246. Hidden in plain sight

OUT OF ESSEX – CHAPTER 26

 

 

One of these days

I’m gonna pay it back, pay it back

Elvis Costello

 

 

Maggie returned from God’s lecture. The Place was buzzing,

Around 150,000 incoming souls were processed each day, about 600 a minute. She looked up. A wide belt conveyed souls into The Stacks for rest and rebooting. Around her, angels scurried: directing, comforting, issuing kind words. Maggie sensed her sports bag – with its smiling images of God, Jesus, Buddha and Satan – was attracting glances. Souls were seated in cafes to the left; sweating in gymnasia to the right. While pondering reincarnation options, they could inhabit a younger version of their last body. Rooms to undertake spiritual exercise sat at one end of a giant hallway; a massive theatre and cinema at the other.

Back in her room, she brought up the Akashic files on the wall, as instructed. “Akash, I need information.”

“Maggie, what a pleasure,” purred the system. “Have you enjoyed discussions with the boss?” She didn’t need chitchat. Tectonic plates had shifted. “A key piece of data please.”

“Maggie that would be an exquisite delight.” She cut in quickly. “Forget the pleasantries Akash. Or I’ll mute you, and read the answers on the wall.”

“State your question.”

“Delve into the Earth’s economic data. Retrieve statistics that show beyond any doubt that countries function better without a money system that pivots around interest-bearing debt.”

“Maggie, consider President Kennedy’s Order 11110 of June 4, 1963. This was signed with the authority to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States government at interest, allowing the government to begin printing its own, interest-free money, backed by silver bullion.”

“I know the details. Get on with it.”

“Government debt in 1963 stood at around $306 billion. By the end of 2013, it will have topped $17 trillion. Had JFK’s order stood across the 50 years, the successive governments could have printed enough money for their every need – including enough to have paid down all of the outstanding sovereign debt to zero.”

Maggie whistled. Having cut some of her sharpest political teeth on the stresses of the UK’s Public Sector Borrowing Requirement, the possibilities jumped out. No wringing of hands about debt ceilings. No government shutdowns. No interminable speculation about how far down the road refinancing could “kick the can”. And what about the harsh dismantling of the US welfare state? This had bequeathed the US with a homeless army, living in sewers, skips, tents or cardboard boxes. Guilty memories of Britain flooded back.

God’s claims were fully validated. As the US financial system stood, every dollar issued produced immediate debt – repayable by taxpayers – and subsequent inflation. Since the 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve, which was privately-owned and operated, the dollar had lost 97% of its value, Akash said. Worse, whenever the Fed cut back the money supply, which was in reality a debt supply, bankruptcies increased, allowing commercial banks to call in collateral. The scam was huge, and yet somehow unperceived. She needed more. “Akash, tell me what the US Constitution says about the country printing its own money?”

“The Constitution grants Congress the power to “coin money”, under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5. Congress controls the minting, and, theoretically, sets its value. But, in practice, from 1913, the power has lain with the Federal Reserve Bank, not Congress.”

Maggie asked Akash for the Founding Fathers’ view. The response was a quote from Thomas Jefferson, a principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third US President. “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” Jefferson was a seer. In an 1816 letter, he wrote: “And I sincerely believe….banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

Maggie was having a Eureka moment. Words such as ‘golly’ bombarded her cerebral cortex. As private foreign bankers made inroads into the US economy, Jefferson had commented that “bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs”.

“Bloody hell,” said Maggie. She was beginning to see why the Federal Reserve was reviled in some quarters. She asked Akash for a view from Woodrow Wilson, who signed the Federal Reserve Act into law. A 1916 quote ensued. “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men….…No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority.”

She would dip into Wilson’s autobiography. More importantly, as the line of thought expanded, it appeared that Congress still had authority to create debt-free money. Given that the country leaned over the world’s largest ever financial cliff, why was the privately-owned and politically unaccountable Federal Reserve still operating?

“Akash, does the Fed run the United States?” An unusual three second pause. “No”. She tweaked the question. “Akash, if money is equivalent to debt, and debt is equivalent to control, does the Fed run the US?”

“Yes”. It had to be. Akash provided comments from Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, in June 1932. “Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers, but the truth is – the Fed has usurped the government. It controls everything here, and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will.”

The ramifications were mind-boggling, both for America and every other country across the world that was tearing itself apart to repay debt, with interest, to private bankers. In Cyprus, the government had looted individual bank accounts in its desperation to pay back banks. Poland had stolen from its private pensions system. Yet conceivably, the entire US federal government – or political administrations in the UK, Greece, Spain or anywhere else where banking was sucking the marrow out of humanity – could be funded without ever again needing to borrow a single dollar, pound or euro that carried interest. Even more astonishingly, it followed that, with no interest to repay, far less taxation would be required.

Now she asked. “Who owns the Fed?”

“That is shrouded in secrecy, but there are major clues,” said Akash. “For example, charts created by an August 1976 House Banking Committee Staff Report revealed that the shareholders included banks run by the Rothschild and Rockefeller families, and a host of other famous banking names, including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the Warburgs, Lehman Brothers, the Kuen Loeb Bank, and Israel Moses Seif Bank.”

“These claims are backed by other research. Eustace Mullins cited the same names in his book The Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Similar claims were made by JW McCallister, an oil industry insider with House of Saud connections. He wrote that information he acquired from Saudi bankers cited 80% ownership of the New York Federal Reserve Bank – by far the most powerful Fed branch – by just eight family or bank names.”

Even as she began her next question – “why does nobody speak out against the banking system?” – Maggie already knew the answer. “Fear of the consequences, with but a few exceptions” said Akash. As an example, it explained that Senator John Heinz and former Senator John Tower had been outspoken critics of the Federal Reserve. On April 4, 1991, Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Philadelphia. On the next day, April 5, Tower was also killed in a plane crash. “Quite a coincidence,” said Maggie.

Akash noted that Senator Ron Paul and his son Rand Paul had boldly requested a Federal Reserve audit. “However, the campaign requires media support, and financial interests own American media, which is always quick to discredit any information exposing this private central banking cartel as ‘conspiracy theory’.”

Overwhelmed by her anger, Maggie needed catharsis.

 

***

 

Ignoring a minor desire for a wee, she headed out again, sports bag gripped firmly, having changed into a fresh sparring outfit. She descended the Highway to Hell, for the first time since her initial meeting with Satan. Blank walls this time. Two of Satan’s cats reappeared, rubbing against her. One ran down to the red door, where Lucifer stood, grinning across his dark, handsome face. She remembered the warmer temperature.

“Glad you could make it – this way Maggie,” he indicated. When Lucifer and Belial had heard that Maggie was a budding martial artist, they invited her to watch them fight. And join in, perhaps. “When entering, you should bow, and remove your shoes,” he said. They walked towards a door marked ‘Dojo’.

Awaiting was Belial, whose equally fine looks glistened with sweat. He was kicking a punch bag from various trajectories. Both were about six foot six, with plenty of growing ahead. Maggie found a chair. They commenced sparring slowly, warming their muscles for five minutes before a tacit agreement to begin. Lucifer was the heavier. He used that advantage in high-contact sequences. Belial countered this with agility and a speed that was still increasing as he approached his 1,000^th birthday.

The spectacle was so compelling that she failed to notice a female sit beside her. “Could you live with either of them?”

Maggie uttered a yelp. “So sorry Mags,” said Satan’s wife, Morgana, tail trailing behind her. She was beautifully dark. “Please come and share a glass of wine with me, whenever you wish.” She stole away, as Belial shouted for Maggie to spar.

Tentatively, she walked onto the mat. After four minutes she was exhausted from being flung around repeatedly. Her hand lifted in surrender.

They talked. “Do you tire of fighting each other?” asked Maggie. “It seems less exciting without Beelzebub, now that he is filling in for Dad,” said Lucifer. “Neither of us could match him on the mat.”

Belial said there was one challenge that scared them both. The Minotaur. Beelzebub had tried once and almost lost an arm. He was unable to fight for two years. “Dad could spend 5 minutes at the max with Minnie,” said Belial, fear darkening his green eyes.

Maggie recalled Satan’s sickening description of the beast dragging Jimmy Savile’s guts. She praised their hospitality, promising to return soon.