NationStates Jolt Archive

What You Didn't Know About the Dollar & Iraq
- by Mark Owen ©, Feb. 2nd, 2005

The Federal Reserve is a system of private banks separate and distinct from the U.S. government. This banking system was originally conceived by John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan. The FED, as it is known, is listed in the white pages along with Federal Express, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and other businesses. The bank produces Federal Reserve Notes. They use these notes/dollars to purchase government bonds. These notes are a fiat currency. Historically, all fiat currencies eventually crash due to hyperinflation from over-issuance. The supply of paper is limitless. There is no intrinsic value in paper currency after delinking from a gold standard. This is why they are referred to as bank notes. Legally, they can't be referred to as 'money.' They are mere tickets/tokens. Forced tender laws were passed in order to give the paper currency legitimacy. The only thing giving bank notes value is TAXATION. Gold and silver have intrinsic value due to scarcity and the fact that it takes work to produce them (mining, smelting etc). This is why they have been used as money for 5000 years. Precious metals are a good store of value. They retain their value over time and aren't subject to inflation. The fiat paper system is designed to create debt through inflation (devaluation of currency). Whenever there is an increase in the money supply without a corresponding increase in gold or silver backing, inflation results. Inflation is a subtle form of theft banks impose upon citizens.


Goodbye Gold

In the 1960s Lyndon Johnson borrowed billions from the French Rothschilds so he wouldn't have to raise taxes to finance the Viet Nam war. Rothschild agent Charles de Gaulle demanded repayment in gold, not greenbacks. When Richard Nixon was elected he noted that the treasury was almost depleted of gold and he removed the dollar from the gold standard. But the debt still stood. Nixon collateralized the debt with the mineral estate of the western U.S. and a land-for-debt swap was initiated. Much of the western States were given to the banks. This is when Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency. Their mandate was/is to PREVENT American citizens from logging, farming, ranching or otherwise exploiting these lands being held for the banks. The Bureau of Land Management and other agencies are used to harass ranchers and farmers from the land.

So, what does the foregoing have to do with Middle East? Plenty.

All central banks of the world hold U.S. dollar reserves equivalent to the local currency in circulation to facilitate trade. The dollar is the biggest American export. It is impossible to overstate this. Also, when any country wishes to purchase oil, they must first convert their local currency to U.S. dollars and then purchase oil from the cartels. This is the arrangement hammered out between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in 1974. The quid pro quo was that the U.S. armed the Saudis to the teeth.

In the last two years the euro currency has gained 30% relative to the U.S. dollar. The European banks are seeking to have the euro accepted as the new world reserve currency. Countries like China and Japan are sitting atop mountains of U.S. dollars that are being daily devalued. Since the U.S. dollar is printed by the FED at will and without restraint (and is not linked to gold), Americans are essentially getting the world's oil for free (it costs the FED around 4 cents to print a one hundred dollar Federal Reserve note). France and Germany would like a piece of the free oil pie.

FED chairman Alan Greenspan is forced to feed the recovery myth or risk a panic sell-off of dollars. This past spring he tripled the money supply to $50 billion per week. This is making even seasoned economists nervous. In August, Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen Roach predicted a stock market crash on the scale of 1987s Black Monday. "The funding of America is an accident waiting to happen," he declared.

In speeches made outside of the U.S. (and only then) Greenspan has repeatedly warned of a possible 'systemic collapse' of the financial system. The printing of all of this paper is leading to massive inflation. All commodities have spiked from 10 to 90% over the last year. $15 dollar jeans available from Wal-Mart produced by slave labor in China somewhat disguise this fact. Another trick the money masters use to lull citizens is to periodically and surreptitiously ditch dinosaur industries from the DOW (like Kodak, this past spring) and supplant them with high-tech earners like Verizon, for instance. This is not to say that U.S. companies aren't investing billions of dollars in new production; they are. It's just that it's in China, not Ohio. China's quarter-trillion dollar export boom is America's import deficit. The debt-based credit inferno must create ever larger volumes of debt (credit) to prevent a financial implosion. The entire world growth since 2003 depends on the record FED money supply. Total U.S. debt now stands at $34 trillion. The U.S. GDP is $11 trillion. This means that debt is 3 times GDP, greater even than the depression of the 1930s. But happily for American citizens, the Federal Reserve of Cleveland commissioned a study recently on ways to diffuse this massive debt bomb. Options discussed included:

1. Doubling payroll taxes from 15.3% of wages to 32% immediately and forever.

2. Raising income taxes by two thirds immediately and forever.

3. Cutting Social Security and Medicare by 45% immediately and forever.

4. Eliminating forever all discretionary spending on courts, highways and parks.

Enter Saddam

In November 2000 Saddam Hussein tried to barter Iraq's oil directly for euros. This would have cut America out of its enormous subsidy and started a stampede of other OPEC members to embrace the euro. This simply would not stand. 9-11 was the pretext used to boot Saddam. Bush couldn't get America's moms to sacrifice their children for dollar hegemony and the terrorist bogey was activated. In March 2003 Iraqi oil war redenominated in US dollars. The war serves as a warning to other oil-producing countries on what to expect should they think of abandoning the dollar matrix.

Fourteen huge, permanent bases are currently under construction in Iraq, along with the world's biggest embassy in Baghdad (3,500 employees, and counting). Bush will continue on a permanent war footing in the Middle East in order to protect U.S. dollar hegemony. There is no other option. All future wars will be run out of Iraq. Iran has been making noises lately about ditching the U.S. dollar in favor of the euro, as have the Saudis. They're next. The U.S. will dismantle OPEC and surround Saudi Arabia, keeping their hand firmly on the oil spigot. This is the essence of the petro-dollar warfare that we are witnessing, in a nutshell.... /END

Source - http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Commentary/Dollar_Iraq.htm

I found this interesting. First time I've really read anything at a "conspiracy theory" site. What do you think?

And the plot thickens...

And the plot thickens...

Indeed ...

How the CIA created Osama bin Laden
BY NORM DIXON

“Throughout the world ... its agents, client states and satellites are on the defensive — on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and assert themselves. They're doing so on almost every continent populated by man — in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in Central America ... [They are] freedom fighters.”

Is this a call to jihad (holy war) taken from one of Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden's notorious fatwas? Or perhaps a communique issued by the repressive Taliban regime in Kabul?

In fact, this glowing praise of the murderous exploits of today's supporters of arch-terrorist bin Laden and his Taliban collaborators, and their holy war against the “evil empire”, was issued by US President Ronald Reagan on March 8, 1985. The “evil empire” was the Soviet Union, as well as Third World movements fighting US-backed colonialism, apartheid and dictatorship.

How things change. In the aftermath of a series of terrorist atrocities — the most despicable being the mass murder of more than 6000 working people in New York and Washington on September 11 — bin Laden the “freedom fighter” is now lambasted by US leaders and the Western mass media as a “terrorist mastermind” and an “evil-doer”.

Yet the US government refuses to admit its central role in creating the vicious movement that spawned bin Laden, the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalist terrorists that plague Algeria and Egypt — and perhaps the disaster that befell New York.

The mass media has also downplayed the origins of bin Laden and his toxic brand of Islamic fundamentalism.
Mujaheddin

In April 1978, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in Afghanistan in reaction to a crackdown against the party by that country's repressive government.

The PDPA was committed to a radical land reform that favoured the peasants, trade union rights, an expansion of education and social services, equality for women and the separation of church and state. The PDPA also supported strengthening Afghanistan's relationship with the Soviet Union.

Such policies enraged the wealthy semi-feudal landlords, the Muslim religious establishment (many mullahs were also big landlords) and the tribal chiefs. They immediately began organizing resistance to the government's progressive policies, under the guise of defending Islam.

Washington, fearing the spread of Soviet influence (and worse the new government's radical example) to its allies in Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states, immediately offered support to the Afghan mujaheddin, as the “contra” force was known.

Following an internal PDPA power struggle in December 1979 which toppled Afghanistan's leader, thousands of Soviet troops entered the country to prevent the new government's fall. This only galvanized the disparate fundamentalist factions. Their reactionary jihad now gained legitimacy as a “national liberation” struggle in the eyes of many Afghans.

The Soviet Union was eventually to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989 and the mujaheddin captured the capital, Kabul, in 1992.

Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured at least US$6 billion (some estimates range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop up the mujaheddin factions. Other Western governments, as well as oil-rich Saudi Arabia, kicked in as much again. Wealthy Arab fanatics, like Osama bin Laden, provided millions more.

Washington's policy in Afghanistan was shaped by US President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and was continued by his successors. His plan went far beyond simply forcing Soviet troops to withdraw; rather it aimed to foster an international movement to spread Islamic fanaticism into the Muslim Central Asian Soviet republics to destabilize the Soviet Union.

Brzezinski's grand plan coincided with Pakistan military dictator General Zia ul-Haq's own ambitions to dominate the region. US-run Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe beamed Islamic fundamentalist tirades across Central Asia (while paradoxically denouncing the “Islamic revolution” that toppled the pro-US Shah of Iran in 1979).

Washington's favoured mujaheddin faction was one of the most extreme, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The West's distaste for terrorism did not apply to this unsavory “freedom fighter”. Hekmatyar was notorious in the 1970's for throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil.

After the mujaheddin took Kabul in 1992, Hekmatyar's forces rained US-supplied missiles and rockets on that city — killing at least 2000 civilians — until the new government agreed to give him the post of prime minister. Osama bin Laden was a close associate of Hekmatyar and his faction.

Hekmatyar was also infamous for his side trade in the cultivation and trafficking in opium. Backing of the mujaheddin from the CIA coincided with a boom in the drug business. Within two years, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was the world's single largest source of heroin, supplying 60% of US drug users.

In 1995, the former director of the CIA's operation in Afghanistan was unrepentant about the explosion in the flow of drugs: “Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets... There was a fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.”
Made in the USA

According to Ahmed Rashid, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, in 1986 CIA chief William Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI proposal to recruit from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. At least 100,000 Islamic militants flocked to Pakistan between 1982 and 1992 (some 60,000 attended fundamentalist schools in Pakistan without necessarily taking part in the fighting).

John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC television network and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, has revealed that Muslims recruited in the US for the mujaheddin were sent to Camp Peary, the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where young Afghans, Arabs from Egypt and Jordan, and even some African-American “black Muslims” were taught “sabotage skills”.

The November 1, 1998, British Independent reported that one of those charged with the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Ali Mohammed, had trained “bin Laden's operatives” in 1989.

These “operatives” were recruited at the al Kifah Refugee Centre in Brooklyn, New York, given paramilitary training in the New York area and then sent to Afghanistan with US assistance to join Hekmatyar's forces. Mohammed was a member of the US army's elite Green Berets.

The program, reported the Independent, was part of a Washington-approved plan called “ Operation Cyclone”.

In Pakistan, recruits, money and equipment were distributed to the mujaheddin factions by an organization known as Maktab al Khidamar (Office of Services — MAK).

MAK was a front for Pakistan's CIA, the Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate. The ISI was the first recipient of the vast bulk of CIA and Saudi Arabian covert assistance for the Afghan contras. Bin Laden was one of three people who ran MAK. In 1989, he took overall charge of MAK.

Among those trained by Mohammed were El Sayyid Nosair, who was jailed in 1995 for killing Israeli rightist Rabbi Meir Kahane and plotting with others to bomb New York landmarks, including the World Trade Center in 1993.

The Independent also suggested that Shiekh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian religious leader also jailed for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was also part of Operation Cyclone. He entered the US in 1990 with the CIA's approval. A confidential CIA report concluded that the agency was “partly culpable” for the 1993 World Trade Center blast, the Independent reported.
Bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, one of 20 sons of a billionaire construction magnate, arrived in Afghanistan to join the jihad in 1980. An austere religious fanatic and business tycoon, bin Laden specialized in recruiting, financing and training the estimated 35,000 non-Afghan mercenaries who joined the mujaheddin.

The bin Laden family is a prominent pillar of the Saudi Arabian ruling class, with close personal, financial and political ties to that country's pro-US royal family.

Bin Laden senior was appointed Saudi Arabia's minister of public works as a favour by King Faisal. The new minister awarded his own construction companies lucrative contracts to rebuild Islam's holiest mosques in Mecca and Medina. In the process, the bin Laden family company in 1966 became the world's largest private construction company.

Osama bin Laden's father died in 1968. Until 1994, he had access to the dividends from this ill-gotten business empire.

(Bin Laden junior's oft-quoted personal fortune of US$200-300 million has been arrived at by the US State Department by dividing today's value of the bin Laden family net worth — estimated to be US$5 billion — by the number of bin Laden senior's sons. A fact rarely mentioned is that in 1994 the bin Laden family disowned Osama and took control of his share.)

Osama's military and business adventures in Afghanistan had the blessing of the bin Laden dynasty and the reactionary Saudi Arabian regime. His close working relationship with MAK also meant that the CIA was fully aware of his activities.

Milt Bearden, the CIA's station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, admitted to the January 24, 2000, New Yorker that while he never personally met bin Laden, “Did I know that he was out there? Yes, I did ... [Guys like] bin Laden were bringing $20-$25 million a month from other Saudis and Gulf Arabs to underwrite the war. And that is a lot of money. It's an extra $200-$300 million a year. And this is what bin Laden did.”

In 1986, bin Laden brought heavy construction equipment from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan. Using his extensive knowledge of construction techniques (he has a degree in civil engineering), he built “training camps”, some dug deep into the sides of mountains, and built roads to reach them.

These camps, now dubbed “terrorist universities” by Washington, were built in collaboration with the ISI and the CIA. The Afghan contra fighters, including the tens of thousands of mercenaries recruited and paid for by bin Laden, were armed by the CIA. Pakistan, the US and Britain provided military trainers.

Tom Carew, a former British SAS soldier who secretly fought for the mujaheddin told the August 13, 2000, British Observer, “The Americans were keen to teach the Afghans the techniques of urban terrorism — car bombing and so on — so that they could strike at the Russians in major towns ... Many of them are now using their knowledge and expertise to wage war on everything they hate.”

Al Qaeda (the Base), bin Laden's organization, was established in 1987-88 to run the camps and other business enterprises. It is a tightly-run capitalist holding company — albeit one that integrates the operations of a mercenary force and related logistical services with “legitimate” business operations.

Bin Laden has simply continued to do the job he was asked to do in Afghanistan during the 1980's — fund, feed and train mercenaries. All that has changed is his primary customer. Then it was the ISI and, behind the scenes, the CIA. Today, his services are utilized primarily by the reactionary Taliban regime.

Bin Laden only became a “terrorist” in US eyes when he fell out with the Saudi royal family over its decision to allow more than 540,000 US troops to be stationed on Saudi soil following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

When thousands of US troops remained in Saudi Arabia after the end of the Gulf War, bin Laden's anger turned to outright opposition. He declared that Saudi Arabia and other regimes — such as Egypt — in the Middle East were puppets of the US, just as the PDPA government of Afghanistan had been a puppet of the Soviet Union.

He called for the overthrow of these client regimes and declared it the duty of all Muslims to drive the US out of the Gulf states. In 1994, he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship and forced to leave the country. His assets there were frozen.

After a period in Sudan, he returned to Afghanistan in May 1996. He refurbished the camps he had helped build during the Afghan war and offered the facilities and services — and thousands of his mercenaries — to the Taliban, which took power that September.

Today, bin Laden's private army of non-Afghan religious fanatics is a key prop of the Taliban regime.

Prior to the devastating September 11 attack on the twin towers of World Trade Center, US ruling-class figures remained unrepentant about the consequences of their dirty deals with the likes of bin Laden, Hekmatyar and the Taliban. Since the awful attack, they have been downright hypocritical.

In an August 28, 1998, report posted on MSNBC, Michael Moran quotes Senator Orrin Hatch, who was a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee which approved US dealings with the mujaheddin, as saying he would make “the same call again”, even knowing what bin Laden would become.

“It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.”

Hatch today is one of the most gung-ho voices demanding military retaliation.

Another face that has appeared repeatedly on television screens since the attack has been Vincent Cannistrano, described as a former CIA chief of “counter-terrorism operations”.

Cannistrano is certainly an expert on terrorists like bin Laden, because he directed their “work”. He was in charge of the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras during the early 1980's. In 1984, he became the supervisor of covert aid to the Afghan mujaheddin for the US National Security Council.

The last word goes to Zbigniew Brzezinski: “What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few stirred up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” /END

Source - http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/CIA_Created_Osama.htm

I've heard and read stuff similar to this before. But not in this much detail. There's some stuff about FEMA there too, that is pretty fucked up.

Same thing could happen with Iran.

"Iran holds a strong hand as the No 2 producer of crude behind Saudi Arabia, pumping 5% of the world's oil demand. Politicians there will also keep in mind that dollar deposits might become a burden in the future, if the US steps up its current war of words to the level of economic sanctions in the attempt to halt construction of Iran's nuclear power plants. Money in the bank does not help when you have no access to it. Substituting Iran's domestic oil demand partly with nuclear power will place the country in a win-win situation. Cheaper nuclear energy and increases in oil exports from the current level of roughly 2.5 million barrels a day will result in a profitable equation for Iran.

Only one major actor stands to lose from a change in the current status quo: the US, which with less than 5% of the global population, consumes roughly one third of global oil production. Oil in euros would benefit millions more in the EU and its trading partners, though. And it would loosen the grip the US has on OPEC members. Thinking of the rapid growth of hostilities between the US and Arab nations in recent years, a renunciation of the dollar appears to be more than just an Arab daydream."
http://indiamonitor.com/news/readNews.jsp?ni=8436

Guess who we want to attack next...

Sorry, the Federal Reserve is part of the government...not "a system of private banks separate and distinct..."

"Total U.S. debt now stands at $34 trillion."

I believe the debt is still well under $10 trillion...

"Total U.S. debt now stands at $34 trillion."

I believe the debt is still well under $10 trillion...


Interestingly enough, Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, advocated having a permanant national debt. I personally don't know why, but he was a smart man, and had a good reason for advocating the policy he did.

I found this interesting. First time I've really read anything at a "conspiracy theory" site. What do you think?
I think I need to know more about economics.

Its pretty crazy though.

The Soviet Union was eventually to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989 and the mujaheddin captured the capital, Kabul, in 1992.


Zbigniew Brzezinski: “What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few stirred up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

:rolleyes:

Which Mujahideen? Which Taliban?

Any close observer of the affairs of the region can tell you that the Afghan Mujahideen != Taliban, although the taliban had in its ranks pushtuns who took part in the Afghan jihad.

After the Soviet withdrawal, with Iranian backing, Ahmed Shah Mas'ud helped set up the Ittehad-e Samt-e Shamal (Northern Alliance) in early 1992 and he allied with Gen. Abdulrasheed Dostum to capture most of Kabul after Najibullah's fall in April of 1992. The Packees were irritated that their guy Gulbudin Hekmatyar failed capturing Kabul and they created the Taliban and propped them up and foisted them on the Afghans. Taliban was created by the packees *after* Hekmatyar's failure.

The claims that the Taliban were a "necessary evil" and they brought down the Soviet empire is utter hogwash. Brzezinski ain't fooling me.

It was the utter shortsightedness (and arrogance) of US policymakers that made them walk away from the region without ensuring stability and leaving the field for the packees to play.

"Total U.S. debt now stands at $34 trillion."

I believe the debt is still well under $10 trillion...
Total national debt, not gross national debt. Gross national debt is probably in the $8Trillion range right now.
Total national debt is all the money owed to anybody by the US, gross national debt is the total national debt minus the money owed to the US by everyone else. The US owes $34Trillion to a bunch of people, a bunch of people owe the US $26Trillion and overall the US is $8Trillion in the hole.

Sorry, the Federal Reserve is part of the government...not "a system of private banks separate and distinct..."

1913-present: Recent changes

The Fed's power developed slowly in part due to an understanding at its creation that it was to function primarily as a reserve, a money-creator of last resort to prevent the downward spiral of withdrawal/withholding of funds which characterizes a monetary panic. At the outbreak of World War I, the Fed was better positioned than the Treasury to issue war bonds, and so became the primary retailer for war bonds under the direction of the Treasury. After the war, the Fed, lead by Paul Warburg and New York Governor Bank President Benjamin Strong, convinced Congress to modify its powers giving it the ability to both create money, as the 1913 Act intended, and destroy money, as a central bank could.

During the 1920s, the Fed experimented with a number of approaches, alternatively creating and destroying money and, in the eyes of many scholars (notably Milton Friedman), helping to create the late-1920s stock market bubble. In 1928 Strong died, leaving a tremendous vacuum in Fed governance from which the bank did not recover in time to react to the 1929 collapse (as, for instance, the Fed did after 1987's Black Monday), and the Fed adopted what most would consider today to be a restrictive policy, exacerbating the crash.

After Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, the Fed became subordinated to the Executive Branch, where it remained until 1951, when the Fed and the Treasury department signed an accord granting the Fed full independence over monetary matters while leaving fiscal matters to the Treasury.

The Fed's powers have not significantly changed since 1951, though it has frequently adopted different policy approaches.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Central_Banking_in_the_United_States


1951 Accord
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The 1951 Accord, also known simply as the Accord, was an agreement between the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve restoring independence to the Fed.

During World War II, the Fed pledged to keep the interest rate on Treasury bills fixed at 0.375 percent. It continued to support government borrowing after the war ended, despite the fact that the CPI rose 14% in 1947, 8% the next year, and the economy was in recession. Marriner Eccles, then Chairman of the Fed, opposed this policy and was not reappointed by Harry S. Truman in 1948, although his term would continue for three more years. The reluctance of the Fed to continue monetizing the deficit became so great that in 1951, President Truman invited the entire Federal Open Market Committee to the White House to resolve their differences. William McChesney Martin, then Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, was the principle mediator. Three weeks later, he was named Chairman of the Fed, replacing Eccles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_Accord

Maybe that's what the writer was talking about.

The Structure of the Federal Reserve System http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/frseries/frseri.htm

Holy Jesus my brain hurts...

1913-present: Recent changes

*snip*

In light of the original post I just have to say that any information garnered from a "conspiracy theory" website is, well, extremely suspect, at best.

However I have long been perplexed by the fact that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, an appointed position with, to the best of my knowledge, no Congressional approval process, has to power to say, "Interest rates are going to go, ummm...I dunno...[flips coin] UP this week!"

That's pretty scary! Alan Greenspan? I didn't vote for him!

In light of the original post I just have to say that any information garnered from a "conspiracy theory" website is, well, extremely suspect, at best.

However I have long been perplexed by the fact that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, an appointed position with, to the best of my knowledge, no Congressional approval process, has to power to say, "Interest rates are going to go, ummm...I dunno...[flips coin] UP this week!"

That's pretty scary! Alan Greenspan? I didn't vote for him!
He does go through congressional approval. And he has to report what he is doing to congress, although congress has no power to tell the FED what to do. Greenspan's term is comming up soon anyway (2007 i'm pretty sure) and he has alredy said two 14 year terms is enough.

He does go through congressional approval. And he has to report what he is doing to congress, although congress has no power to tell the FED what to do. Greenspan's term is comming up soon anyway (2007 i'm pretty sure) and he has alredy said two 14 year terms is enough.

January 2006 he's leaving. I am sort of glad he's going though. He's managed to engineer two horrible bubbles during his tenure.

January 2006 he's leaving. I am sort of glad he's going though. He's managed to engineer two horrible bubbles during his tenure.Sssshhh, he might go for three if he hears you talking like that.

Interesting post, not sure how much credibility it has, but interesting nonetheless.

As for the hamilton thing, he wanted a smaller, managable debt, not a huge one. From what I remember(This part made me fall asleep reading, in history), he wanted a fairly small one, so the people had an investment in the country, by putting their money into it slowly and constantly. From what I remember.