American Monetary Association is pleased to interview the gracious and scholarly G. Edward Griffin author of the masterwork The Creature from Jekyll Island an American film producer, author, and political lecturer. Starting as a child actor, Griffin became a radio station manager before age 20. After writing for the 1968 Wallace campaign, he began a career of producing documentaries and books on controversial topics like cancer, Noah’s ark, and the Federal Reserve, as well as on libertarian theories of the U.S. Supreme Court, terrorism, subversion, and foreign policy. He strongly opposes the Federal Reserve, charging it with being a banking cartel and an instrument of war and totalitarianism. In 2002, Griffin founded the individualist network Freedom Force International. This is a fascinating discussion for investors and all who care about their future!
Narrator: Welcome to the American Monetary Associations podcast where we explore how monetary policy impacts the real lives of real people and the action steps necessary to preserve wealth and enhance one’s lifestyle.
Jason Hartman: Welcome to the American Monetary Association’s podcast. This is a venture funded by my foundation, The Jason Hartman Foundation, to teach people about monetary issues and how they can better manage their lives based on an irresponsible government that is creating far too much money out of thin air. What the future will hold in terms of monetary issues, how it affects our everyday lives, and what we can do about it to best protect ourselves and our savings and our futures.
So today I thought it would be a good way to start the show by listening to an interview that was published on my Creating Wealth podcast with G. Edward Griffin, who really is sort of the father of Federal Reserve studies in terms of what is really going on behind the scenes. Now, the Federal Reserve of course is our central bank and it is a private organization, a consortium of bankers, of wealthy bankers, from different parts of the world. And G. Edward Griffin really wrote sort of the major treatise on the subject. And it’s entitled “The Creature From Jekyll Island”. So I think you’ll enjoy this interview with G. Edward Griffin, and let’s listen into that right now.
Start of Interview with G. Edward Griffin
Jason Hartman: It is my distinct pleasure to have G. Edward Griffin, the author of “The Creature from Jekyll island” on the show with us today. He also has an interesting and varied background he may want to share with us. It’s great to have you on the show.
G. Edward Griffin: Thanks a lot, Jason. It’s good to be here.
Jason Hartman: It’s good to have you. We’ve been anticipating your interview for a couple of months now and it’s definitely a great opportunity. I am a huge fan of your work. I discovered “The Creature From Jekyll Island”, oh I’m going to say maybe back in 2001 or something like that.
G. Edward Griffin: Um hmm.
Jason Hartman: When was the book originally published?
G. Edward Griffin: Let’s see, in 1997, I think it was.
Jason Hartman: Great. Tell us a little bit about your background and then maybe the book. Then I want to, of course, since it’s a new year, talk about your thoughts on the outlook for the economy and so forth.
G. Edward Griffin: My background is nothing particularly impressive, frankly, I’m just a writer. I became interested in issues that pertained to the future of our country, and the future of our country and the future of my kids and grandkids and that was pretty serious stuff. Early on, I became aware, back in about 1960, that the world in which I thought I was living was quite different, that there were forces at work which were eating away at the freedom foundations of our way of life. I saw things happening in our government, trends internationally, which greatly alarmed me. And I could see in the future that if we didn’t reverse that trend we might wind up at precisely the place that we are today. So I became very alarmed and I started to research and read. Then I decided to write. Much to my amazement, people liked what I wrote. They bought my books and so I kind of eased into it.
My first attempt at writing was a very serious critique of the United Nations. It was called “The Fearful Master: A Second Look At The United Nations.” That was back at a time when it was not popular to be critical of the UN because everyone, including myself when I went through school, we’d been taught that the United Nations was our last, best hope for peace. That it was a forum where we could expand brotherhood and peace and harmony, and improve trade, and all of it, good sounding things. I bought into that. It sounded good. But when I began to check into the reality, it was quite different than the promise. So I started to write about it and I received quite a bit of flak in those days.
Jason Hartman: What year was that?
G. Edward Griffin: About 1967, something like that
Jason Hartman: Of course, you know the UN post World War Two era was thought of as something that would curtail nationalism.
G. Edward Griffin: Oh yes.
Jason Hartman: Hitler exploited nationalist fervor quite a bit, so I can understand why you would get some flak with that. What people so many times just don’t understand is that, they take everything at face value, and on the face of it, it sounds like the UN mission is a good one. Without further investigation, I can see why people would believe that.
G. Edward Griffin: It’s a political game that occurs internationally and nationally and locally. Anybody that takes a politician at face value is kind of naïve I think. Politicians, regardless of where they are in the scale of things, they all try and make things look very favorable. If you’re not critical, you’ll say “Oh that’s wonderful. This political system is great and this movement is great and I support it.” But, boy, after you start becoming a little skeptical and a healthy skepticism about world events, you begin to realize things are not really what they are. That’s how I got started. The United Nations piqued my curiosity.
Then I got into an upstream category with a natural control for cancer, a substance which is commonly known as Laetrile. I had, in those days, a very close friend who was a doctor in San Francisco who began to use this substance and he ran crosswise with the medical establishment and the media and they all started to call him a quack. Didn’t make any difference that he was saving lives and others were not. He was still a quack. Why? Because he was using a substance which was not approved by the FDA. That got my curiosity and then started down that area of research to find out what kind of system do we have that would prevent a person from saving lives because it wasn’t investigated by some government bureaucracy?
Jason Hartman: I think what you’re pointing to early in our talk here is that every institution, it’s goal is to perpetuate its existence and increase its power and influence. You look at the UN. You look at the Federal Reserve, of course. You look at the medical establishment. You think why would that be suppressed? It’s always about money, it seems. Are we taking away money from the powers that be, the oncologists? What was the outcome of that?
G. Edward Griffin: That’s exactly it. You find out that all of these huge institutions become monopolistic or at least cartelistic in their nature, and they don’t like competition. They form very close liaisons with politicians so that their industries are protected by law. They get laws passed that are favorable to those industries, and then anybody who bucks the success of those industries is labeled as a criminal because they’ve violated some kind of a law. Boy, once your eyes are open to this, you’re never the same. You can never go back. That’s why we call our little business over here, we call it The Reality Zone because once you step into The Reality Zone you can never return to the twilight zone from whence you came.
You realize that there is this corruption at all levels of these huge industries. Then you pursue it even further and you find, well, why is this and how is this and how do they make it happen and all of that and you come to the realization that at the core of the whole thing is an ideology. It’s called collectivism. And it’s the concept that we’ve all been taught in school. Certainly I was taught that in school. The concept that government is the arbiter, the source of solutions for all problems and government is more or less our mother, our father, our big brother, and that if we have any problems, we turn to government to solve those problems. We think that because we vote for our political leaders, therefore we are the government, we think. Because we vote for these people, we think that we are in control of our own political destiny, when in reality it’s no such thing at all because we find out that the mechanism of voting is tightly controlled by a very few people. The process by which candidates are selected is totally beyond the reach of the common voter.
Jason Hartman: You’re absolutely right. This two party system that we’ve got is such a sham when you see a guy like Ron Paul who can’t get any traction.
G. Edward Griffin: Yeah.
Jason Hartman: And he’s the most honest guy you see running.
G. Edward Griffin: That’s right. And then you find the two political parties apparently fighting each other but it’s more like a TV wrestling match in which someone behind the scenes has decided who’s going to win this match. But still they have to put on a good show. Otherwise, you’d never get the fans coming out and buying the tickets and sitting there in the seats and watching the match. So, yeah, the two candidates, the two political parties fight against each other but not on major principles. Always on secondary issues and on personality and style and things like that. But the issues are never discussed. The principles are never discussed. As a matter of fact, the average American today doesn’t even have any political principles.
They vote on such things as words like change. Well, what do you mean? Well, I don’t know. It’s time for a change, don’t you think? Very shallow thinking. So, as a result, they get no change at all. They change personalities. They change name tags but they don’t change political movements. So all of these things gradually occurred to me over the years, Jason, so I became concerned about it and I started to write about it and so, that’s what I do.
Jason Hartman: Very, very interesting. I completely agree with you. When people vote for what I call the personality ethic over the character ethic, and they have such shallow ideas of I’m a Republican or I’m a Democrat and they’re so attached to their beliefs of those parties. Those parties, they’re in the same club. I mean, they’re friends. These people are really opponents. It’s like a wrestling match. That’s a great analogy. Maybe we’ll talk before we get into the subject of the Federal Reserve and the outlook for the future in terms of our economy and our financial lives and what we can all do to protect ourselves.
I wanted to just touch a little bit on the concept of the UN real quickly, if you will, because that was interesting what you said previously. This whole concept of one world government and the new world order. You hear about it and a lot of it is written off as conspiracy theory wackos. It doesn’t get any real traction in the media, of course, although when you look at alternative news and you go on the internet and so forth and listen to various podcasts you get a much different view of the world. What do you have to say about that?
G. Edward Griffin: Well, there are two topics that kind of stick together there. One is the reality of the United Nations and the other is the vocabulary used to describe it, especially the vocabulary used to describe those who are not fans of the UN. They call them conspiracy theorists. So let’s take the first one which is the UN itself. There’s nothing wrong with the concept of world government, I don’t think. Especially the way it’s sold to the average person. It’s sold as an international forum where people can talk and share ideas and expose their cultures to other parts of the world. Improve trade, preserve peace and all these things. That’s all wonderful.
The reality, however, is nothing like that. The reality is that the nations of the United Nations, most of them, are totalitarian in one form or another. All the way from massive totalitarian systems of major countries, all the way down to little tin horn dictatorships of a third world country. The great majority of the governments that go to the United Nations are totalitarian in nature. It is absolute insanity to think that you’re going to create a world forum based upon little modules of totalitarianism that’s going to produce anything other than totalitarianism at the international level.
The people at the UN, while they talk about these wonderful things like peace and brotherhood and commerce and trade and all these things, in reality, when you look at the decrees and the laws that are being generated there at the United Nations, every one of them has as its core the expansion of government power and the reduction or elimination of personal freedom at the local level.
It’s the constant aggrandizement of government, the building of government power first at the national level then the international level, to the point where the subjects of the world will absolutely have no voice whatsoever in the government, this international government that will run their lives. That’s what you find when you start to look at it.
I’ll give you this one little example that might pique the curiosity of some of your listeners to delve into this a little bit further. The UN has what they call a Draft Covenant on Human Rights, and it sounds pretty good when you read all of these human rights that they talk about. The right to freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, all of the things that we have in our own Bill of Rights, plus a lot of things that are not in our Bill of Rights, like the right to a job, the right to health care, the right to a decent standard of living. All of these things.
Jason Hartman: The right to a government bailout.
G. Edward Griffin: The right to everything. You name it, there’s a right for it. Now you take a look at the way it’s written and it gives and then it takes away. For example, the Draft Covenant on Human Rights says everybody has a right to peaceful assembly except where as may be prescribed by law.
Jason Hartman: That sounds like you don’t have the right then.
G. Edward Griffin: Exactly. Everyone has the right to freedom of speech, except as provided by law. Everyone has a right to a job, except as provided by law. Everyone has a right to this, that, and the other thing and, in every case it’s followed with that little clause that nobody reads. Nobody thinks about, except as provided by law, which means you have a right until they pass a law that takes away your right and you don’t have it any more.
Now you compare to the Bill of Rights which says everyone has a right to peaceful assembly – period. It says Congress shall pass no law taking away the right to freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, right to bear arms, and all the other things that we’ve got. It says Congress shall pass no law, not except as provided by law. It’s just a hundred and eighty degrees out of phase and yet the average, gum-chewing public reads those Draft Covenant on Human Rights and says, “Oh that’s wonderful. Let’s vote for that.” It just shows you how naïve the average citizen is and it’s not their fault. Where do you get these ideas? They get them in school. Who runs the schools? The government.
Jason Hartman: A collectivist organization
G. Edward Griffin: A collectivist organization.
Jason Hartman: Called the NEA. The National Extortion Association.
G. Edward Griffin: We are the victims of a very carefully programmed educational process that teaches us to want collectivism. Teaches us to believe in big government. It’s not surprising that when we come along and we’re presented these propositions by politicians, we think they’re a good idea because we were taught that, you see. So anyway, that’s the United Nations. The United Nations is a totalitarian concept. It’s built on the model of collectivism and those who, like myself, who are opposing this and trying to point out the reality, they like to call us conspiracy theorists. Well, I would challenge that somewhat. A theory is something that hasn’t been proven, I would say. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m a conspiracy historian. I’m talking about the fact that, in history, there are conspiracies. As a matter of fact, people who scoff at conspiracies, I have to feel a little bit sorry for them because that tells me they’ve never read a history book.
Jason Hartman: A conspiracy, by definition, is just more than one person engaging in some activity they’re keeping secret from others, right?
G. Edward Griffin: That’s basically it.
Jason Hartman: It’s not a very complicated thing.
G. Edward Griffin: The activity has to be either illegal or immoral.
Jason Hartman: Okay.
G. Edward Griffin: And in this case we would certainly say it’s an unethical, immoral activity because they’re trying to enslave people. Now they don’t look at it that way. They think, well, this is the new world order. We’re trying to help people. It’s for their own good. That’s how they justify it. So they wouldn’t call that an immoral object. But I think that most of us who have to live under this collectivist totalitarian system would call it an immoral object. Therefore, we’re certainly justified in calling it a conspiracy.
But as I was saying a moment ago, anybody who’s read anything in history must understand that every major event in history has been formed by conspiracies. I mean, I can’t think of any event, major event in history, that wasn’t the result of one or more conspiracies. Conspiracies abound in history. Conspiracies are the norm. They’re not the exception. So when some pundit comes along and says, “Well, you think that there’s a conspiracy out there today?” Come on, man, of course I do. You think there isn’t?
Jason Hartman: It’s so obvious what you say. It’s just a self-evident statement, what you’re saying, because if you think about the founding of the United States of America, well, of course, the people within England would have thought that to be conspiracy.
G. Edward Griffin: It was a conspiracy!
Jason Hartman: Of course it was a conspiracy. A good one.
G. Edward Griffin: Every major act of history has a conspiracy at its fountainhead. And so these people think that now we’re living in this current modern enlightened age that conspiracies are impossible. It’s absurd to think that there are conspiracies. Just go to any courtroom today. If you sit there long enough listening to the cases that are brought before the judge, a huge percentage of them involve conspiracies of one kind – conspiracies to defraud the stockholders, conspiracies to violate the law, conspiracies to do this, that, and the other thing. Conspiracies are everywhere in our history and in our current history as well. And here we are talking about a government where the temptation for conspiracy, and the rewards for conspiracy are the greatest of all, and we’re supposed to think that conspiracies don’t exist there? Come on, give me a break.
Jason Hartman: Back to your talk a few minutes ago on the concept of the UN, the world government, and collectivism, and rights. Put the “rights” in quote. What people don’t realize also is that every right for one person is a burden to another. They like to chunk things up in the political arena into groups. We’ve got to help this disadvantaged group or give something to that group.
The obvious thing, amazingly, so many people don’t seem to ever think about is in order to give one group something you have to take it from another. You have to redistribute wealth or redistribute resources in some way. One person does not have the right to impede the rights of another. And the smallest minority on earth, I love the way Ayn Rand says it, is the individual. The individual is the world’s smallest minority. Each individual human being. It’s just amazing as you say this, people are so shallow in their thinking so many times. They don’t understand. They think the government just has this endless amount of resources that they can just dole up and give to people. Well, it’s being taken from somebody.
G. Edward Griffin: Being taken from the very people who are supporting the program and they don’t even realize it. You know, when we talk about how ill-informed the public is, it’s always dangerous because people who are hearing that think that we’re talking about them and, in a sense we are, but we’re also talking about us. I mean, I was there. It’s not something that’s someone’s fault for not picking up on this because they’re not being exposed to the truth in the media or in the schools. And certainly the politicians are not telling them the truth.
Jason Hartman: No question and, of course, by the very fact that they’re listening to this show, they are wanting to be more informed.
G. Edward Griffin: I think about the poor guy that’s driving down the highway, he’s looking for something interesting to keep him awake behind the wheel and he stumbles across your program, Jason, and he hears us talking, he thinks this guy is insulting me, so that’s the point I’m trying to make. No, I’m not insulting. I don’t want to insult anybody. We’re all victims of our training and our media.
Jason Hartman: No question.
G. Edward Griffin: My message is that, come on, everybody. We’re all in this same boat together. Let’s find out the truth. Let’s break free of those chains.
Jason Hartman: You are absolutely right. Talk to us a little bit about the Federal Reserve. I just don’t want to make it the whole show because I really want to get your take on the current climate and your thoughts on the future, but give us a little background on “The Creature From Jekyll Island” if you would.
G. Edward Griffin: Well, “The Creature From Jekyll Island”, of course, is the Federal Reserve system. The reason I called it “The Creature From Jekyll Island”, it has kind of a mysterious sound, so it’s a good title. But it has substance to it because Jekyll island is a real island. It’s off the coast of Georgia. It was on that island, back in 1910 that the Federal Reserve system was created.
It was created there away from the eyes of investigators and journalists and anybody that was interested. Back in Washington, they had to get away from Washington, they went to this private island. It was completely owned by a small group of billionaires from New York. People like JP Morgan, William Rockefeller, and their associates, business associates. It was a resort island where their families went during the winter months. They had a beautiful clubhouse there. They went there for the privacy of creating the Federal Reserve System. They denied that they went there. They kept it a secret for quite a few years. Anybody that said they went there was accused of being a conspiracy theorist and so forth.
After the Federal Reserve System was finally enacted into law, then they began to talk openly about it. They said, yes, well, of course there was a meeting there. Yes, I was there and yes, we conceived the Federal Reserve System.
When I went into that history, I thought it was interesting that something like that would be done under conditions of great secrecy. I was well aware, even then, early on in my investigation, that when people do something in secret there’s usually something to hide. I was curious as to what it was? Well, I found out. That’s what caused me to write the book. What I found out, in a nutshell, is that the Federal Reserve System is not federal and has no reserves and, in fact, it’s not an agency of the federal government and, in fact, it’s a cartel. It’s no different than a banana cartel or oil cartel, sugar cartel. Happens to be a banking cartel, which means it’s made up of the largest, most powerful banking interests in the country. There’s some connection, by the way, to foreign banking interests as well but, primarily, American banking interests.
They went into partnership with the federal government. They took their cartel agreement and they convinced the politicians to pass that cartel agreement into the form of law. Now that means that the cartel can force its internal agreement on everybody in the United States because they paid off some politicians and they passed it in the form of law. If you don’t do what the cartel wants, you go to prison. That, in a nutshell, is what the Federal Reserve System is. It’s a private banking cartel that’s been given, by Congress, the power to enforce its dictates on every man, woman, and child in the country.
The people think it’s a government agency of some kind. Can you think of anything more absurd than that? The fruits of that fraud are finally playing out just as I predicted when I wrote the book back in 1997. I predicted everything that’s happening today in rather accurate detail, I’m sorry to say. I wish I had been wrong. But I could see it coming. The system that they created had to meltdown. Since they had the power of law, they were going to pass along their losses to the taxpayer, and I predicted all of that.
I said that this would be a bailout of massive proportions and that’s happening. It’s not that I’m so smart. It’s not that I have any clairvoyance. It’s just that I could see where the graph led. You know if you take a graph and you see that there’s a line that moves up every year at a slope of 30 percent every year, 30 percent, next year 30 percent. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to project that line out into the future and see that it’s going to continue to go up 30 percent, 30 percent in the future. Unless major changes are made.
Jason Hartman: Tell us, what line are you referring?
G. Edward Griffin: That’s sort of a figure of speech. You could see the growth of government and you could see the expansion of the money supply rather consistently occurring and I’m just using that as a figure of speech. It was an economic trend that you could plot in your own mind. It just grows and grows and grows. The bubble gets bigger and bigger and bigger and what I’m really saying is that unless that trend is changed, you can see that it’s going to go to full term. The growth of government will go to 100 percent. It grows every year. It grows, what, six percent? Let’s put a number on it. Approximately six percent. How many years can it grow before it’s 100 percent? And when you’ve got 100 percent government, you’ve got totalitarianism.
Jason Hartman: Sure.
G. Edward Griffin: That’s what I’m talking about.
Jason Hartman: Absolutely. On the subject of the Federal Reserve though, what has really happened is that the money supply has increased, and increased so much. I mean since the creation of the Federal Reserve, and I believe this is according to “The Creature From Jekyll Island”, although I’m not sure, the dollar is now worth four cents. That same dollar, it’s still called a dollar, of course, that’s what we call nominal terms. It’s still named a dollar in name only but the value of it is only four cents today, I believe is the number.
G. Edward Griffin: It may be even less now.
Jason Hartman: Yeah, so we’ve seen the dollar become devalued and one of the strategies that we recommend is that most people, they see this devaluation of the dollar in their gold bugs, and while I agree with the premise of the gold bug argument, however I don’t think the conclusion is as good as a debt bug. Debt gets destroyed as the value of the currency is destroyed. I’ve learned to like debt as long as I’m not paying the carrying cost. That’s why I like my rental properties so much. I know that may sound crazy to say in this market but real estate in cheap areas has performed pretty darn well when you take out the bubble markets. Even for last year, 2008, which was a terrible year. Stock markets around the world are down about 60 percent, on average. Debt seems to be a pretty decent protection strategy. What are your thoughts on that?
G. Edward Griffin: I agree with you but there are two caveats. I’m sure you talk about those as well. The one caveat is that if people are going to go into debt they should do it not exposing their own security base. In other words, your own home. I would say to anybody that would listen to my advice is to get your own home paid off as quickly as possible, so that regardless of what happens, they can’t take that away from you. Now if you’ve got funds beyond that and you’re trying to make money with it, then I’d say okay, now we’re talking about risking some capital and if you lose everything, okay, you lost everything but you’ve still got a home, you know.
Jason Hartman: I would agree with you on that completely, if it wasn’t for the fact that the government maintains a perpetual lien on everybody’s house called property taxes.
G. Edward Griffin: Well, that’s true.
Jason Hartman: And you just can never get rid of that. You can never pay it off.
G. Edward Griffin: That’s true and it indicates that you don’t really own your own home anyway but I’m just talking about relative security.
Jason Hartman: Sure.
G. Edward Griffin: Yeah, you do have to be able to pay your taxes. You would have to do that too even in the investment scenario. But anyway, that would be my first caveat. And the other is that there are some people that maybe don’t have an aptitude for investing in real estate or in anything else, for that matter. For those people, if they’re not willing to do some research, and to do some serious study and become fairly expert at the field in which they’re investing, they probably would be better off not doing it because they’ll be easily fooled. They’ll be taken by some slick operator.
Jason Hartman: Right
G. Edward Griffin: If you’re going to become an investor, you’re going to need to become an intelligent and well informed investor, and be willing to put some time into it. Those are my only two caveats but having said that I figure your strategy is absolutely correct.
Jason Hartman: I completely agree. The first of what I call my 10 Commandments of Successful Investing is education, so I absolutely agree with you there. Tell us what your thoughts are about all of the scandals on Wall Street. I think that Wall Street has really hijacked Washington. You mentioned earlier that these various concerns go and enact laws and hire lobbyists and influence the legal and political process. That’s how they sort of maintain their power base and grow their enterprise. What do you think about all these scandals – I mean it is so disgusting what has been going on in 2008. There were a lot of things leading up to that, of course, but, wow, we really saw it come home to roost last year in 2008, didn’t we?
G. Edward Griffin: We certainly did. Your statement that Wall Street has hijacked Washington is absolutely true. But the thing is they hijacked it back in 1910 when the Federal Reserve System was created. Once that relationship was created, then it was just a question of when. It was a question of timing and it was inevitable that it would work out this way. You can see the results in the principle. And it has been working out over the years. There have been many bailouts before this. People didn’t pay too much attention to them but they bailed out Penn Central Railroad.
They bailed out several of the big banks along the way. They bailed out New York City. They bailed out a lot of third world countries and what that really means is they didn’t really bail out these institutions at all. They bailed out the banks that were loaning money to these institutions.
Let’s just say Mexico can’t pay its interest on its debt to Chase Manhattan or whatever bank it has borrowed from. The politicians step forward and say, well, we gotta help Mexico. No, they’re not helping Mexico at all. They’re helping Chase Manhattan. They give the money to Mexico, so Mexico can give it to Chase Manhattan and pay the interest. That’s how this bailout works. They’re not bailing out General Motors or Ford Motor in this case. They’re bailing out the banks that have loaned money to these institutions, so Ford Motor and General Motors can continue to pay interest on the debt.
This is what people don’t realize. All of this was set in stone back in 1910. And there’s no way to change it until the Federal Reserve System is abolished. As long as that creature is in place, it’s going to dine on us. That’s the hard reality and that’s the message of my book.
Jason Hartman: How do we end the Fed?
G. Edward Griffin: We end the fed the same way we created it. It’s an act of Congress that created it. It’s got to be an act of Congress that uncreates it. It’s as simple as that. That means, of course, that we’ve got to get an entire new slate of congressmen and senators in office. Because they guys and gals that are there today are not going to do that. They’re too beholden to the system. It means a complete political upheaval. It means a growing awareness on the part of the voters. It means an understanding of how the system works. And it means a political resolve to replace the people who are committed to the existing system, replace them with ones who understand the principles of economic freedom.
Jason Hartman: Unfortunately, entrenched interests and people have a way of replicating and perpetuating themselves, I mean, one example that is very topical right now is the new Kennedy that wants to come in and has absolutely no experience whatsoever, hasn’t voted in 18 years. You think you should come into the government because your name is Kennedy? It’s just unbelievable.
G. Edward Griffin: Oh, it could happen, yeah, because they love the name Kennedy. That’s how the political system works today. My friends, we better change it because it’s going to continue to go down the tubes because of that and we’re gonna go with it. Our freedom is going to be lost unless we change it.
Jason Hartman: It seems as though America is really on the precipice of some major, major changes and everyone, like yourself, that I talk with says the same thing, you know, we’ve gotta do something. We’ve gotta do something. I don’t know, what can you do, I mean, is it write your congressman? I doubt that’s going to make any difference. Certainly voting isn’t going to make much of a difference.
G. Edward Griffin: No, not write your congressman. Replace your congressman.
Jason Hartman: But how do you do that?
G. Edward Griffin: Well, I’m glad you asked that, Jason, because back in 2002 this issue came very much to head in my mind. I decided that what we needed was a movement to do exactly that. Quit talking about it. Quit educating ourselves about it. Enough of us know what the problem is. Let’s do something about it. Well, what? So we created an organization called Freedom Force International. The purpose of this organization which, by the way, now has members is 60 countries. This is a global problem. It will have a global solution. The solution is to, as I said before, replace these congressmen with people who have the right view – people with an understanding, people with a loyalty to freedom and not to some political party.
How do you do that? How do you change the political structure of a nation? Short of a violent revolution? It can be done. We know it can be done because it was done right under our noses. We had a great republic when this nation was created. In the first 80 years or so, maybe the first 100 years, it was fantastic. But then the collectivists began to move into politics and they began to take over the educational system, and they began to take over the media and consolidate their power. They began to change the thinking of the American people. The American people themselves brought about the change, a lot of the change.
Jason Hartman: Can you mention some time frames in there?
G. Edward Griffin: Let’s go back to the Woodrow Wilson administration, which is where it really began in full force. There’s an organization, I know we don’t have a lot of time to talk about, but it’s called the Council on Foreign Relations.
Jason Hartman: Sure.
G. Edward Griffin: It’s really the hidden elite. It’s the rulers of America today. There are only about 4,000 members. You find them everywhere, the tops of critical organizations, the power centers of society. You find them at the tops of both political parties. You find them in all the major media outlets and all of the major corporations and so forth. Only 4,000 people, they run America from behind the scenes.
In the early days of the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the creators of it was Colonel Edward Mandell House. That’s a name many people have never heard of but they should. He was the actual president during the Woodrow Wilson administration. He lived in the White House. He had several rooms in the White House. Woodrow Wilson considered him as his alter ego. He asked for House’s advice and direction on every matter. It was Colonel House who actually selected Woodrow Wilson and ran him as a candidate for the presidency. Here was the guy who was one of the founders of the Council on Foreign Relations, which was dedicated to global collectivism, the elimination of the United States as a nation, living in the White House, actually serving as the president. He actually served as an advisor to President Roosevelt that followed. From that day forward, Jason, the Council on Foreign Relations began to move people into all the key positions in America. That is the turning point. Right there.
Jason Hartman: Right.
G. Edward Griffin: We have never had a true republic from that date forward. The growth of collectivism has just been exponential ever since.
Jason Hartman: So, these people are going to retain their power however they can. That was in the early 1900s. Of course, we saw the creation of the Federal Reserve. We saw the income tax right about the same time.
G. Edward Griffin: Yep. These people created all of that.
Jason Hartman: So, how would we ever get rid of them?
G. Edward Griffin: We have to get rid of them the same way they got in there. We have to, first of all, have our own forces to field. Most people have no idea of what are the principles of freedom. You ask them define freedom. How do we preserve freedom? What is the essence of freedom? Unfortunately, many people think that freedom is just being out of jail. They have no concept of the idea of human rights and the obligation of the citizenry to protect the individual. They think that the group is more important than the individual, for example. They’ve been taught that. As long as that continues, collectivism will reign. So, where do we start? We start by educating a small cadre of people who will understand and who will then get up off of the couches and away from the television sets and go into the organizations to which people belong.
We are asking our people to become active in politics. To go into both political parties, or more than both political parties. All political parties. We’re asking our people to become active in media. To go into education and to all the places where you can influence and lead our fellow citizens. This is the way our enemies have done it. They’ve taken away our freedom because they moved into the organizations that lead the country. They captured control of the organizations to which people belong and that’s how it’s done. We’re asking our people to go back into those organizations and become active and influential and try and get these people out of the heads of those organizations. That’s how it can be done.
Jason Hartman: That’s a good point. It seems as though that the reason these groups are so entrenched nowadays and have been able to maintain their power base, is media. You look at media, it is so scalable and so pervasive. Fortunately, the alternative media, I’m going to call that talk radio and the internet, I call this the dialogue media. In other words, people can talk back to it and it can withstand the power of debate. Whereas you look at the more collectivist side of the equation. They control all of the monologue media. Publishing, newspapers, old media, television, movies, things like that where you don’t really get to talk back to it. I know you could say, well, there’s an op-ed page and editorial page and so forth but that’s not really talking back
G. Edward Griffin: It’s very filtered.
Jason Hartman: Talk radio people call in and they debate issues. Talk radio has been more to the right, more to the libertarian side, more to the conservative side because, I think, those arguments or those philosophies can withstand debate better than the left side of the equation, the more collectivist, the more liberal side of the equation. It’s so bisected in terms of who controls what media, the monologue or the dialogue media. That monologue media is still very big. It’s scalable, so when it’s scalable it can influence a lot of people.
G. Edward Griffin: Well, it does. It dominates. There’s no question about it. Of course, we’re living in a very interesting and perhaps short period of time in which the internet is still pretty much open to alternative voices. That’s one of the reasons the establishment is so concerned and so determined to control the internet. We see a major move being made right now for the United Nations to be given the authority to regulate the internet worldwide.
Jason Hartman: That’s scary.
G. Edward Griffin: Oh yes, and the kind of censorship we now see in China and in other countries around the world and somewhat in the United States, increasingly, is going to become universal if we don’t stop it. You won’t even be able to mention the word freedom. It will probably be blocked, you know. They’re putting all of this in place. They’re working on it very feverishly as we speak. And they’ll sell it to the average person, who will think, “Oh this is to stop pornography, or this is to stop treason, or sedition, or this is to stop terrorism, or something else.” They’ll tell them all of these things so that people will say, “Oh, okay. I guess it’s a good thing to have the government control the internet.” That’s how they do it.
Jason Hartman: Good point. That is the way it’s sold, no question about it. Tell us about some of your thoughts on predictions, if you have any, and I might be putting you on the spot here. What do you think is going to happen to the dollar? Are we going to have anything called a dollar in ten years from now? Is it going to be worth anything?
G. Edward Griffin: I always hesitate to make predictions but I can certainly talk about trends, and I can say if the trend is not reversed this is where it’s going to go. Hopefully, we’re going to change the trend. But if the trend is not reversed, then the dollar is going to go into continuous decline. It will probably disappear. It’ll be replaced by the amero, the currency for the North American Union, which will be Mexico, the United States, and Canada.
Jason Hartman: Many people that debate the amero say that Canada and Mexico wouldn’t want to be a part of that.
G. Edward Griffin: Well, what difference does it make what Canada, the United States, and Mexico wants? This is not determined by the people of those countries. This is determined by the CFR rulers. They make these decisions for us.
Jason Hartman: What is the CFR?
G. Edward Griffin: Council on Foreign Relations.
Jason Hartman: Council on Foreign Relations, okay, sorry.
G. Edward Griffin: Yeah, that’s primarily in the US but they have their counterparts in other countries. This is not a question of what you or I want or what the voters want. No. See, that implies that these people who say that have no realistic appraisal of what is really going on in the world. The people in Europe, the European Union, for the most part, didn’t want that. Doesn’t make any difference. They got it. You see.
Jason Hartman: Right.
G. Edward Griffin: These things are being determined by forces that are far above the voter desire level.
Jason Hartman: Yeah.
G. Edward Griffin: Anyway, what’s going to happen to the dollar, if the trend continues, will be replaced by the amero. It will be sold to the people as a great solution to the problem of the disappearing value of the American dollar, when the dollar buys less and less and less and people will be told, well, now we’ve got the amero. Now you can buy more with it. And they’ll say, “Oh, thank you.”
Jason Hartman: Where would be, if we have an amero, another currency, if we have still a dollar but maybe the dollar is sort of revalued, whatever happens. If that scenario occurs, what are your thoughts on what would happen to denominate debt? So, if I have a million dollars in mortgages on a few different rental properties, how are they going to evaluate that debt and what the value of it is?
G. Edward Griffin: Typically what they do, Jason, is that the all-wise politicians are asked to step in at the behest of their manipulators and funders behind the scenes, the banks. The politicians will pass a law and they will say this is the conversion rate. That would be 500 American dollars for one amero or whatever number they come up with. Might be five for one, instead of 500. They just come up with a number, just like FDR came up with a number back in the Depression and said gold is now going to be sold at 35 dollars an ounce. They just pronounced it and if you don’t follow it, then you go to prison.
So, they’ll just declare a number, an exchange ratio. And then they’ll tag onto that another provision of the law which says that all existing contracts must be converted into that same ratio. Then they’ll probably tag on another provision which says any contract other than in ameros, or dollars, or whatever units they’re talking about, will be declared null and void. So it will not be legally possible to do a contract in gold or silver.
Jason Hartman: In other words, a legal tender law.
G. Edward Griffin: That’s right. A legal tender law. But they’ll go one step further and just outlaw contracts even in anything other than this fiat money, this funny money. In other words, we’re talking about the totalitarian intervention where the state just moves in and says this is it. And you will follow it or you will go to prison.
Jason Hartman: Right.
G. Edward Griffin: That’s probably what will happen because that’s what always happens when the government’s money falls apart. The government doesn’t want you to go anywhere else. So they force you to stay with it all the way down.
Jason Hartman: Let me mention something I’ve heard about that, you know, when those conversions occur, I was in Eastern Europe about a year and a half ago and I took a trip up through five countries and looked at real estate in all of them. It was sort of a scouting trip and I was looking at real estate deals which I felt were all overvalued, in my opinion, and walked away. I’m glad I did.
One of the things I’ve heard, I talked to a lot of people over there, and I was in Bulgaria and Romania, who were still on their old currency but had just joined the EU earlier that same year, and were planning to convert to the Euro the following year. I said, what happens when this type of conversion occurs? They said it’s inflationary because there’s an automatic rounding up of all of the merchants. Any vendor that’s selling anything is afraid that they will be burned in the exchange, so they just round up. If something is, let’s call it 89 units, you know, dollars, whatever it is. If it’s 89 units, they’ll just call it a round 100 on the day that conversion occurs because they are afraid that they will get hurt in the conversion ratio and it will put them out of business or get them into trouble. Do you see that as a possibility?
G. Edward Griffin: Well, I hadn’t thought about that, Jason. That sounds plausible to me. In a way, you might consider it as a catch up because usually the merchants are always behind the curve in inflation. The supply of the money goes up, up, up and then finally the merchants are forced to increase their prices just to catch up.
Jason Hartman: They’re a lagging indicator.
G. Edward Griffin: They are lagging indicators, yes, so here is a chance for them to make up what they’ve been losing for quite a few years.
Jason Hartman: So, we’re going to see a collapse of the dollar. Can I sum it up saying that?
G. Edward Griffin: Yes, you can say we’re going to see it if the present trend does not change.
Jason Hartman: Any time frame?
G. Edward Griffin: I have no time frame.
Jason Hartman: Okay. Thought I’d try and pin you down on that one.
G. Edward Griffin: I’ve learned not to – I’m usually pretty bad at time frames because I always think it’s going to happen sooner than it does.
Jason Hartman: Right and, logically speaking, I would have to agree with you. You think why hasn’t it happened already?
G. Edward Griffin: Exactly, yes.
Jason Hartman: But they can keep that scheme going pretty well, although last year it certainly looks like the jig is up in a lot of ways.
G. Edward Griffin: Yeah, they found ways of passing along the hanging over part, as they call it. Passing it along to the taxpayers.
Jason Hartman: That’s for sure.
G. Edward Griffin: The present bailouts are a perfect example. How can they keep this thing going? And they just keep passing it along to the taxpayer in terms of inflationary measures.
Jason Hartman: Yeah, Obama is going to give everybody a check for five hundred dollars and it’s going to cost them ten thousand in the devaluation of their currency and in higher taxes.
G. Edward Griffin: And people will cheer him for that.
Jason Hartman: It’s insane.
G. Edward Griffin: I know.
Jason Hartman: Any other trends, if not predictions?
G. Edward Griffin: Well, yes, my mind always turns to something even more important than money. And that’s to freedom. We talk about the amero, okay, what happens if the amero is finally given to us? We can talk about the conversion ratios and what that means to our balance sheet and all of that. What comes along with that is the loss of our national sovereignty. If we don’t have an American currency, we don’t have an America. That means, even theoretically, even though we think we’re voting for people in the Republican and the Democrat party, and we know that that’s a scam.
Now, all of the sudden, we’re one more huge step removed from recovering our freedom because now our country is no longer our country. It’s part of a regional system. We have to worry about the politicians in Mexico and Canada as well. And we have no control over that. So we’ve lost. We’ve lost our nation at that point. And we’ve lost our sovereignty. We’ve lost almost the last vestige of regaining our freedom again.
Jason Hartman: You certainly see that happening in the European Union, don’t you?
G. Edward Griffin: Yes, yes. The people in the European Union just don’t have any voice really at all any more. Their rulers are appointed by somebody. They don’t even know who’s appointing their rulers.
Jason Hartman: It’s amazing.
G. Edward Griffin: Yep.
Jason Hartman: Really amazing. Okay, so definite concerns for freedom. Any thoughts on stock markets? Can you give us a number of the Dow or the S&P, I doubt?
G. Edward Griffin: No, I couldn’t. It’s so far removed from a free market. You know, if this were a free market the old rules would apply and you could say, well, when stocks go up, bonds go down. And when inflation occurs, gold goes up. All of these things that used to be true are not true anymore because just about every aspect of the market is now controlled by governmental power. These forces are not allowed to work anymore.
Jason Hartman: What are your thoughts on gold price manipulation or all the metals really, gold especially?
G. Edward Griffin: There’s no doubt in my mind that the price of gold has been manipulated severely for quite a few years in order to protect those banks which have been selling gold that they don’t own, leasing forward their gold. They’re being allowed to lease their gold and still carry it as an asset, as though there was no liability against it which allows them to expand their asset base on the books considerably. It’s very profitable for them to be able to do that but when those contracts come due and they’re being asked to maybe deliver the gold or whatever, it gets very complicated but they don’t have the gold, so they have to go out and buy the gold at the current market.
So it would be devastating to the banks to have to go out and buy the gold that they promised at a high price. So they’ll move heaven and earth to keep that price low. Basically, that’s what’s been going on. The price of gold has been manipulated to protect the asset base of the banks, to keep them from going bankrupt.
Jason Hartman: It would also seem that that little gold Ponzi scheme that they’re running is a way to increase the fractional reserve lending. Is that correct?
G. Edward Griffin: Yes. Exactly. Underneath it all it improves their ability to expand their loans. There’s no doubt in my mind that the price of gold has been manipulated and is manipulated even today. However, also in that picture is the fact that with the downturn of the economy, the demand for all minerals, all metals, all commodities, declines. Traditionally, that includes gold. I’m not quite sure why gold should follow all of the commercial commodities but it always has. I suppose there is some gold being used in commerce and gold electrical plating, electrical switches and all that kind of stuff. Although I think that gold is mostly a monetary and an ornate type of asset.
But moving away from gold for the moment, I don’t think that the price of silver, copper, and nickel, and all these others are being manipulated. I think they’re just in a natural decline because of the decline for the demand for these metals in production. That is also present in gold but to what extent I don’t know. I think it’s minor. And yet we see when we compare the decline of commodities in general, and minerals and other metals in general, with gold. Gold is doing better than the others. We would expect that because gold is also a monetary metal. So there’s a demand for gold far above and beyond what is needed for production.
Jason Hartman: I agree. Any other thoughts in closing? This has been a fascinating interview and I thank you so much for being on the show. We want people to get your book and read it. It was very enlightening to me and it has been to many, many other people. Wrap this up for us, if you would.
G. Edward Griffin: Two things come to mind. We’re living in very, very serious times. If we don’t turn things around pretty soon it’s going to adversely affect our personal lives even more so than it already has done. We must prevent that.
The next part of my closing thought is let’s do something about it. I urge anybody who wants to become a change agent, really become active and do something about it, to come to our website, Freedom Force International. Take a little time and see what our plan is and then become a part of it. Let’s change history. Let’s not just complain about history. Let’s become a change agent. I urge anybody that wants to do that to come to www.FreedomForceInternational.org. I think you’re going to like what you see.
Jason Hartman: Is the book available at that website as well?
G. Edward Griffin: Not directly. The book is available from our commercial site, which is The Reality Zone. We have about one hundred different items there. The book is one of them. That’s simple enough, RealityZone.com.
Jason Hartman: Excellent, excellent. Well, G. Edward Griffin, thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to talk with you. Keep getting the message out and keep up the good work.
G. Edward Griffin: Thanks a lot for inviting me, Jason. Good luck to you.
Jason Hartman: You’re welcome.
Narrator: The American Monetary Association is a nonprofit venture funded by the Jason Hartman Foundation, which is dedicated to educating people about the practical effects of monetary policy and government actions on inflation, deflation, and personal freedom. Our goal is to help people prosper in the midst of uncertain economic times. This show is produced by The Jason Hartman Foundation, all rights reserved. For publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.HartmanMedia.com or email [email protected]. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate professional if you require individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own and the host is acting on behalf of The Jason Hartman Foundation exclusively.
Transcribed by Ralph Jordan
The American Monetary Association Team
