It’s only when discovering the true answer to that question that you have that “red pill or blue pill” moment, to use a Hollywood movie meme. That’s the Matrix moment because what you’re about to discover in this episode is not taught in any school or any university, and probably for good reason.
I highly encourage you to listen to this entire episode. I want you to think about what you hear, and maybe question some other long-held beliefs about things that are simply taken for granted or accepted as fact.
Enjoy the show!
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Welcome to passive real estate investing, the show where busy people like you learn how to build substantial passive income while creating wealth for the long term. And now here’s your host Marco [inaudible]. Welcome to passive real estate investing. I’m your host Marco [inaudible].
You know it is believed that Mayer Amschel Rothschild, a German Jewish banker, and the founder of the world-famous Rothschild Banking Dynasty said back in the late 17 hundreds give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws. Well today the U.S. dollar is the world reserve currency and since 1971 and it’s been backed by nothing but the faith and confidence of the same US dollar. So how is money or more specifically currency created? It’s only when you discover the true answer to that question that you have that red pill or blue pill moment to use a Hollywood movie meme. Of course, that’s the matrix moment because what you’re about to discover in this episode is not taught in any school or university and probably for good reason. I highly encourage you to listen to this episode right through to the end.
I want you to think about what you hear and maybe question some of the other long-held beliefs about things that are simply just taken for granted or accepted as fact.
So, before we joined today’s guests, a quick reminder that you can download a free copy of the ultimate guide to passive real estate investing. Just go to passive real estate investing.com and click on the free download.
It’s my pleasure today to welcome G. Edward Griffin to the show. Ed, as he goes by, is a well-known author, a documentary film producer and the founder of freedom force international listed on the WHO’s who in America. He is well known because of his talent for researching difficult topics and presenting them in clear terms. He has dealt with such diverse subjects as archeology and the ancient earth history, the Federal Reserve System and international banking terrorism, the history of taxation, US foreign policy, the science and politics of cancer therapy, the supreme court. And last but not least, the United Nations, one of Ed’s most influential and better-known works includes his book, the creature from Jekyll Island, a second look at the Federal Reserve. Ed, welcome to the show.
Oh, thank you. Thanks for inviting me, Marco. I much appreciate it.
Well, it’s great to have you on. You have a very long bio. I had to actually cut it all down because you’ve done so much as a researcher.
Well, that’s what happens when you live a long time.
Oh, well you’re amazing. I mean, I not gonna tell anybody your age, but I’ve had, you know, a fair share of conversations with you and dinner with you and you’re in amazing health. It’s unbelievable.
Yeah, I think so too. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Well, we have a very, very interesting topic to talk about here today and it’s something that most people really haven’t heard much about, if anything at all. But what struck me about you is I met you a little over a year ago. We spent some time on and off over the course of a week just getting to know each other a little better in that two months ago, you and I had dinner together and you know, we’ve had multiple conversations and it seems like every time we get together we go down these rabbit holes. Um, but you’re a fascinating person. So let’s start off with you sharing with our audience a little bit about yourself and then transition that into how you came to write this book called the creature from Jekyll island, which is just a fascinating title.
Well, that is quite a long story in itself, but it’s sad. It needs to be shortened a lot, especially when we have so little time here. Okay. I think the short version is that I started off heading in an entirely different direction than I wound up and I’m happens, I think to most people. Um, I went to school, uh, that was a child actor. Okay. I don’t know how that happened really, but I was in Detroit, Michigan and um, they were auditioning for some little bratty kids to learn how to act on radio. So I tried out and um, I got past the initial trials. The first thing, you know, I’m, I’m the little kid on the lone ranger, for example, you know, and or the hermit’s cave or the Ford theater, all the programs that came out of Detroit, Michigan. I was a bratty little kid, you know, Gee Dad, here comes the Indians or whatever I had to say.
And I went to school, the University of Michigan, and I was going to go into drama. I was going to go into television and I got it. When I came out of school, I got a job at Wwu JTV Detroit, which was the NBC affiliate, one of the first really fully functional modern type television studios in the world. And that was a, they called me a director, which means I was the floor manager. I the kid on the floor, the through the cues, you know, and flip the, the reading, uh, cards down. And so the cameras could come in and take a picture. They didn’t have any, any way of putting the letters on directly into the video. You had to make a card, take it, the cart, all that. That’s what I did. I went in the military. I, uh, I met, uh, it’s a long story.
I wound up in, let’s cut through it. I wound up, um, in Hollywood that came out of the military. I was going to make my big Mark in Hollywood and I got there and I discovered that there were a lot of people with greater challenges in mind who were waiting tables and the busing dishes. But this time I had a beautiful wife and a couple of kids and I was running out of money. I decided to get a real job, went to work in the corporate world. Um, I was doing pretty good, decided I was going to climb the corporate ladder. It’s going to be a vice president, have a penthouse apartment in New York when I retired. You know, all of the things that young people thing they want to do, think they want to do when they’re young, climb that ladder and have a lot of money.
And then I discovered what the real world was about. I ran into some literature that questioned the integrity of the United Nations. And that was sacrosanct for me because I’ve been taught in school that the UN was our last best hope for peace. So I began to take an interest and I thought, this can’t be true, but I had just learned, I went to the library, right? Believe it or not, I went to the library. I thought when I got out of school, I would never go back. I was like a torture chamber for people that were bad, you know, punish me for being bad. And so anyway, to make a long story a little shorter, I discovered that what they were saying about the UN was true the way, not at all. What I had been taught in school. I became a crusader. I discovered I had a crusader gene.
I quit my job with the insurance company I was with. My wife almost had a fit and a what I launched out on my own and I wasn’t going to save the world. I got to explain to everybody what was really going on in the world and that was when I started to produce little very low budget documentary films. In those days we called them film strips. They were just single pictures that you show on the screen. There was narration over it and there was a beep sound and an operator had to turn the crank and the picture would change and that’s how I started. I did those. I went into 16 millimeter film documentaries. I targeted produce my own and I took an interest in inflation. I wanted to do a documentary on inflation that led me to the Federal Reserve System, which is the engine of inflation.
I started giving speeches on the Federal Reserve System. I gave a one day seminar called a crash course on money. I decided I better quit doing that because I didn’t know enough about the real markets. So I enrolled in the college for financial planning, which is a school in Denver. It got my CFP designation. We just like a, uh, like a CPA, except as for financial planning, I never wanted to become a financial planner. I just wanted to learn about the real markets. And then I wrote my book, the creature from Jekyll island, the second look at the Federal Reserve. It was just, as you can see, it was just one step after the other. Oh, I had no idea where I was going, which is true. I was being propelled by the things I discovered, tripped over something and go, well that’s interesting. I better find out about that. So my path of life was Kinda zigzaggy and here I am, I’m still tripping over things that interest me and causing me to go in different directions.
Yeah. That’s just amazing. So you opened up the door, he found the trap door, opened it up, found another door, went through that one and yeah,
and three more indoors after that and so forth. Yeah. That’s how life is.
Yeah. Very true. And you know those doors, one after another, you can call just a rabbit hole because it just kept going and going and he kept discovering new and new things that probably surprised you as you went. So,
ah, yes. More than surprised and amazed and, and just blow your mind at the things you can discover. Especially when you realize that many of the things you thought you knew and the most revered and leaves you have turn out to be wrong. Right? Shocking, right? Then you think, how come I got this wrong information? Who, who was giving me this wrong information? There’s a natural question and in every case I found out it was coming from people or institutions which had great authority as authority over people, authority over the culture, authority over institutions. And I began to realize that I get it now. This is a power game. This isn’t a certain groups have an interest in keeping you misinformed and keeping us all right. They have a strong interest because it gives them power over you. And boy, that was the turning point because before that I was kind of a snowflake as they call the kids. Today I kind of believed, you know, everything was fine. Nobody was out, nobody had any ulterior motives or hidden agendas. Everybody was good and all that sort of thing. Now, by the way, I still believe that most people are that way, Ron, but I didn’t realize what a significant underbelly there was in society of people who are not that way and it seems that they’re the ones that gradually climb up and clawed their way into these positions of authority.
Right? Right there, there are dozens of things we could discuss. Just a, you’re giving me flashbacks to our dinner, which was about three hours long and we were just talking about all kinds of things, individualism versus collectivism and just all kinds of stuff. I mean we could, we could talk for hours, but let’s kind of stay focused on the Fed here. So the fatter, you know, short for the Federal Reserve, the Fed is like one of those things that it’s always there, it’s in the news, it’s in your face. It’s in your wallet and people don’t even realize that it’s just omnipresent, but it’s very misunderstood. Your book is so all encompassing that it helps to explain the very roots of all modern American wars, depressions, economic booms, and most importantly, the darkest, best kept secrets of our international banking system. So for the people listening in, and for those that have watched the movie, the Matrix, which is one of my favorite movies, just an unbelievable movie, there’s a scene at the beginning where Morpheus says to neo, you take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. So for those of you who haven’t taken that proverbial red pill, let’s start off by defining and describing what the Federal Reserve really is.
Well, it’s one of those things, Marco, that I mentioned a moment ago, and I thought I understood at a surface level, but it was completely the opposite of what I thought I thought. And most people today still think that the Federal Reserve System as an agency of the federal government and if they’re direct, collate the banks and protect the people of America and to stabilize the economy and uh, do all good things for our society and particularly for America. I love that understanding of it. I, that’s what I was taught in school. It made me feel good. But boy, what I found out was quite different. I got to reading the foundation documents or the fad, I learned about the people who created it. I learned about the meeting where it was created on Jekyll island, by the way. That’s why I call the book the creature from Jekyll Island, which is a private island.
In those days, it was off the coast of Georgia. It was where the wealthiest people in the u s had there, what they called cottages there, winter cottages where they, most of them left the environs of New York, um, where it got very cold and they went down to Georgia where it’s kind of Nice and Balmy in December and January. They had these estates there and I had a clubhouse to called the Jekyll island club. And that’s where the, some of the wealthiest men in the world gathered in 1910 and in conditions of great secrecy, they created the Federal Reserve system there. And, uh, when I got into all of that, I thought, you know, when people do things in secret, there’s usually something to hide. So I was curious as to what it was they were hiding. And to my amazement, I found out that they were very upfront about it and their own writings and their own biographies.
And in some of the articles that they had written for magazines and newspapers after the event, after the Federal Reserve was created, they were very well versed about, well verse about it. They, they, uh, they talked about it, they bragged about it then, but in the day when it was being, um, formed, they were very secretive about it. And so what I discovered now to the point, I discovered that the Federal Reserve system is a cartel. It’s no different than an oil cartel were banana cartel. Uh, it just happens to be a banking cartel to group of private interests. She came together and formed this shared monopoly over the whole banking system to control their own industry, to their advantage, to prevent competitions. Or they could not have to compete with each other. They would have nicer profit margins, they would be free of regulation by government. And so in order to do that, they drafted the cartel agreement in secret on Jekyll island in 1910 spent the next three years trying to promote it to Congress as a means of controlling the banks and helping the American people.
And most people didn’t know, including the congressman themselves, did not know that the document was written by the banks. That was the secret. That was the reason for going to Jekyll island. They drafted this thing. So what basically happened at short is the biggest banks in America drew up their own cartel agreement. They went to Washington, they got this big fat eraser. This is figuratively speaking of course. And they erased the words that said, cartel agreement. And instead they wrote in Federal Reserve Act, they sold it. The congress, the stupid congressman voted it into law and now a cartel, a private cartel agreement between private banks was given the power to issue the nation’s money. And it was given the power to control all banking supposedly for the American people. But it was a document drafted by the banks themselves to make sure that the American people would never have the power to interfere with the affairs of the bank. That’s what I discovered and that’s what I wrote about in the creature from Jekyll island.
So clearly the, that truly defines a cartel, but a lot of people will claim that the Fed was or is a conspiracy. And I don’t mean a conspiracy theory. I mean literally a conspiracy and most are, um, a dictionary definitions. Use the word conspiracy and describe it as two or more people coming together. Uh, secondly, they use methods of deceit or deception to achieve a goal and then thoroughly, um, often this is the result of unethical or illegal behavior. Can you elaborate on that? Would you say that they meet that definition, that three part definition?
Yeah, that is certainly the generalized accepted definition of a conspiracy. And it’s clear to me at least, that, uh, uh, it is, uh, certainly involving two or more people. So number one is obviously met and they do use methods of deception a and the c indirection add to conceal what they’re trying to do to make it seem like something else. But when it comes to item number three, if not illegal, they’ve done nothing illegal because they have written the laws, right? So that’s part of the genius of this thing. If you’re write the laws to suit what you want to do and then you don’t have to do anything illegal because it makes it legal. So that part is how they escaped the classic definition of a conspiracy. Now, in most minds of citizens like us, we think what they have done should be illegal.
It certainly is unethical in our view and immoral, but they don’t look at it that way. So in their mind, it’s not a conspiracy because there’s nothing unethical about it. They think that they’re helping us, theirs, they say at least that they think they’re helping us. They’re trying to stabilize the economy and for us idiots that don’t know how to do it ourselves when they have to do for our own good. That’s always the mantra of collectivism. They, they make you a slave for your own good, they say. So they argue it in defendant from that side. But I think for most people who are being controlled and who are being legally plundered by their system would definitely decide and say that it was an unethical system. So the point is that in the minds of most people, in the minds of society, in the, in real definition, to me it is a conspiracy, but in the minds of the people doing it themselves, it is not.
So what are the fits true goals? Well, the true goals are to him. What’s the goal of any, uh, cartel? It’s to advance the interests of the cartel whatever way possible. So those are, it’s true goals. And of course it has to always conceal that from the voters who still think that the vet is a government agency. They still think that. And so when they have these hearings in Washington and they have the politicians sitting up there in the Diet as the big leather chairs up behind him and so forth, and then the chairman of the Federal Reserve sits down below at a table, a bare table. It kind of looks like, you know, like the government is in charge and the Federal Reserve chairman is sort of meekly answering questions. I know it looks, it looks that way. If the posting really that way at all. In fact you, if you really want to go to the Internet and look at some of those hearings, occasionally you’ll find some congressman or senator asked a question of the Fed chairman and the Fed chairman would say, hmm, well I’m not going to answer that question and that’s it.
They never say, what do you mean you’re not going to answer the questions, right? No, it’s not in the best interest of the system. We were not going to answer that question, but we’ll say this and then he’d go on and then they make it seem okay. But if you look, you’ll see that there congress has absolutely zero zero authority and power over the Federal Reserve System, which was designed to be an is an independent structure governing body given its power by passive congressman. Hopefully didn’t know what they were doing and that’s what we have to live with. So I don’t know if I answered your question, but that the, it’s easy to see that the whole purpose of the Fed is not to help the American people, but to preserve the interest and the independence of the Fed. And if there’s a big crisis and there’s a money collapsed, who gets the money?
Congress votes what these to allow the Federal Reserve to allow the Federal Reserve, it’s said to create money out of nothing to give to the banks. What they don’t realize that when they say the word Federal Reserve, they’re really talking about the banks. They’re not talking about a government agency. By the time you read it in the newspaper, it seems like, oh, well the government created money and they’re giving it to the banks. No, no, that’s not what happened. What happened is they politicians said, yes, let’s do this. And the, and the banks created the money and gave it to themselves. That’s what really happened. And what do you understand the mechanism? It’s, it’s the greatest legalized scam imaginable and it’s been going on for years and people allow it to happen because they had no understanding of its origin. It’s, it’s motivation and certainly no understanding of how,
yeah, you’re spot on. There’s such a high level of ignorance when it comes to the Federal Reserve and how the monetary system actually works. You know, the Fed has its stated goals and unstated goals. The unstated goals or what, you know, you just said that they’re trying to advance their own best interests as a, as a cartel. Um, but you know, what they publicly say is that, well, we’re here to control, you know, interest rates, inflation, stability of the economy. And really, I don’t think they have much, if any, control over those three things that, you know, they’re reactionary not, you know, they’re not preventative there. They’re very reactionary to what’s going on in the marketplace. Uh, they have very few levers to pull, but we’ll get to that in a minute here. Um, I like to jokingly say that the Federal Reserve, this is what I’m talking to my friends, of course, you know, there’s nothing federal and there’s nothing on reserve. It’s like, it’s like the opposite of what we’re actually calling it.
That was part of the design. And that’s one of the things you discovered when you started researching the founding documents. You people talk about things like that and it’s in the printed record. They, well, you know, what are we going to create here? We’re going to create something that in the encyclopedia is called a central bank. That’s the name given to it. It’s not a bank at all, but that’s the name that it’s been given to it. That’s the name that came out of London when they were copying a, the Bank of England.
Well, it is a central bank
live, we’d call it a central bank. Yeah. And they’re copying the Bank of England. But the American voters and the congressman in America did not want a central bank. They knew what, not quite sure what it was, but they knew that what they had over there in England and they thought, no, this is America. We want something that’s unique. We went our own type of system. And so the guys who were drafting this cartel agreement discussed that and they said, okay, we can’t call it a central bank, so what are we going to call it? Well, we’ll make it sound like it’s the American though. So we’ll call it federal people will think that means federal government and then we’ll call it reserve at all. They liked the word reserve were put that in there and we’ll call it the bag. It’s not a bank, it’s a cartel of banks and it’s an on and on and on. They were very cunning and very brilliant when they designed the Federal Reserve, even to the selection of its name.
Yup. Very crafty for sure. And I think it was Shakespeare that said that a rose by any other name is still a rose. So a central bank is still a central bank, regardless of what you call it. Right.
A cartel is always the cartel, even if you call it the Federal Reserve System.
Sure, sure. Um, you know, I, there’s probably a lot of people listening to this right now and thinking, oh, well I find that hard to believe, or I believe it, but it’s just unbelievable. Or, um, or surely you might have some of your facts wrong. Has anybody come forward ever and said that you’ve got the story wrong and let us correct you on this? Yes.
That’s an interesting question because I lived in dire fear of that because I had no knowledge. I of, I didn’t come from a banking background. That wasn’t what I learned in school and all that stuff. So I thought, Oh man, Oh man, I spent seven years researching it and reading all the books and interviewing people with experience that, all of that. And I said, Oh man, I’m sure I’m going to make a mistake. I’m gonna, I’m gonna make a fool of myself. So when the book was finally published, I was very proud of it. I was very happy. Oh Man, this is finally out. And I thought, oh, it’s just a matter of time before somebody who’s going to expose me as a fraud because I’m sure I must’ve stumbled somewhere and gotten it wrong. Well, the days went by and then the weeks and then the month and nobody, nobody corrected anything.
And there were a lot of academics that got my book. I knew because I could see the sales receipts, are the invoices go out there, universities, we’re buying it. I, we, we sent one copy directly to the Federal Reserve system itself. I knew that they had one in their library and I was waiting for the, you know, the hammer that come and it never, never came except one day, uh, about two years after the publication of the book, I was on tour books and I wound up on a little town in the east coast. Don’t remember the show or anything, but it was a radio program. I was invited to be on the radio and talk about my book. That’s why I was there. So I was happy to go. When I got to the studio, I saw that I was not the only person to be interviewed.
They had a college professor there and it was going to be a debate, not in an interview. I thought, Oh man, here it comes. This, they sent that back for me. Now I’m going to be through after this. Okay. A is like a man going to the gallows. We started the radio and the radio host said, alright Mr. Griffin, we’ll start with you, will you please present what your position is about the Federal Reserve or something like that. So okay. I took that deep breath and then I sort of blurted it all out. Probably had about maybe four or five minutes to summarize it pretty much like I’ve been doing here. And although I went on to explain some of the effects of it, like inflation, the loss of purchasing power and all that kind of thing and how it hurt the small person. And just so finally it came time to turn the microphone over to the college professor. And so the host said, well, Professor Zone, so what? What’s your response to this? And there was a long pause and this is what he said. He said, well, what he says is true, but we’re living well, aren’t we?
That’s a deflection. If I ever heard
what is it? That was it. And to this day, that’s basically the only counter argument there is to anything I’ve written because the facts are there and they’re drawn from the people themselves who created that district. Sure. These people who love the Federal Reserve admitting themselves what they were creating. So the facts are there. All they can say as well, in spite of the fact that you’re plundering the little guy and spite of the fact that we’ve lost purchasing power in spite of the fact that all these crimes are being committed, we’re living well. So that makes it okay. That’s pretty much. And what they don’t say with that statement is who are the we who are living well, maybe the academics, maybe the people in government. Certainly the people in the banking system, our living well because they’re the beneficiaries of this system, but the little guy working for fixed income or hourly wage or salary with his, with his purchasing power being stolen by inflation, he is not doing so well and we’re seeing that in our world today.
That’s, that’s pretty widespread actually. So I’m sure there’s people listening to you listening to us and listening to this that are starting to get a little upset, maybe a little cheesed off and realizing that, okay, this is not sounding so good. Well, I think there’s going to be some people who are going to get even more upset as we go along here because as we dig deeper into this, you’ll realize that this is such a sham. So let’s get this straight. The U.S. treasury and the Federal Reserve are basically swapping IOUs and they do this through the big banks as middlemen. And when we see the Federal Federal Reserve busy buying us bonds and other paper assets or whatever they’re using the money for that they’ve printed out of thin air, essentially, uh, the party on the other end of the transaction, like a bank like JP Morgan or wherever they’re turning around these 100% win ratios, they never lose because they’re, they’re essentially brokering this exchange of currency coming from the Federal Reserve going to the U.S. Treasury. And so they’re essentially quote unquote making millions or even billions of dollars. It calls into question how ethical that may be. But essentially what we’re saying is the Federal Reserve is plundering the people legally.
Well, yeah, guide you through all of that. Your last statement is definitely accurate in my view. Uh, I’m sure I’m not the first one to use that phrase, but it became one of my most popular phrases early on when I discovered how the system really works. Yet everything is done illegally. The Federal Reserve is given the power to act on behalf of the government. The government enforces those rules and regulations, uh, passed by the Federal Reserve. They, in fact, they put the Federal Reserve Act into law. So the politicians took the cartel agreement, made it law and that agreement, by the way, has been amended over a hundred times since it was passed in 1913. And uh, I, I am sure having read those many of those original documents, that the power of the Fed today far exceeds what even the founders dream that it might do when they put it together.
Every time it’s amended, a little more of the restrictions are removed and more power is given to them. It used to be that in the beginning of the Fed, the money, even though it was issued by the banks now instead of the government, if you know, let me just pause on that. He knows it and the old bills, if you go to the museum of money, you’ll see that the money has said United States treasury across the top. The money came from the government. But when the Federal Reserve Act was passed, now that may change. It says, it says Federal Reserve note on it doesn’t save treasury and says Federal Reserve. So the money is issued by the Federal Reserve now, so and that’s private. So anyway, when, when that happened, even in the beginning there was a little bit of gold required to be behind it with a little bit is better than none, but every year there are, these amendments are added to the bill and some of those restrictions are removed and new powers are given to it.
So that today you could hardly recognize the Federal Reserve, but it’s unlimited power to turn anything into money that they want to. I mean it used to be you could just turn, you know, debt government bonds and notes into, into money. Now the Federal Reserve could probably take wadded up chewing gum and converted into money if they wanted to. They find some legal way to just to see that it fits the definition of their powers. They have no limits whatsoever on the ability to create money out of nothing. Now think about this, creating money out of nothing. It sounds pretty bizarre, but that’s, that’s the whole basis of the banking system. Now. However, don’t think that they just use that money to spend for their own purposes. They don’t. They create the money out of nothing and the loan it into existence, there’s really not out of nothing. The money is backed by debt. So that’s even worse than nothing because it, there’s a debt relationship.
Some someone knows somebody and then there’s interest on top of that. So
now you just, you nailed it. The interest is the name of the game here because the money that goes into, into circulation through loans now brings interest into the banks. And this is where the river of gold started to come back. The banks performed the service, they like to call it. I’m creating money, which helps the economy. Everybody’s got money to spend now we can buy things, we can invest or it’s great for the economy, but all of that money, every nickel and dime of it, and penny of it, is there any interest for the banking system? And so it’s the interest on nothing that’s really the key to their great scam interest on [inaudible].
Nothing. Right. Absolutely. And so just to clarify something you had said, uh, money back in the day was truly money. It was a claim on silver or gold and it literally said that on the bill that you carried in your wallet. Then in 1971, just to fast forward, the dollar was decoupled from gold. President Nixon at the time it took it took it off the gold standard. And ever since then we’ve been on this truly debt based monetary system. And the result of all that is the printing of the US dollar creates inflation, ins and instability. So for those people who are listening to this many being real estate investors, they understand what a note is. It’s essentially a, a promise to pay. It’s a, it’s a mortgage is nothing more than a note. Um, and so that means that there’s debt, there’s monies owed and there’s interest on top of it. So this is the system we have today. And this is essentially what you’re saying is that we have a debt based monetary system and the more currency that we create and put into the system, the more interest is owed. And it sounds like it’s a perpetual spiral, call it either upward or downward, but we continually get further and further into debt with more and more interest. Oh, does that a true statement or not?
I think it’s a very true statement and it’s even worse than that because it’s, it’s gone so far now that there’s no way in the world that it can ever be rewound. It is on a path, in my opinion now that cannot be reversed. It has only one place to go and that’s to total destruction is it’s on the self-destruction path. Yeah. This is not guesswork. We have plenty of history to base that judgment error. This is not new. This sort of thing into a lesser degree has gone on over and over again throughout history ever since the creation of money that could be a represented by something other than an asset of itself. In other words, the minute you, the first example of a paper money took place back in ancient China when they use the inner bark of trees and they’d cut it into squares and impressed symbols on it.
That was the first example of what we might call paper money. Right now we’ve recorded by Marco Polo in his travels. That was the beginning of this whole thing. When you can hold up something which had no value or very limited, real value for anything other than medium of exchange and turn that into very valuable things that you can, you know, represent houses in and cattle in and acres of land and boats and so forth. That was the beginning of the skullduggery right there. So, um, this has happened before and every time that nations have adopted that are started on that path, they’ve always come to the point where they had to go over the cliff. Right? Cause that’s where the path goes. It comes to an end. It can’t go any further. And into the, into the chasm they go, we’re definitely headed in that direction.
And the only issue left in my mind is, uh, how hard a fall is it going to be? And can we pick ourselves up afterwards and learn a lesson from it and next time around are we going to go to the system that does not re uh, make these same errors that, and I’m hopeful when you see we’re headed to total destruction. Are you referring to hyperinflation or something different? Well, I’m referring to hyperinflation. There are other possible scenarios, but the end result is still the same. Nothing works. That’s the bottom line and I’m afraid that what we’re heading into now, um, is um, is something that is new in history throughout history. To this point. We’ve always had symbols of money that uh, were either assets or they were representative of assets, but they were always tangible. Um, or not quite. So in, in today’s world we have digital money.
Most of our money is digital, but there are, um, there are ways of converting them into paper there, which we have Federal Reserve notes even though what’s behind them as digital, you can get hold of these papers and stuff. Your mattress or whatever you want to get. Physical Representation. Exactly on the edge now of digital currency. It really a hundred percent crypto currency where there won’t even be pieces of paper. It’s just all on your computer or on your smartphone. And this, this is a very interesting, uh, turning point because it opens up the possibility of having a system without any tangible representation of money at all. And it opens up the possibility that people like you and I have no money except what the authorities say we have. We cannot say, oh, you’re wrong. Look, I’ve gotten my horn, or this is my stack of hundred dollar bills, or are anything like that.
We can say, look, this is our wallet, our Bitcoin Wallet. And it says we got 2000 units there and they throw a switch and your bitcoin wallet is empty. You know, so we’re, we’re approaching a period in history where this, it looks like it’s not only possible, but it looks like it’s coming. And that opens up a very scary scenario because it means that in a totalitarian system, everybody will be completely subservient to the authorities who control that switch to determine whether they will be able to buy food, whether they will be able to travel or they can have clothes where they can pay rent or or have coupons that are worth rental credits or they can have shelter. All kinds of things like that mean that authority of Totalitarian Authority theoretically can control your control every aspect of our lives. And that is the situation is pretty hard to escape even with a so called revolutionary war. I mean, how do you escape that with with no means to, to acquire even food. So I’m beginning to wonder that this time when we come to the cliff, it might be a different clip. I might, it might be as whirlpool. I don’t know. I’m trying to think of something the indicate that it’s going to be different, I think than anything we’ve realized before. And it may be good or bad, but it’s certainly on. No,
that’s a pretty scary thought of losing complete control over access to whatever value you have in a currency. You can’t the pot buy food, pay for rent, pay for your mortgage, whatever it may be. Uh, you know, if you don’t have, if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it. They know that’s the same with gold, right? So if it’s all digital, you have no control over it. You’re accessing it through whatever portal or governing system that may be. And you know, that’s often going to be the central bank. But, uh, and you know, that reminds me of George Orwell’s book, 1984. I think that’s the one that I’m thinking of where, you know, you’ve just basically lost lost control of, of virtually everything. And you’re in a totalitarian system. That would be a terrible thing.
Oh, work. We’re actually, we’re pretty deep into that right now. Or, well, his book was a really famous for what he called the memory hole. If they didn’t like a fact or historical event, they just, uh, they had the ability to remove all mention of it from all history books and all the periodicals and it just, it’s a very one of the memory or gone never happened.
Yeah, yeah. Well that’s been going on for many years and that’s a subject for another day. Um, okay. So let’s kind of start putting, you know, a wrapping around this. Um, do you find it coincidental that the income tax act was actually passed in the same year as the Federal Reserve Act? That’s a pretty big coincidence.
Well, I very big coincidence and actually I don’t think it wasn’t coincidence. I think the two are certainly the, the political personalities behind both of those acts were the same. They were senator all region, his crew, they were the international banking interests. They were the big, uh, uh, industrialists there. The money powers that people that held control of the money system in those days were behind the Federal Reserve system for obvious reasons, which we’ve been discussing. And also the, they wanted an income tax, um, for, that’s a big topic by itself. But the income taxes was a way of not only, um, controlling society by rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies. If you write the tax laws, you can reward your friends, give them loopholes and benefits and subsidies and you can punish your enemies by taxing them out of existence all in the name of, you know, doing good.
And not only that, um, but you can, uh, you can escape taxation yourself by those very loopholes. And so we found that the, the big names that were creating the income tax in 1913, we’re at the same time creating tax exempt foundations so that they could put their massive wealth into these foundations technically illegally giving up personal ownership. But in reality is still controlling them through their, uh, interlocking directorates because they, they made sure that the people who are on the boards of directors where their friends or their employees or indebted to them in some way. So they still had total control over these empires. But on paper they did not own them it and have that ownership certificate. So that was a means of protecting their inheritance as it goes from one generation to the other, to the other, to the other while all the rest of the poor steps out there or paying inheritance taxes and all other kinds of taxes and being kept down.
So these, we’re back to the beginning of our conversation. Uh, you know, I learned and it’s still in learning that many of the things I thought I knew were not true and I met daily horrified to realize how, how many things remain in society that we thought were harmless. We thought they were benign or maybe even helpful, but now we discovered that they were the work of very cunning people who were authorities and had great influence over the creation of our laws and our political system. And they have been taking us to the cleaners daily. And in many cases we didn’t even know it.
That’s right. Yep. That’s true in so many levels. So really we, you know, we can’t unravel what has been done. We can’t change that system. We just have to live in the system just like neo does in the movie. The Matrix. He understands what the Matrix is. He sees it, he understands it, he knows what it is, but he knows how to live within that system. And that’s what we need to do as individuals, as investors. And so we have this Federal Reserve system. We’re putting this currency every year into the monetary system. It inflation. We know it’s there as investors, we know how to deal with it, whether you have hard assets like silver and gold or you’re buying one of my favorite asset classes, which is an income producing real estate, which is a phenomenal hedge against inflation. So we know how to control that piece of, uh, of it. Um, but would you say that the Federal Reserve creates instability in our economic system? I would think it does. At least that’s my belief. Uh,
did no doubt in my mind gets a great d stabilizer of the economy. I am on the definite school, the laissez faire school, a free market school that the best, the best regulator of an economy is the unfettered, um, limit lift number of people in the market making personal decisions. Millions of them. At a time all playing against each other. One interest against the other interests that all balances out and, and all these unknown factors show up in the numbers of millions and millions of transactions. It turns out to be the best for everybody. And, and they can respond to changing events much quicker that way than if you have a committee of Seven. So called very wise man sitting up. Now let’s say, what are we going to do with the economy? Are we going to control rents are what are going to, and we’re going to increase the money supply.
There’s no human or group of humans with that much intelligence that can know what the answer is. It has to be played out in the free market. But beyond that, that you can be sure that of the seven of these wise men, at least six of them are going to be corrupted, right till their eyebrows. And there’ll be probably because they have that power to make those decisions. So there’s the free market is the, is the only, only answer. So, um, as long as we have the concept in place that these important matters relating to the economy have to be decided by political or professional review, we’ve lost the game to start off with. We just, that solution is to get these institutions off of our back, not to give them more powered or find wiser men on the things we’ve been trying to do all these years.
We have to break that. Otherwise there’s nothing we can do. Even the investment in real estate, eventually it’s going to come to a grinding all when somebody decides, well, nobody deserves to own real estate. It should be owned by the people. All real estate starting next Tuesday we’ll be all owned by the state on behalf of the people and that the game is over and we, we would support that because we the, yeah, we need these decision makers are making these important decisions for us. No, we’re going in the wrong direction. We’ve got to go back to the other free market. I would disagree. I agree with you when you said we have to live within the system, but I would disagree with the concept that we shouldn’t try to change this system because I do believe, as I said a moment ago, right? Unless we do change it, let’s get rid of the Federal Reserve System. Uh, eventually. Uh, how do I, I think the best way to say is that if we don’t, if we don’t abolish the Federal Reserve, if America doesn’t abolish the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve will abolish America. It’s that simple. Eventually we have to break that system.
Right? No, I totally agree with you. It was the whole conversation we had over dinner about collectivism, which is what you’re talking about and individualism. So I don’t, I don’t disagree that we have to come together as individuals and create a, a strong group or coalition that can reverse or change or improve the situation we have. I, I’d never said that it was impossible to fix. I just don’t know what that’s gonna look like. But I know you have a movement and a collective of people coming together. And I believe that’s what freedom force international is all about. And maybe you can take a minute to talk to us about that. But let me ask you one more question here as we wrap up and then you can talk about, um, you know, what you’re doing and the red pill expo, which ties in very well with what we’re just talking about here. You know, we’re, we’re, we’re investors more specifically real estate investors, but we’re investors and you know, we obviously want to protect ourselves and, and, and, and move ourselves forward. And this is obviously going to be a loaded question, but what would you say we can do as individual investors to protect ourselves? And I may have answered that to some degree, but I’d like to hear it from you.
Well, I think the answer to that in at the same time, it’s very complicated and also very simple, complicated in the details, but simple in the principal. Um, the best thing we can do in the short term while we’re working on changing the system or reforming the system, we do have to survive in the meantime. Sure. I think the best thing to do in that in that stage is to make sure that we’re not dependent on Fiat money to whatever extent we can get rid of that. By that I mean I’m in our country, I’m talking about US dollars. Um, it’s very Fiat, it’s losing its purchasing power by the minute. So anytime we have a large amount of our assets tied up in terms of dollars, whether that be a bank accounts, savings accounts, uh, mutual funds, uh, or, or, or anything like that, or even insurance policies that are the values expressed in terms of dollars, um, we’re losing of the game very rapidly.
It’s a, it’s like standing on the railroad track and you can see that the engine coming under the headlight is getting bigger and bigger and it’s coming right at us. What did we do? We just stand there, look at the engine approach. No, we got to get her off of that track. And that track is the Fiat money track, Joe. I would, I would think then it’s obvious to everyone that uh, to whatever extent is possible, we should take whatever assets we have, whatever we might term as our wealth, our savings, and put them into something other than Tiade money. That’d be tangible assets. Real estate is one of those, uh, gold and silver is one. Commodities. I mean, I mean, I guess if, if somebody was in a business and they were making widgets, wouldn’t be a bad idea to fill up your warehouse full of widgets because it might’ve cost you $4 now to make them, uh, but next year it might cost you $7 in the next year or $22. So make as many as you can now at four. And so you’ve got your, your value stored in the widgets. You don’t, if you don’t make widgets and you have some money, maybe you can buy a warehouse full of cheap white wine or something. I don’t know, something tangible value that you are pretty sure that people will always want and cheap white wine is one of those things. Um, but I’m speaking in generalities now. It’s the details that are difficult, but the principle, I think it’s pretty simple.
Yeah. And one thing our listeners know and like about inflation, um, so I guess if there’s any benefit that comes out of the Federal Reserve and the inflationary environment that we’re in is the fact that if we own a real estate portfolio and it is purchased to a large degree with mortgage debt, that debt doesn’t adjust for inflation. So every year that goes by as we lose purchasing power, that debt in, in, in real terms is actually losing value. So it’s becoming less valuable or cheaper every year. So we’re actually paying it off with inflated dollars as every year goes by. So that $100,000 mortgage today, next is worth $95,000 in the next year. After that, it’s worth, you know, 90,000, whatever it may be. So, as real estate investors, we actually benefit from the inflation that’s created in our monetary system because that debt is actually becoming less valuable as time goes on. Yet the rents that we have on the properties continue to go up and the pretty much keep in step with inflation. So we’re getting ahead by protecting ourselves, holding a portfolio of investment real estate. Does that make sense?
Oh, absolutely. And it’s a fact of life. And that’s one of the reasons that real estate has always been a very attractive area, right? To Park Your Fiat or take your feet out money and put it there instead for that very reason at right. And I, I, you could argue that it’s unfair, uh, but most of the laws on our land are unfair. And so it’s the question of taking advantage of what you can to survive. Remember, this is, in my view, at least the short term strategy while we’re trying to repair, right. Neil the system.
Hmm. Right. Yeah. No, I totally agree. I mean, it’s a way to keep, it’s a way to protect yourself and deal with the system we live in by essentially controlling your own local economy while we work on the bigger picture as individuals coming together to better the system.
Yeah, and there’s kind of a philosophical, a quirk to this whole issue because it makes sense that if a person is doing well under a corrupt system, if you’re, if you’re making money, if it’s your great benefit, even though you say the system is corrupt, your enthusiasm for changing it will be diminished. You might, well that’s true. You might not fight quite so hard to eliminate the system that is still profitable to you personally, even though you know that for the rest of the people, it’s terrible that because it’s so profitable to you, it’s, it’s sort of a philosophical and moral dilemma that true is introduced by systems like this.
So that’s a good segue. You talk about, you know, the system we live in. Um, talk about your red pill expo. Just give us a highlight of what that is. Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to make it this year. If I can change my schedule, I will. But tell us about your red pill expo when it is, what it is and where it is.
Yeah, I’d be glad to. Thank you, mark. Oh, by the way, before I do it, I might add that you don’t have to attend to be able to, uh, to see Ben because we will, the recording of the whole thing will be available to anybody who’s a student enrolled student and a Red Code University, which is very, very inexpensive to do. So everybody will be able to see the whole thing. But the red pill university is, is all of your listeners know about the, the main, take the red pill, break the illusion, see life the way it really is. And so the red pill expo is exactly that. We are bringing together this year about 28, uh, experts in their own fields who have themselves taking the red pill on some important issue, usually involving their personal lives or their profession. And, uh, uh, like Morpheus in the movie and Neo, uh, they want to share this information with their fellow homosapiens, get them out of the Matrix.
And um, this is our third one coming up in the first two were smashing successes. I mean, we’ve never, never had successes like this before. I have to tell you, normally we’re out there trying to get people to listen to this serious story and we’ve got to defend our liberty and the economy’s going to pieces, you know, we got a problem here. The problem, their jokes, responsibility, why don’t you know, nobody wants to hear that. But when you change that around and talk about the red pill mean and all of that, it is, it’s a little more accessible. It sounds like it’s a more entertaining, which it is. And it also opens up a lot of fields that we hadn’t thought about. Uh, being in the red pill category, for example, it just came to mind. Now, one of my favorite films that I produced is called the discovery of Noah’s Ark. Okay.
What, what’s that got to do with freedom or money or anything? Nothing. It’s just an archaeological or a historical event. Uh, some people think it’s a religious event or release related to the religious texts and so forth. I don’t quite see it that way as much as a historical event. But anyway, no matter how you look at it as extremely interesting, didn’t know as arc actually exist. Was there really a global flood or was it just a local flood in the Euphrates area? Um, what’s the evidence? Well, is there any other, well, anyway, these things, you know, uh, there’s uh, as a book we sell on our website is not going to be part of the red gold this year, but it will be next year. It’s called the sinking of the titanic. And I want to put on a program called the titanic didn’t sink and that’s a shocker.
Why do you mean it didn’t take all your money on the titanic sank, but wouldn’t you be interested in if you found out that it was an insurance fraud and that they had changed the names? There were two sister ships and it was the sister ship that went down so that they could collect the insurance on the damage chip that was uninsurable. And it was all done by JP Morgan, uh, behind his control of the white lines, which was the ship, um, the company that built the titanic. Uh, is there evidence for that? You know, so what I’m saying is that there are a lot of fields out there that maybe are more historic than they are, uh, uh, essential to our daily lives today. But by dealing with the red pill, it opens up all of this. And so it’s quite fascinating. Now, let’s be honest, most of our topics are about issues that profoundly affect our lives.
Today we’re talking about money, banking, health and uh, wars, education, all of these things. And then so anybody that really is interested in what’s really going on in the world and the extent to which they are being fooled and probably manipulated and most likely plundered. And we’d like to know about that and maybe find a way to eliminate that aspect of it. This is the place to come. It’s the red pill expo and it’ll be held in June seven, eight and nine in Hartford, Connecticut. And uh, if you want to learn more, come to the website, which is a red pill, expo.net red pill expo.net. You’ll see all the speakers there, some amazing speakers, amazing topics, and people are coming from all around the world and, uh, you’ll have a chance to meet some amazing people and make friends. And frankly, we’re trying to do something more than just find what the truth is.
We’re trying to build a coalition. Marco, as you have said, we have to do something about this and not just survive, which is important, but for the long-term, we have to, we have to defeat these forces of evil. And so part of our reason for doing this is to help people discover each other, find out that they’re not alone, that there are more people out there that you can possibly imagine who are aware or are partially why or what to do something about this. And this is a chance to start building coalitions and start pushing back
based on the body of work that you’ve done and the goodness in your heart. And then how I’ve come to know you and just the great character you are. I highly recommend and endorse this red pill expo. I really encourage people to go if you can go or at least just sign up online and just watch it virtually and be able to reference it later because it’s going to be an eye opener. A lot of the stuff is a mind bender, but that’s what I love about the movie, the Matrix. It’s a great meme and there’s so many great metaphors that come out of that movie. In fact, one of, one of my greatest experiences in this year has been actually with you in a theater watching the matrix together. You know, here’s the guy who wrote, you know, the creature from Jekyll island and there’s just so many interesting takeaways and, and, and just to be watching that movie with you was just an incredible experience.
So I want to say to the people listening to this, if you haven’t watched that movie, definitely watch it. You may love it. You may not like it, but it’s, it’s an interesting movie. I’m just curious to know what people think about that movie. But back to your red pill expo, check it out. Red Pill expo.net. Um, you know, at least support add in his, uh, you know, his movement and all the good that he’s trying to do in the world. So with that, add any last comments or things you want to share with our listeners before we close here?
All I can think of right now, two things. Question, authority,
and take the red pill. Take the red pill. Love it. Tell our listeners how they can find out more information about you and get your book. Because I know that, um, some people might be curious about the creature from Jekyll island.
Yeah, thank you. We got a whole bunch of websites. So the, the commercial website where we have books and a documentary films and recordings on this chart them information, it’s called reality zone. So that’s reality zone.com okay. And you all of my books and all of our videos and a hundred different items there that are handpicked pretty much by me. I think they’re good. They’re well worth your attention. So that’s reality zone.com um, the sponsoring organization for the red pill or red pill expo is a freedom for us international if you want to get, that’s our think tank. That’s where we start talking about, okay, how are we going to solve the problem for the world? What do we believe in? What’s our program deeper than just, Oh, these guys are bad. We got to stop that. We, in order to defeat evil, you have that.
You’d have to know what you believe and make sure that you don’t slip into that same category. You know, you have to deal with questions like, well, what happens after we win? How do we know that we are followers won’t be corrupted the same way that these people were opposing today were corrupted. We have to think about that and build the mechanisms so that that cannot happen. This is all the discussion, the kind of discussion you’ll find at red. I mean, excuse me, at freedom force international.org. That’s our think tank and of course let go, uh, expo, we’ve just talked about that, that red pill expo.net and that of course, the thing we’re building right now is the red pill university, which is kind of like a red pill expo on steroids except it’s all year long. And also locally were stashed, hoping to establish campuses in every local community literally around the world. So there are plenty of websites to go to reality zone that calm and we got red pill expo dot. That red pill, university.org and freedom us international.org. That’s enough.
It amazes me how much you’re actually doing at the age you’re at. It’s um, I’m, I’m amazed. It’s incredible. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Thank you. The one that only g Edward Griffin at. Thank you for coming on the show. We’ll put all the links in the show notes and thanks for coming on and I appreciate your time. All right, thank you. Bye everybody.
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