How 'Fiat Capital' and the 'one percent' destroyed the U.S. economy
Gregory K. Tanaka
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Editor’s note: Gregory K. Tanaka is a winner of the James Clavell Literary Award and the author of Systemic Collapse and Renewal. The article reflects the author’s opinion, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

In 2013, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter announced in Der Spiegel for all to hear that "America currently has no functioning democracy."

How did the elites in effect "steal the democracy?" The work began, I argue, through what was proclaimed to be an impartial private organization, the Federal Reserve Bank. Through this bank, the elites were able to: First, undermine the model of free market capitalism. Second, set up the U.S. economy to fail, and third, provide the foundation for a Constitutional crisis within the U.S. democracy itself.

Fiat Capital

The "silent disease" the Federal Reserve Bank infused into the body of a nation was "fiat paper dollars." Created in 1913 by a U.S. Senate bill written by a representative from the House of Rothschild in London – as noted by G. Edward Griffin (1994) in The Creature from Jekyll Island – what followed was a century in which the fiat U.S. dollar through excessive money printing came to lose 98 percent of its original value.

According to a new Census Bureau report, income inequality is greater in New York State and the New York City region than in any other states or metropolitan areas in the country. /VCG Photo

According to a new Census Bureau report, income inequality is greater in New York State and the New York City region than in any other states or metropolitan areas in the country. /VCG Photo

This means that the hard-earned savings of U.S. citizens have been greatly diluted with the result that they are today unable to sustain themselves or their families, or live comfortably in retirement. During this time, profits from all gains in productivity in the U.S. were directed to the upper class and away from the working and middle classes.

Usurpation of the American Democracy

Since 1913, fiat capital has hurt large swaths of a trusting American citizenry, the majority of whom still believe in democracy and expect their elected "representatives" to, well, represent. But with the growing recognition that their elected officials are no longer protecting their interests, the public is beginning to recognize that it is too late to turn back the clock. Anger is building.

With the abrogation of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act by President Bill Clinton and Congress in the 1990s, Elites were also granted the ability to manipulate all capital markets at their whim. From that point on, large financial institutions could take the savings of everyday Americans (lifted from the retail banking side of the bank) and move them over to the investment banking side where they could use the funds to launch crazy, speculative money-making deals and tranches called "derivatives."

Valued at over 1.5 quadrillion U.S. dollars today, the derivative market instantly became the largest unregulated and unaccounted for pooling of funds in world history.

In issuing these massive derivative tranches, the largest U.S. banks made profits by pawning them off on unsuspecting European banks, with executives placing their resulting gains into illegal, offshore "numbered accounts" (some around for decades) from which they could subsequently trade with anonymity in New York hedge funds.  

Imperial County is one of the richest food producing regions in the U.S. yet one out of four people are unable to find work, making it one of the most-effected regions for unemployment in the U.S., July 31, 2009. /VCG Photo

Imperial County is one of the richest food producing regions in the U.S. yet one out of four people are unable to find work, making it one of the most-effected regions for unemployment in the U.S., July 31, 2009. /VCG Photo

With this, the case, preconditions for a truly massive, heart-wrenching economic failure linked to counter-party risk are now in place. The stage is set for the final blow: a total economic collapse in which the same tiny group of Elites will know exactly when the market will collapse and can conveniently "sell short" the market to make money off the crash. They will also have the means to direct some of their accumulated wealth to purchase the world's best "economic crash insurance" – precious metals like hard silver coins and bars.

The Elites thus stand prepared today to make trillions in the event of an economic crash – and the U.S. public would never even know what hit them. Worse, because their trading is conducted through offshore accounts, the Elites can escape having to pay taxes on any of their massive gains.

What this means is that the bottom 90 percent of the American population will soon be left watching from the sidelines while the super Elites make off like bandits.

Public intellectual Dr. Dave Janda (2019) from Operation Freedom names the Rothschilds of Europe and Payseurs of France as some of the key instigators of this taking. But, you ask, why would elected officials in a functioning U.S. democracy let outsiders conduct the usurpation of their democracy in the first place?

The famously opulent shopping street for the rich and famous in Palm Beach, Florida. /VCG Photo

The famously opulent shopping street for the rich and famous in Palm Beach, Florida. /VCG Photo

As a former lawyer, I have to wonder how the United States Supreme Court could decide the Citizens United (2010) case that gave foreign elites the power to "buy" future U.S. elections. With the Rule of Law thrown out the window, one could conclude this decision marked the end of the U.S. democracy itself. And from 2008 to 2016, Congress and President gave billions of dollars to banks via "bailouts" (and billions more to hi-tech firms via "interest-free loans"), with these final acts of "corporate welfare" paving the way to unmitigated social and economic asymmetry in America.

Before they can repair the economy and reclaim democracy, U.S. citizens will have much work to do. They can begin by calling for a return to the rule of law – and "cast out the money-changers" by calling for an end to the Federal Reserve Bank.

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