What Every Student in America Needs To Know About The Federal Reserve

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

Frequent contributor Jeff W. recently penned this succinct explanation of the Federal Reserve, and he did so with such clarity that in my view this is the essential primer on the Fed that every high school and college student in America should read. If they study this short essay, they will grasp the essence of the Fed and understand why the financial Status Quo is doomed.



First of all, the Federal government thinks of the Federal Reserve as a service bureau, whose function it is to print money that the government can spend. As long as the Federal Reserve performs that function--reliably printing, let's say, a trillion or more each year to top off the Federal budget--then Congress will be happy with the Federal Reserve (their rainmaker) and will follow its advice and try to keep it happy.

It should be emphasized here that the whole Keynesian smokescreen and sideshow has very little to do with the reality of the relationship here. The Federal Reserve's job is not just to lend Uncle Sam some money during a recession so as to provide temporary stimulus. The Fed is a milk cow for Uncle Sam. Its job is to give milk all the time.

So to summarize this first point, the Fed is a service bureau for the Federal government whose job it is to provide the government with freshly printed fiat every year. This job has very little to do with the Keynesian prescription of how to deal with a recession.





Summary: The Fed is also a selfish, power-seeking institution. It is not an organization of scientists (even though it does employ a small army of Economics Ph.D.'s) whose sole concern is to manage the economy scientifically for the benefit of all.

Some people think the Fed prints money, but when you ask Ben B. about it, he says, "The Fed does not print money. We lend money." Printing money is easy to visualize and understand. Lending money is also easy to understand; it's what banks do. But what the Fed does is somewhat more difficult to understand. To put it into one phrase, "they print debt-money." They print money, but each dollar they print has the chains of debt attached to it. Each dollar they print represents a debt that somebody owes.

A Federal Reserve note is an IOU from the Fed that says "we owe you one dollar." There does exist in the world paper money that is not debt-money, but the Fed does not traffic in that. As the Fed prints more debt-money, they tighten the chains of debt enslaving the government and the people.




This whole concept of infinite fiat is hard for people to grasp; it is something outside of their experience. People's lifelong experience with money is that it is a limited resource. It is hard to conceive of a group of people who have unlimited, infinite money. Yet the Federal Reserve has just that. The Fed is not like a doctor who prescribes a short-term stimulus for a patient who is feeling run down. The Fed is not like a parent who temporarily puts training wheels on a bike until the kid learns how to ride it. These metaphors make people think that the Fed's fiat printing is temporary and limited. It is not.










It is a Clausewitzian principle that individuals, organizations and nations will expand their power until some superior or equal power effectively opposes them and stops them. Because the Fed's power has no equal, we can expect the Fed's power to continue to increase indefinitely.

At some point, however, history shows that the slaves and victims of oppressors gain strength and confidence when they feel a desperate determination to live.

But that point is still far off. The numbers of the righteous are far exceeded by those who want freshly printed debt-money from Ben Bernanke. Things have not yet reached the desperate, life-threatening stage which is when most revolutions occur.


Thank you, Jeff W. for a clear, concise description of the Fed and its role in the American economy. I would add two clarifications:

1. The U.S. Treasury issues currency (paper money, i.e. Federal Reserve Notes) and sells Treasury bonds to fund Federal deficits, but it does not "print money" in the sense of adding money to the nation's money supply. It borrows money by selling newly issued U.S. Treasury bonds.

2. Technically speaking, the Fed does not give or loan the Federal government money. However, it creates money and pumps it into the economy in a number of ways, enabling large institutions such as banks and insurance companies to buy newly issued Treasury bonds. The Fed also uses its freshly created money to buy Treasury bonds directly. Lastly, the Fed can manipulate the interest rate in a variety of ways, making Treasury bonds attractive to institutional and global buyers.

So even though the Fed doesn't give or loan money directly to the government, it facilitates the sale of Treasury bonds to fund the government in a variety of ways, including direct purchase of government bonds for its own account.

These complexities act as a complexity moat that protects the Fed from inquiry and resistance, as few people understand what the Fed is or what it does.

Correspondent Doug W. recently submitted this excerpt from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison on the issue of debt as serfdom:

Writing from Paris, in his letter to James Madison dated September 6, 1789, Thomas Jefferson opened with these words:



After elaborating on what he thought should be among "the fundamental principles of every government," Jefferson closed with this impassioned request to Madison:


"Turn this subject in your mind, my Dear Sir, and particularly as to the power of contracting debts, and develop it with that perspicuity and cogent logic which is so peculiarly yours. Your station in the councils of our country gives you an opportunity of producing it to public consideration, of forcing it into discussion. At first blush it may be rallied as a theoretical speculation; but examination will prove it to be solid and salutary. It would furnish matter for a fine preamble to our first law for appropriating the public revenue; and it will exclude, at the threshold of our new government the contagious and ruinous errors of this quarter of the globe, which have armed despots with means not sanctioned by nature for binding in chains their fellow-men."

Thank you, Doug, for this reminder that the power to indebt the public is also the power to enslave them. That, fellow citizens, sums up the Federal Reserve and the Savior State it has enabled: debt is serfdom, debt is slavery.