I first published this article in March of 2008 but I am reposting it in light of all that is going on In <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />America and the large number of new readers to our site.   <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Past Presidents Have Warned Us About The Danger and Corruption of A Central Bank (The Federal Reserve)
By Brannon Howse
Few Americans know the truth about the Federal Reserve. The reality is it is no more a part of the federal government than is Federal Express. The Federal Reserve is a private corporation run by private bankers.
Why should you care? Because as President Thomas Jefferson, President Andrew Jackson and President Woodrow Wilson all understood, a private central bank has the power to destroy our lives and steal our freedoms.
The U.S. Treasury, in connection with the Federal Reserve, has "loaned" billions of taxpayer dollars to banks here in the U.S. and around the world and there is no guarantee we will ever be re-paid. This is nothing more than the rich bankers taking care of their rich banking friends while creating further inflation that limits your buying power of essentials such as food and clothing. In other words, the injections of liquidity by the feds in the billions of dollars have caused you and me to be the recipients of a "hidden tax" through the debasement of our currency.
While many doubted my predictions, in 2007, on my national radio program, I predicted that the federal government, at the encouragement of the Federal Reserve, and with your tax dollars, would bail out many banks from their bad business decisions. I also predicted that major banks would fail and that massive inflation was to follow. I still believe the latter will occur.  
As you will see from the Presidential warnings below, the expansion of an all powerful central government is created through the unconstitutional and self serving fiscal policies of a central banking system.
Americans had better wake up to what is going on and start electing state and federal officials that have the understanding of President Thomas Jefferson, President Andrew Jackson and President Woodrow Wilson.
Thomas Jefferson on the dangers of a central bank wrote:
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States 1801-1809
 
Can you say corporate fascism? In my second book which was published in 1996, I warned that America was falling victim to corporate fascism. The American Heritage Dictionary defines corporate fascism as:
A philosophy or system of government that advocates or exercises dictatorship through the merging of state and business leadership.
 
What do you call the government backed bailout of numerous banks and corporations if not corporate fascism?
What do you call it when members of Congress and the President's Administration implement national and international policy based not on legislation but on "agreements"? These "agreements" create rules and regulations that are implemented without Congressional approval. Whether it is the creation of the Transatlantic Common Market or the North American Union, the players are the same and the losers are always hard working Americans.
These "agreements" undermine national sovereignty; destroy America's middle class and create more dependants for an ever increasing powerful central government. Meanwhile, huge American and multinational corporations reap huge financial profits while politicians have their campaign coffers filled so they can be guaranteed re-election. That is, until they decide to retire from "public service" only to be hired by the corporate titans they worked for while "serving" on Capitol Hill.  Payback is a rich, former congressman making millions working in the "private sector".
Now you understand why President Thomas Jefferson in 1816 wrote, "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."
 
President Andrew Jackson Eliminated the Central Bank
 
In his "Farewell Address" on March 4, 1837, President Andrew Jackson warned about the dangers of a central bank that created fiat currency. Jackson was a strong believer in the "hard assets" of gold and silver as a currency.
The Second Bank of the United States was a corporation chartered by Congress to provide a national paper currency and manage the government's finances. Like Thomas Jefferson, Jackson believed such a bank to be dangerous and unconstitutional. In 1832, he vetoed a bill to extend the Bank's charter beyond its scheduled expiration in 1836. Jackson's veto message counter posed the virtuous plain people against the Bank's privileged stockholders. The next year Jackson moved the federal government's deposits from the Bank to state-chartered banks, triggering a brief financial panic and prompting the Senate to censure him in 1834. Undeterred, Jackson launched a broader assault against all forms of government-granted privilege, especially corporate charters. His Farewell Address in 1837 warned of an insidious "money power." (see source by  click here)   
·        "The severe lessons of experience will, I doubt not, be sufficient to prevent Congress from again chartering such a monopoly, even if the Constitution did not present an insuperable objection to it. But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government. The power which the moneyed interest can exercise, when concentrated under a single head and with our present system of currency, was sufficiently demonstrated in the struggle made by the Bank of the United States."
 
·        "The distress and sufferings inflicted on the people by the bank are some of the fruits of that system of policy which is continually striving to enlarge the authority of the Federal Government beyond the limits fixed by the Constitution. The powers enumerated in that instrument do not confer on Congress the right to establish such a corporation as the Bank of the United States, and the evil consequences which followed may warn us of the danger of departing from the true rule of construction and of permitting temporary circumstances or the hope of better promoting the public welfare to influence in any degree our decisions upon the extent of the authority of the General Government."
 
·        "… if you had not conquered, the Government would have passed from the hands of the many to the hands of the few, and this organized money power from its secret conclave would have dictated the choice of your highest officers and compelled you to make peace or war, as best suited their own wishes. The forms of your Government might for a time have remained, but its living spirit would have departed from it."
 
·        "The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself no intrinsic value, it is liable to great and sudden fluctuations, thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and uncertain. The corporations which create the paper money can not be relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount. In times of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect of gain or by the influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend their issues of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable demands of business; and when these issues have been pushed on from day to day, until public confidence is at length shaken, then a reaction takes place, and they immediately withdraw the credits they have given, suddenly curtail their issues, and produce an unexpected and ruinous contraction of the circulating medium, which is felt by the whole community. The banks by this means save themselves, and the mischievous consequences of their imprudence or cupidity are visited upon the public."
 

• Our growth has been rapid beyond all former example in numbers, in wealth, in knowledge, and all the useful arts which contribute to the comforts and convenience of man, and from the earliest ages of history to the present day there never have been thirteen millions of people associated in one political body who enjoyed so much freedom and happiness as the people of these United States. You have no longer any cause to fear danger from abroad; your strength and power are well known throughout the civilized world, as well as the high and gallant bearing of your sons. It is from within, among yourselves--from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power--that factions will be formed and liberty endangered. It is against such designs, whatever disguise the actors may assume, that you have especially to guard yourselves.

 
You can read President Jackson's entire Farwell Address at this link:
 
President Woodrow Wilson Establishes the Federal Reserve
Sadly, President Woodrow Wilson did not read and heed the warning of President Andrew Jackson and in 1913, President Wilson signed the legislation that created the Federal Reserve. Years later, President Wilson acknowledged the harm he had brought to America.
 
A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men...We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world-no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men..
 
 
If the current financial storm turns into a tsunami the central bankers and their politicians will be either relieved of duty by angry Americans that demand a truly free, free-enterprise system or they will be entrenched with even greater power and America will have fully embraced corporate fascism which is a form of socialism.