Originally posted by twitchy
The federal reserve system violates the US constitution, yes, Echtelion is correct. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 pushed through the legislature by Woodrow Wilson was nothing short of treason and a clear violation of the US constitution. Article 1, section 8 of the US Constitution states that Congress shall have the power to coin money and regulate it's value, but the federal reserve act gave this power to a private corporation, the shares of which are not traded publicly, nor is it regulated or mandated by congress. They print money with no backing whatsoever, at no interest, then loans it to the treasury, with interest. They also retain the rights to purchase national debt (which is also illegal) and charge interest for it. The ones chiefly responsible for this are...

www.worldnewsstand.net...
Rothschild Bank of London (Jewish)
Warburg Bank of Hamburg (Jewish)
Rothschild Bank of Berlin (Jewish)
Lehman Brothers of New York (Jewish)
Lazard Brothers of Paris (Jewish)
Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York (Jewish)
Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy (Jewish)
Goldman, Sachs of New York (Jewish)
Warburg Bank of Amsterdam (Jewish)
Chase Manhattan Bank of New York (Rockefellers Interesting History...)

To put this in layman's terms, your ten dollar bill is not ten dollars, it's a note, or a debt. In actuality, your ten dollars is a ten dollar debt, which you, as a taxpayer, are paying interest on.

A few points of interest...

www.scionofzion.com...
The Federal Reserve was incorporated in 1914 and has been creating a completely unnecessary national debt ever since. In simple terms, the Fed creates money as debt. They create money out of thin air by nothing more than a book entry. Whenever the members of the Fed make any loans, that debt money is our money supply.
The United States went bankrupt in 1938 because of this system. It took the Fed only 25 years to bankrupt the USA. Can you imagine how little time it would take these vultures to bankrupt a developing nation? The American people are paying about $300 billion dollars a year in interest to this phony organization. When you look in the Washington, D.C. phone book, you will not find the Federal Reserve in the Government section as they are a private concern.
The national debt is increased about $1.71 billion dollars every day (as of October 12, 2004) . Have you taken a look at your money? It says "Federal Reserve Note" which means it is an instrument of debt. There is no real money in circulation.

There is no system in place to audit the Federal Reserve, at all. And not only is it illegal by the terms of the US constitution, the US supreme Court has also declared this practice unconstitutional...

www.totse.com...
Although the FED is required to give back most of its PROFITS back to the Treasury Dept., there is NO ORGANIZATION that has the power to AUDIT the FED (not even the Congress or the IRS). This creates a HUGE opportunity for "creative accounting" to hide the profit that ROBS the US Tax Payers Hundreds of Billions of Dollars annually....
According to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, the US Congress has the power to print money (The Congress shall have the power... ...to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, ...). According to the Supreme Court, the Congress can not transfer its power to other organization like the FED....

From the same source, a good summary as to how the system operates...

www.totse.com...
The US goverment runs a $400 billion deficit annually. To cover this, the US goverment issues bonds which are bought by the FED.
Since the FED has the POWER TO PRINT MONEY, it can buy any amount of the US Government bonds at almost NO COST, save for the expense of printing money (~3 cents/$100).
At this point, the owners of the FED already profit $99.97 for every 3c they invested to print the money. Basically, they exchange something that costs almost nothing to them with the US Government Bonds.
Since the FED can NOT be AUDITTED by the IRS (or even by Congress), most of this profit can go anywhere the FED owners want to. BTW, did I mention that the profit is TAX-FREE?
After buying the bonds, the owner of the FED can either:
1. Keep the bonds, and collect the interest the US Government now OWES them.
2. Sell the bonds to the US Tax Payers or foreigners.
In either case, the FED owners have profitted $99.97 for every 3 cents it invested to print the money. Remember, the FED is a PRIVATELY OWNED corporation, just like the Federal Express. The profit of the FED goes to the FED owners.
The US Government now owes the FED owners the interest on those bonds. Remember that the FED owners DO NOT EARN the bonds. They simply PRINT the money to buy the bonds. In other words, they created money out of thin air, and exchange it for the interest bearing bonds.
In order to pay for the bonds' interest, the US Government taxes the US population.
When a US Citizen holding US Government bonds receives his/her return of investment on the bonds, essentially the money he/she receives is the tax money he/she is paying to the Government.
When the OWNERS of the FED receives the interest on the BONDS they're holding, they are receiving that money for FREE (save the initial 3cent/$100 investment to print the money)! Not only that, the FED owners receive the money TAX FREE.
Under the LAW, the FED is REQUIRED to RETURN its PROFIT back to the US Treasury. However, NEITHER the Congress NOR the IRS have the POWER to AUDIT the FED. The FED has used this obvious loophole to profit via 'creative accounting'.
Consider this: every year, the FED profits by hundreds of billions of dollars by buying US Government Bonds. Yet it only returns ~$20 billion to the US Treasury. The rest of the profit has been spent as "Operational Expenses".
The FED expects us to believe that the FED operational expenses amounts to $100's billion dollars annually!!!
The truth is, those profits were spent as "DIVIDENDS TO SHAREHOLDERS"!!!!

The final blow to the US Currency came in the form of the Emergency Banking Act, designed to 'pull us out' of the Great Depression, all it did in reality was eliminate the last obstacle to the Federal Reserve Company by elimination the need to back their notes. A good explination of the act is here...
www.fourwinds10.com...

Income tax is also illegal, but that's a whole other can of worms. How do they get away with this kind of crap? Ever wonder why the District of Columbia isn't a state? We the people are basically ruled and taxed by a foriegn entity...
home.iae.nl...
Scary stuff...

[edit on 20-1-2005 by twitchy]

Ever play connect the dots?

Unlike the current $50 bill, the "Blue Seal" Federal Reserve Banknote (1918) could be exchanged for gold. The Federal Reserve kept gold reserves equivalent to 40% of the value of all Federal Reserve notes issued.