The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve Kindle Edition

If you really want to understand the Federal Reserve, I highly recommend that you READ THIS BOOK.

They should make this required reading in Middle School.

The picture painted by by the author is one that can't be brought to bear in a review.Once you read this your view on the financial system, and the fabric of modern social engineering as we know it, will be broken.Take the red or the blue pill, but no matter what you take.... good luck on your journey.

A well documented book

If banking is a mystery to you, read "The Creature from Jekyll Island" and you'll have a better understanding of why today's economic policies are so dangerous to our economy and to our freedom.If you think that the Federal Reserve is an "independent" agency that "protects" our banking system and currency, read "The Creature" and you'll never think of the Fed the same way again.Even if you already have a good, basic understanding of how the banking system works, as I did, "The Creature" is a worthwhile read because it provides a good review of the basics together with a lot of enlightening historical and international detail.Griffin cuts through all the high-sounding jargon and reassuring platitudes surrounding the "independent" Federal Reserve and its (deliberately) confusing programs to "stimulate" or "correct" the economy. He exposes it for what it is once you cut through all the claptrap ("quantitative easing," "discount rate," FOMC meetings, etc): a very effective scheme for major banks to profit at our expense with little risk and with the enthusiastic cooperation of politicians who benefit from being able to issue an endless supply of debt to fund their political schemes.Jekyll Island was the meeting place of a handful of powerful bankers who, in 1910, put together the structure of the Federal Reserve and the strategy for getting it passed by Congress.Griffin explains what was clearly behind the creation of the Fed, how it basically is a cartel of major banks, and how it consistently debases our currency and causes turmoil in our economy. He explains how banks create "money" out of nothing -- every time you deposit $1 in a bank, the bank, on average, lends out $10. The $9 difference has no meaningful backing -- no gold, no silver, no savings, no production -- nothing. But the bankers charge interest on each of those ten dollars. This is called "fractional reserve" banking, another harmless sounding name for economic poison. And politicians cheer on and protect the Fed because the Fed allows the government to spend more and more by issuing debt.Does it matter? You bet. One dollar today has the purchasing power of four cents when the Fed was created by Congress in late 1913. And the size and reach of the Federal government has grown massively thanks to the Federal Reserve's "purchases" of all the debt the government cares to issue.Griffin goes much further in tracing the international connections of central banks and their inexorable push towards bigger government and even world government.Today the Fed is doing what it has always done, but it's doing it at a pace and level never before seen. "The Creature from Jekyll Island" will give you the details and history to cut through the smoke screen and recognize just how dangerous the Fed, together with its supporting major banks and power-hungry politicians, really is.

Once in a while I read a book that changes my view of the world. It's akin to having blinkers removed from my eyes. Books on that - short - list include 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', 'The Naked Ape', 'Games People Play' and, now, 'The Creature from Jekyll Island.'The book could be superficially seen as yet another conspiracy theory book, a style of book which I generally dislike. When people like Robert Kiyosaki recommend such a book though, I decided that it was worth reading for self-education.Like most people I know, I've wondered how on earth we came to the Global Financial Crisis that is destroying so many lives and futures around the world. I'm familiar with the usual answers: 'Consumers and countries overspent and now it's time to pay the piper', 'The rise of China', and so on; but none of those answers provide a framework within which to understand how we got there or why we keep essentially being told that this was inevitable but that Government is protecting us - a nonsensical story if ever I heard one. This book does provide that framework.The index alone is interesting, particularly for a book that is written about such a dry subject as the Federal Reserve! I had a smile just looking at the format of the index. At the beginning, and in many places throughout the book, the story reads almost as a cross between a biography and a detective story, spanning a century of conscious financial abuse and mismanagement for private gain. There are whimsical stories that beautifully illustrate the central ideas. The first point the book makes is that the Federal Reserve is neither Federal, nor a Bank. It is instead a cartel of bankers, one of who's primary goals is to shift responsibility for bank losses from their collective shoulders to those of the taxpayers - in this case of the USA. There are other serious points, which the author freely admits might seem at first like overstating the case. He goes on however to, in my opinion, amply support his conclusions.I found myself hooked from the beginning. Unbelievably for a book like this, I found it difficult to put down and I specifically made time in my day to read chapters when I could, even at the expense of sleep.This is a scary book, one that opened my eyes to some serious economic history. One that provides a good argument in support of the assertion that the banks have literally hijacked the US economy; causing enormous hardship to the taxpayers, an enormous devaluing of the dollar, transfer of US national wealth to their own pockets and its movement overseas; and that they are essentially in the process of doing the same thing globally.Is the book correct in its assertions? The argument convinced me although you'll need to draw your own conclusions. As an example though, the day after completing the book I read a news article discussing a British proposal to jail senior bankers who breach their fiduciary duty. Despite having an MBA I would previously not have been able to put many of the arguments into any significant context. Instead, I suddenly found myself clearly understanding the papers' conclusions and understanding why this idea is so critical to solving the GFC for the long term. Without measures like this, the Creature from Jekyll Island is likely to survive, to continue its quiet digestion of our collective global wealth and to reach out again in just a few years to bite us - but much harder next time.