Kollodge Gallery

About The Image:

Are there any counterfeits represented here?  Tragically, it’s not a trick question or a joke. Not only are there some counterfeits represented, in the truest sense, they all are counterfeit. First, look at the paper money in your pocket.  All the bills are Federal Reserve Notes and what follows is an outline of the basic mechanics of how they are counterfeited.  A slight bit of history might be helpful.

You see, several of our “founding fathers,” and in particular Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, were, for good reason, suspicious of and dead set against establishing a “central bank” that was in charge of creating and determining the value of our nation’s money.

Throughout the history of the United States, we have had three central banks, the latest one being called the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed for short) which came into existence by a congressional bill known as the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 which was signed into law by President Wilson.  This occurred on December 23rd, 1913, during the holiday break, when barely enough congressmen were around to have a quorum and pass the bill.  Wilson, reportedly, just prior to his death, lamented that by signing this bill into law he unwittingly ruined his country.

Because of the name, Federal Reserve Bank, quite naturally most citizens believe this grand daddy of all banks is part of the Federal Government.   Well, it is not.  It is a secret cartel of large private U. S.  banks, more than likely coordinating with some banks that are not even American banks.  The Fed creates our money, these Federal Reserve Notes, regulates its worth and availability using a variety of schemes.

These powers are contradictory to the wording in our Constitution at Article I, Section 8 where it reads, “Congress shall have Power (5) To coin Money, (and) regulate the Value thereof….”  That wording still stands and has never been amended even though the procedures for amending our Constitution are right in the Constitution itself at Article V.

Incidentally, these amending procedures do not include ignoring the Constitution or pretending it reads differently than it actually does.  Furthermore, in case anyone is skeptical as to what was the intention of the writers of our Constitution, the very next entry under the powers congress must exercise reads, “Congress shall have Power (6) To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States.”  Notice it says Congress SHALL have Power to, not “may” have Power to….

So, how does the Fed counterfeit our money?  The most common technique is as follows.  When, as a matter of law, more money is required to be spent by the Federal Government than was collected in taxes, the U. S. Treasury issues bonds to be sold to raise the money.  These bonds are loan instruments which you and I have the obligation to pay back with our taxes.  In addition, these bonds earn interest which also has to be paid by you and me.

The U. S. Treasury issues and prints the bonds, ships them to the Fed while the Fed, in the meantime, arranges with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (which just printed the bonds and is part of the U.S. Treasury Department) to print and deliver to the Fed, Federal Reserve Notes in the amount of the face value of the bonds it is receiving from the Treasury.  The Fed pays nothing for this new currency other than the cost of the printing.  According to the web site of Engraving and Printing, the cost of printing a Federal Reserve Note in either a $1.00, $2.00, $5.00, $10.00, $20.00 $50.00 or $100.00 denomination is less than 10 cents each.

The Fed then delivers these new Federal Reserve Notes (like the ones in your pocket) back to the Treasury as “payment” for the bonds it just received from the Treasury.  The Treasury then deposits this new money in checking accounts it set up in commercial banks.

Our Government then starts to write checks on these checking accounts, for example: Social Security payments, war expenditures, maintaining national parks, paying for the TSA and IRS, and bailing banks out.  The Fed sells the bonds to “investors” mainly through its network of member banks.  These bonds are our debt (yours and mine) and we have to pay them back with our taxes and we have to come up with the interest payments besides, which, of course, deliver no benefit whatsoever to you and me, the owners of this country.  So, as easy as that, money has just been printed and “created” out of thin air, that is, counterfeited.  Some might say, so what?

Because the Fed did not create an equivalent offsetting amount in value of new goods and services when it counterfeited this money and our Government ended up inflating (increasing) the monetary supply by writing checks on these counterfeited money deposits, we now have more “money” circulating out there in the monetary system available to be spent attempting to buy the same amount of goods and services in our market place.  This, of course, is the overwhelming main cause of what we all experience daily as “price inflation.”  Put another way, this counterfeiting causes the decrease of the buying power of our money.  Tomorrow, our money will buy less than it did today.  It’s as simple as that!

So, is this, slight-of-hand, this “carnival shell game,” this counterfeiting, destroying our country as we know it?  Is the end result anything less than lowering our standard of living by transferring the little bit of accumulated wealth of those at the bottom into the pockets of the few at the top?  Well, make up your own mind.  I suspect you can tell how I’d answer those questions. And in case you think this is the only fraud in our monetary system destroying our country, let me assure you, it gets worse. If you want to find out about the whole sordid, grizzly, enslaving mess imposed upon us all, just get a copy of Ellen Brown’s “Web of Debt” wherein all the various banking ruses are explained in detail including their historical origins. So, exposing this particular scheme just scratches the surface.

I made this image using a Leica M9 camera with a Leica 90mm f4.0 Macro-Elmar lens.