Senate Sponsor Exposes The Real Reason For The Fed

Robert Latham Owen was a part-Cherokee Democratic Senator from Oklahoma between 1907 and 1925 who (ironically) championed efforts to strengthen public control of government.

He is, however, best-known as a co-sponsor of a bill that would change the world forever - The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (which enabled the Federal Reserve System).

Writing later in his life, he reflected (as so many political leaders do once they leave office) on the real reason for the Federal Reserve Act...

From Robert Latham Owen's "National economy and the banking system of the United States"

...Funding War!

h/t @RudyHavenstein

Comments

[Sizzurp]

What a sickening piece of legislation this was.  20 years later, gold had to be confiscated, and the dollar lost 70% of it's value.  Ironically, they confiscated gold so that people wouldn't unfairly benefit from the devaluation.  Never mind the perverse unfairness of the FR Act itself.  

[zipit]

With solid gold pens.  So ironic.

[CHX]

It's the woar funding, stupid.

[NuYawkFrankie]

The unabridged "FED Mandate":

Funding USSA Wars for 'The Greater Glory Of Zion'  (and sticking YOU with the tab)

[pcrs]

Printing money to find wars, what else is new. With direct taxation it would soon come to an end.

[smartknowledgeu]

War is a Racket, by Brigadier General Smedley Butler. 'nuff said.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/092291586...

[daedon]

war is a racket

https://archive.org/search.php?query=war%20is%20a%20racket

[Jumbie]

"Because money having intrinsic value, such as gold, is preferred by the people to paper money having no intrinsic value, when the two moneys are both in circulation the gold money will be hoarded and disappear whenever there comes any undue expansion of the paper money. For this and other reasons all of the nations in the world have now abandoned the use of gold as domestic currency. "

Translation: people will hoard (a bad thing by implication) things of value which help preserve their hard-earned wealth, causing the value of promissary/debt notes - issued to fund other people's (mis)adventures and wealth redistribution plans - to fall.

https://archive.org/stream/NationalEconomyAndTheBankingSystemOfTheUnited...

[Moribundus]

Governments can pay their bills in three ways: taxes, debt, and inflation. The public usually recognizes the first two, for they are difficult to hide. But the third tends to go unnoticed by the public because it involves a slow and subtle reduction in the value of money, a policy usually unarticulated and complex in design.

In this article, I will look under the hood of the Federal Reserve during World War I to explain the actual tools and levers used by monetary authorities to reduce the value of the public's money in order to fund government war spending. This example will help readers better understand the more general idea of an "inflation tax," and how such a tax might be used in the future to fund the state's wars.

http://mises.org/daily/3828/How-the-Fed-Helped-Pay-for-World-War-I

[layman_please]

very interesting article, thanks!