Times of a Kind

It was a time when doing our best for others meant bringing out our worst, out into the streets, beyond the reach of the political machine. A time when crisis in the making gave birth to crisis, a precarious time of risk for the champions of the status quo, and danger to all who would challenge it.

It was a time of missiles in October, and a place called Vietnam. A time with freedom hanging just over the edge, beyond reach of the common citizen. A time yet on the verge of out of control for the controlling elite.

It was an ill fated time for men of principle, when a man named King shared his dream with a King named Kennedy, who reached out rather than down to touch the common man. And while King fought violence with non-violence, Kennedy dreamed peace, and their dreams together mythologized becoming our dream forging a a dangerous new reality to the rulers. King would not see his dream realized, Kennedy's would not be fulfilled, both would be shot dead shot dead in the angry summer of our discontent.

It was a time of bitter broken dreams, civil rights denied and Camelot lost. A time when with the country coming apart around him Lyndon Johnson maintained the status quo, the bloody war. It was a time like these times.

Now in a world struggling to overcome the New World Order the manufactured credit crisis provides another time of opportunity for both the principled and practical. When 247 men and women whose principle known, unknown and questionable stand with one man of unquestioned principle to finally ask the serious questions of the hydra of corruption, from which spring all things corrupt in economy and politics. When Ron Paul introduced a measure similar to HR 1207 a decade ago it inspired exactly zero co-sponsors, it now has 247 demonstrating how much the times are a coming around, and a nation too easily distracted once again wakes up, waking up in turn disturbing the beast in the process of reaching for empire on it's own.

The system threatened retaliates, with impunity.

When asked by Rep. John Duncan on Thursday about the fact that a majority of Congress is co-sponsoring Ron Paul’s HR 1207 bill to audit the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke responded:

Ben Bernanke: “My concern about the legislation is that if the GAO is auditing not only the operational aspects of the programs and the details of the programs but making judgments about our policy decisions would effectively be a takeover of policy by the Congress and a repudiation of the Federal Reserve would be highly destructive to the stability of the financial system, the dollar and our national economic situation.”

That threat is serious and severe, to deliberately ruin the economy, forcing every man, woman and child in a nation of 250 million to suffer for the sake a smitten few. Ironically it has already been carried out. It would take over $21 today to buy what $1 would in 1913, when this the third US central bank was born. That is a threat, should be greeted with the grave seriousness of a Presidential assignation --Andrew Jackson's not Kennedy's--.

The Second Bank of the United States was run by a genius named Nicholas Biddle who graduated from Princeton as the class valedictorian at age 15. The bank had a twenty year charter to drive the United States deeply into it's debt. Jackson refused to summarily renew it, events culminated in a failed assignation attempt by a man with ties to Biddle.

Jackson believed that his reelection was a mandate from the people to break the power of what he called “this hydra of corruption,” the Second Bank of the United States. To accomplish this, Jackson decided to withdraw government money from the bank to pay current expenses and to deposit future government revenues in selected state banks. These banks were called pet banks. Jackson appointed Roger B. Taney of Maryland as secretary of the treasury to carry out this policy after his two previous secretaries refused.

Bank President Biddle and his congressional supporters, led by Clay and Webster, were determined to save the bank. Biddle used the bank’s money to buy political favors. In 1834 the Senate passed a resolution of censure against Jackson and refused to confirm Taney’s appointment to the Cabinet. Biddle said, “This worthy President thinks that because he has scalped Indians and imprisoned Judges he is to have his way with the bank. He is mistaken.”

Biddle began to restrict credit and call in loans from state banks. Business leaders pleaded with Jackson to approve the bank and end the crisis. However, Jackson placed the blame for the panic on the doorsteps of Biddle’s bank and advised all callers to “Go to Nicholas Biddle.” Biddle’s reply was: “All the other banks and all the other merchants may break, but the Bank of the United States shall never break.”

In this struggle for power, Biddle was doomed to defeat. Jackson rallied public opinion behind him, and Biddle was pressured into restoring credit and loans. All he had proved was that Jackson was correct in his contention that a private monopolistic bank, independent of government regulation, should not be entrusted with public finances. Jackson won his greatest political victory, and the Second Bank of the United States passed out of existence when its charter expired in 1836.

The Second Bank of the United States was the spawn of the money from nothing creature and though it passed out of existence, the creature did not, rising as it did from Jekyll Island in 1913, it has been consuming us since.