PeaceRanger
Ever since early childhood I remember being passionate about money. My passion had extremes from an ignorant youthful desire, a social phenomenon of acceptable greed, to a well-educated disdain for the central bank system and the influence of money throughout our society. The ignorant youthful passion for money could have carried me thru my whole life and inevitably the path would have been much easier, however I could not resist my calling. To me it was no accident that I was born April 15 1971, tax day in America and the year that the dollar became the Mark and the gold standard was totally abolished. Ironically, most people who do not greed money and it's resulting influence tend not to generate mounds of wealth but in my case I managed to still wield plenty of power and influence.
During my college years I was more of a liberal environmentalist and found I had a passion to understand money. It started simple; my interests included topics such as the pathetic distribution of wealth to crimes against humanity and damage to the environment in pursuit of wealth and power.
Later in life, after graduating college, I realized I knew very little about our money. Who circulates it, who owns it, and how the modern dollar came to be. It is the very thing that is the glue that holds the fabric of our society together and I could not tell you much about it. I found later in life that this inept ignorance is commonplace. So I set out on a very dark path to confront and understand the birth of our monetary system. The more I discovered about the history of banking, the American Federal Reserve and its author, the harder I fought. I started my search for answers at the beginning, the creation of paper money, and here is what I discovered.
Before there was
money, wealth itself was traded. Two people would exchange their wealth and did
not use money and were initially forced to trade equal values of wealth. For
instance a man might trade his wood canoe he built for a cart made by another
man. People soon, however, ran into the problem of inequity in trade. If the
cart took twice as long to make than the canoe then this trade would be unfair
to the cart maker.
People for thousands of years used beads, seashells, carved stone and bone as
reminders of debt, a simple way to remember debt for inequity in trade.
These were not "centralized" systems. The beads and
seashells were simple reminders and only had value to the parties of the
transaction. They were used as money should be used, to facilitate trade of
goods and services.
The beads, seashells and carved stone were not the
commodity, it was still clear that the commodity was the goods and services
themselves.
Over time, man came to use gold, silver and other finite
limited resources as money.
At this point the gold was more than a
representation of inequity in trade for it was a representation of wealth.
Gold and silver could be used to buy goods and
services from any person participating in the social system that accepted the
gold and silver as wealth, which even early on was just about everyone.
Because of their value of "scarceness” gold and
silver became a good medium for representing wealth.
One could spend time and effort mining and panning
for it but it was not easily created or duplicated.
When people gathered
more gold or silver than they felt safe keeping on their person, or in their
house, they made a deposit.
Here
enters the first bank and banker.
A deposit-house introduced the 1st of the bankers who began
their trade by securely storing gold and silver deposits. The banker would issue
claim-checks as an IOU to the depositor. Claim-checks quickly became their own
form of currency and were then used to purchase goods and services and were
accepted in trade at the marketplace.
People knew the claim-check was as good as gold and
could be redeemed for the amount stated on deposit.
The paper claim-check and the actual gold were of
the same value.
The claim-check was the first form of paper money.
Throughout history early bankers would create claim-checks for gold that had
never been deposited, fiat and counterfeit. With a piece of paper and ink they created wealth from
nothing. These were illegal and counterfeit claim-checks as they had no actual
gold on deposit and were simply a sheet of paper also known as "fiat". Back in the day
when a banker counterfeit a fiat fraudulent claim-check and was caught he would
be hanged. Many fiat
claim-checks went without discover as under normal circumstances not all gold
from every deposit would be withdrawn at the same time, a rush on the bank so to
speak.
The early corrupt banker man would simply make sure he had
enough reserves to handle gold withdrawal but because not everyone withdraws at
once and he could create wealth via fractional reserves, only a fraction of the
amount of claim-checks issued are actually on deposit in reserve.
America has throughout the years had different paper dollars or notes issued by different entities and banks. There have been central and decentralized banks and gold and silver were the dominant forces that gave value to the paper, backed by gold and silver. America's forefathers, the founders of the constitution, wrote in Article one Section Ten that America was to use nothing but gold or silver. And for many years, albeit a rich history of success and failure, we managed to stick to that, often through a gold standard. A gold standard means that paper dollars are backed by gold and can be redeemed at any time for gold based upon the gold standard. The paper is as good as gold.
The goods and services are the commodity,
they are what is important.
The money was originally intended to be a reminder
of inequity in trade, a debt to be reclaimed so that we could trade our goods
and services.
Later, money itself became the commodity.
Paper and ink were printed in such quantities as to
allow the flow of goods and services.
But who gets ownership of the money printed?
Our dollar today is fiat (no gold standard) and our
banking employs fractional reserve banking.
Remember the early banker who wrote claim-checks for
which there was no gold on deposit, he was employing fractional reserve banking,
illegal at the time. Our system is not only
fiat but also employs fractional reserve banking.
But, as ridiculous as this may sound, the fraction
on reserve is no longer gold, its paper.
They only have to have a fraction of paper dollars
on reserve for the amount of digital bits, checks and money they lend out.
And, rest easy, a rush on the bank, as seen in previous American depressions is not a risk because we have the Federal Reserve. The central bank that backs the member banks should a nasty “run on the banks” occur the reserves are now simply paper notes.
Here is the ridiculous part, they lend us
(The Federal Reserve and member banks) their notes or dollars so that we can
trade the actual commodity, our goods, our resources and our services.
The money is created from thin air, lent to us with
interest (usury).
By law the Federal Reserve has the right to lend us
their money, which by the way should be our money.
The kicker is we must pay them back what they lent
with only a printer and paper, or in most cases a few keystrokes.
The modern banker will argue that there are complex laws, checks and balances and that everything is square. A common man trying to decipher these laws and systems will quickly be overwhelmed and surrender to the fantastic house of cards. I ask who do you think created much of the law that governs the massive central bank system was it the humble virtuous person or the wealthy powerful man who already holds the handles to the monetary system? Who are these people you may ask. How did the Federal Reserve come to fruition? I think this is a very pertinent question, more important in fact then asking to see the ownership of today’s (privately held) Federal Reserve. The first, and most important fact to understand about the Fed is that it is not Federal or Government but privately held. It is also important to understand the foundation, inception, and early ownership from which the American Federal Reserve stands. This is important because one gets lost in the current, over-zealous complex central bank.
Please read "The Federal Reserve" and 'Warburg" links for more details.
All my collegiate life I tried to make a difference. I majored in Urban Studies with an emphasis in environmental systems. I wanted to use my knowledge about the planet and environmental systems to change the way we consume resources and populate the earth. I understood the facts and I thought, “I can make a difference”. I tried to get people around me listen and be active. I personalized the plates on my truck to read "14PEECE” meaning 1 for peace.
I stopped trying to change the course of the planet. Out frustration and the necessity to make a living I thought at least I can save a few people being a Peace Officer, a cop.
After a lengthy background
investigation I was accepted into the LAPD academy,
serial number 32442.
I was in class 12-95.
The academy was a great character building
experience.
The experience also helped qualify me as a trusted network
security engineer.
I was a pretty good cop and in the academy I won the
self defense award for my class.
While I was a Police Officer it would
go without saying that I stopped using marijuana and began consuming alcohol.
At times I would come home and ease the memories of
what I saw that day with three or four drinks.
I put my religion in the back seat and did my best
at what jobs I had in front of me.
No more personal exploration.
I found however that I was frustrated at what the
job of a police officer really was.
I ran largely victim to victim taking reports and
booked small time thieves.
I became overburdened and unable to cope with daily
involvement of inhumane crime, most notably death and rape.
I love the LAPD but seemed to fall a bit short in matching some common attitudes within the department.
I quit the force and went back to a talent I long
had, computers and their supporting networks.
On the way out, during my exit interview, I mentioned some problems I encountered in the way of sexism due to my female training officer which resulted in some serious consequences for one individual who had a loose mouth.
At some point after being a cop I decided I was going to have to take matters into my own hands, I was going to have to help the world free itself of the Federal Reserve Note or Mark even if I have to do it alone.
After leaving the LAPD I moved back to a company called PacificNet where I got the foundation for my networking career. I began to configure and deploy the routers and switches on our ever growing network. Business was good and our network did nothing but grow. Before too long we outgrew our datacenter and moved locations to an old Texaco datacenter. I was, in several years time, managing the entire datacenter of network engineers, system administrators, and wireless network technicians.
Just prior to the dot com crash of '99 PacificNet sold everything to a company called E-Sat. PacificNet offered terrestrial wireless and had the largest wireless IP network in California at the time. E-Sat was a satellite technology company and they figured the two together made a good marriage. In many respects PacificNet gave E-Sat credibility and E-Sat gave the owners of PacificNet a great deal of money. The employees of PacificNet were left with worthless stock options of which nothing ever arrived on paper.
I began to stop blaming individuals and started to blame the thing I felt was shaping our world, politics, wars, resource consumption, and the world around me. I began to blame money and the system that owned and controlled money. I believe that what I came to understand about money would lead me to some very dark times. The future held a ton of exploration but it would cost me everything I hold dear, even my freedom.
I was finished and hurt at PacificNet so I quit. I took my PacificNet networking background and my LAPD history and was picked up by Veritect. It was a great opportunity just before the dot com burst. We were one of those well-funded, millions injected best-of-breed security firms. We had the best engineers, offices, support, laptops and even developed our own proprietary applications to use on penetration tests and internal vulnerability assessments.
I was a ringer for the network security business. I had a solid background of working with all the most common operating systems. I had a great deal of experience with Cisco routers and most important firewalls. My talents with Checkpoint firewalls would serve me well throughout my career and I was destined to be a well traveled security engineer. My future would entail work on many financial and military networks.
That’s just it I am not one of the external penetration test guys, the hardcore external hackers. I worked on the inside and was given privileges similar to people who work for the bank or institution being audited. I’m given topology maps, IP ranges and in some cases the root passwords. The team runs their tools against every piece of network equipment on their enterprise networks. We tended to find equipment they’ve even forgotten about.
I really don’t like technology and I am more of a forest environmentalist that prefers hiking over hacking but for whatever reason I was good at what I did and it seemed God had a plan for me. I couldn’t believe the places my career was taking me. I liked Veritect and I worked hard proving myself to be an asset to the company. Veritect, had a CEO that was x-military, in fact he was a general. He managed to land a very important contract with the military and I was about to benefit. The job was to install Checkpoint firewalls on military bases around the world, more specifically for the Defense Logistic Agency on DAPS networks. These were the printing networks for sometimes top secret documents. There was some concern that documents in queue to print and in memory on the printer were at risk of being stolen. Our job was to secure the printing networks “DAPS” and install Provider 1 Checkpoint firewalls.
The world, which is populated with American bases, was divided up into regions for the purpose of this assignment. I was probably the luckiest engineer and I was given the European Region. This meant I was to travel to Europe for an extended amount of time and install firewalls on every American base in the region. This was to be done with an assistant engineer from Booze Allen.
Veritect was planning for a smooth operation. There were project coordinators and specific directives. I was given a specialized laptop for the job one that was prepared ahead of time and supposedly cleared to perform the work. I was not to alter the laptop installation at all. The Sun machines that were the hardware for the firewall were to be shipped overseas and I would retrieve them from customs in Germany. I went through basic but specific training on what I would do at each site and was given all the maps and contact information that I would need to complete the work.
The hardware started to arrive through
customs and we began to perform our work.
The firewall installs went off without a hitch and
we were successfully completing all associated tasks.
My free time consisted of solo travel, reading,
writing, hiking, exploring new cities and meditation.
I was spending a lot of time on a speech.
I wanted to express to people along the way that I
believed great change was going to occur in the future and I wanted people to
understand it was my best conclusion that our own money had deceived us and led
us to our
present predicament.
M