End the Fed

By Daryl Dominic Tan

A brilliant example of strange bedfellows would be the progressive left-leaning Liberals and fiscal conservative Libertarians marching together on the streets of New York City as part of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Odd yet fascinating as despite comprehensively different political views, many are starting to see the discrepancies in Wall Street and are now stepping up to the plate against the very evils that are causing the inflation of the American dollar and the suffering of the middle-class Americans – Corporatism, also known as Crony Capitalism.

If any one word could be used to sum up these evil entities accurately, it is greed. Unfortunately though, a large majority of people (comprising mainly of Socialists and advocates of central-planning) always fail to grasp that there is a difference between Capitalism and Corporatism. The word “Capitalism” itself has largely become a pejorative, immediately denoting exploitation of the poor at the expense and benefit of the wealthy. This is not true however, as free market capitalism is about privatized profits and privatized losses and provides greater opportunities for the unemployed and lower costs of products as a result of healthy market competition. Corporatism AKA Crony Capitalism on the other hand, is the truest definition of a system that absolutely incapacitates the working and middle class. Corporatism doesn't favor the free market, for it is all about having their own corporate interests protected by the government who are readily in bed with them. Competition is eradicated and prices are driven up contributing to the inequality rate.

Much to the displeasure of the common man, most political decisions that the government make are largely influenced by corporations and likewise. Who funds these corporations and make them "too big to fail"? None other than the infamous and much hated Federal Reserve, the single largest man-made disaster the United States has ever created in the history of its existence. The Federal Reserve was established in 1913 in Jekyll Island, Georgia, with the sole intent of establishing a more efficient central banking system. The idea of a Federal Reserve was conceived by many billionaire bankers, most notably J.D. Rockefeller and J.P Morgan.

Exactly 20 years later since its enactment and at the peak of its activity, the Fed effectively caused the United States government to declare bankruptcy under Franklin D. Roosevelt. The inefficiency of the fed has been displayed on a regular basis and has always been the cause of an economic crisis or a bubble burst, most notably when Alan Greenspan became director and kept interest rates too low. The result of his actions led the economy of the United States to plummet in the early 90s. Current director of the Fed, Ben Bernanke, not to be outdone, has constantly called for the creation of paper money out of thin air (also known as Quantitative Easing) to bail out inept companies that have simply overspent their budget due to their own greed, resulting in a sharp and dangerous increase of executive powers allocated to the Federal Reserve.

How then, does the Federal Reserve affect every other American, and the world in general? The answer is by manipulating the global currency through devaluing, deprecating and debasing the American Dollar. This in turn, affects everybody's wealth as currency value dramatically takes a plunge. The Federal Reserve behaves like a criminal enterprise, or as many would say, an international banking cartel. What makes it all the more frightening is that the Federal Reserve is run by a coalition of powerful banks. Therefore, in essence, the entire United States economy is being run and observed by banks, all under the watchful eye and support of the government .

It is hereby somewhat comforting to know that one of the main agendas of the Occupy Wall Street protests is to end the fed. People are starting to realize that a Fiat-based currency and a fractional reserve banking system simply won't work as it exploits the other classes of society and only serves to promote a corporatist agenda.