Gold and Economic Freedom: GATA Interview
Western Standard columnist Brad Parkes interviews Chris Powell with the Gold Anti Trust Action Committee and explores the relationship between gold and economic freedom.
Brad Parkes - November 1, 2009
Gold and Economic Freedom was the title of an essay that Alan Greenspan wrote for Ayn Rand’s Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal before he sold his soul to the establishment and became “the Maestro”.
Here’s an excerpt from that essay:
An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense-perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire -- that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other.
....In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.
This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.
The author of these words went on to become the most influential Federal Reserve Chairmen of our time and was regarded as the Maestro, and all knowing economist and central banker, possibly the surviving oxymoron, if only one could exist. America’s central bank, The Federal Reserve was created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. However, most people have little knowledge of the machinations behind the scene in the creation of this institution. Edward G. Griffin has written an extensive book on the Fed’s creation, The Creature from Jekyll Island (as well as a 12 part YouTube video series). I will let him explain the secrecy involved in creating this banking organization from a speech he gave:
Back in 1910, Jekyll Island was completely privately owned by a small group of millionaires from New York. We're talking about people such as J. P. Morgan, William Rockefeller and their associates. This was a social club and it was called "The Jekyll Island Club." They owned the island and it was where their families came to spend the winter months. There was a magnificent structure there, the clubhouse, which was the center of their social activities. That clubhouse is still there, by-the-way. The island has since been purchased by the state of Georgia, converted into a state park and the clubhouse has been restored and you can visit it. I think you'd be very impressed by it. As you walk through the downstairs corridors you'll come to a door and on the door there is a brass plaque and it says: "In this room the Federal Reserve System was created." This is not a secret anymore; it's a matter of public record. Around the clubhouse there were some cottages as they were called which were built by some of the families to quarter themselves. They're attractive little things; they were magnificent examples of the architecture of the turn of the century. One of the cottages through which they take tours if you're interested in doing that, as I recall the guide told us that there were 14 bathrooms in that cottage--not exactly what we would call a cottage.
The clubhouse is where the Federal Reserve System was created. Let's retell that story in detail and see how it came about. The year was 1910, that was three years before the Federal Reserve Act was finally passed into law. It was November of that year when Senator Nelson Aldrich sent his private railroad car to the railroad station in New Jersey and there it was in readiness for the arrival of himself and six other men who were told to come under conditions of great secrecy. For example, they were told to arrive one at a time and not to dine with each other on the night of their departure. They were told that should they arrive at the station at the same time they should pretend like they didn't even know each other. They were instructed to avoid newspaper reporters at all cost because they were well-known people and had they been seen by a reporter they would've asked questions. Especially if two or three of them had been spotted together, this would've raised eyebrows and they would've asked a lot of questions. One of the men carried a shotgun in a big black case so that if he had been stopped and asked where he was going he was prepared to say that he was going on a duck hunting trip. The interesting thing about that part of the story is that we find out later from his biographer that this man never fired a gun in his life, in fact he borrowed that shotgun just to carry with him on this trip as part of the deception.
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