or creation of bonds and money, this all occurs within their computer system. I don’t know about you but, to me that all sounds like thin air. There is no actual money or bonds for this so-called 10 thousand dollars that turns into 90 thousand dollars, just computer transactions. Does it sound to you like there is any real value here? Does it sound to you like it could possibly be a Ponzi scheme, better known today as a Bernie Madoff scheme? Hmmm, let me think. Madoff took large amounts of money from someone guaranteeing them a large return on that money, took a larger amount of money from someone else making the same guarantee and then paid off the first with the excess from the second and then went on to a third and a fourth and a fifth victim and so on, hmmm, they kind of sound identical to me, how about you?

Also understand that the loans created for you and I was simply a paper transaction. What I mean by this is that you, the borrower, simply signed a contract that the bank created for the purpose of making sure that it was going to make a profit from the money that really did not exist. You were given a contract that stated you would pay back the amount plus an interest amount and if not, any assets you claimed as collateral could be taken from you. Everything for them, nothing for you. Sounds kind of crazy to me, since none of the money they were giving you really existed, but your property assets actually do exist.

“None are so hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – 1749-1832

In 1921, a dollar would buy 276 marks. By August 1923, it would buy 5 million of them. Middle-class savers were wiped out. This occurred because the government began printing more and more German Marks to meet the needs of the country and to attempt to push back a very bad and very deep recession. With the printing of more Marks came the inevitable inflation. Consider this example from history that occurred less than 100 years ago and what is currently taking place in our country and in some cases, around the world, today. It would appear that history is destined to repeat itself unless we first take the time to learn from it.

Some of the information presented here was from an idea from The Zeitgeist Movement Movie. I recommend this movie for those of you who want new ideas.