Was JFK Murdered by Bankers?
A question on my Bulletin Board:
Arthur,I read an analysis of the US debt and Federal Reserve (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/it-is-now-mathematically-impossible-to-pay-off-the-u-s-national-debt). It sounds vaguely conspiratorial, and some of the comments start to link monetary policy to JFK’s assassination. Do you have a take on this or have you covered this topic in the past?Best,Dave
Jeffersonians, Populists, Libertarians, and many others have a healthy distrust of banks. Jesus didn't have much use for usurers either.I'm no economist--monetary policy baffles me. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea that money is an ever-changing notion, not a concrete thing, that currency that I could buy a house with one day won't pay for a month's rent on a tiny apartment the next. In a monetary system, promises, intentions, and shared ideas about what the future holds have more to do with a country's (or an individual's) wealth than anything else. A Massai herdsman counts his cattle; that's something I can wrap my mind around.If debt is ruinous to a household that's been financed solely by credit cards, then how can a bank leverage itself ten times and more and thrive--and how can a government mortgage itself to banks for its very lifeblood? As Ezra Pound wrote, "Understanding of usury is central to understanding of history. Until you know who has lent what to whom, you know nothing whatever of politics, you know nothing whatever of history, you know nothing whatever of international wrangles. There is no freedom without economic freedom. Freedom that doesn’t include freedom from debt is plain bunkum."That said, Pound's critique of the Fed was conspiratorial in the extreme (he believed it was a criminal enterprise, deliberately created as such by Woodrow Wilson and his advisor Colonel House, who "believed in government by an uncontrolled oligarchy whose acts would only become apparent after an interval so long that the electorate would be forever incapable of doing anything efficient to remedy depredations," as he wrote in the introduction to his protege Eustace Mullins' SECRETS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE). In Pound's (and Mullins') telling, it was a part of a specifically Jewish conspiracy, too--the International Bankers plot. Broadcasting from Mussolini's Italy in 1942, Pound addressed himself to the British: "You let in the Jew and the Jew rotted your empire, and you yourselves out-jewed the Jew....you stand for NOTHING but usury....the big Jew has rotted EVERY nation he has wormed into." G. Edward Griffin's THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND (1994) describes the Fed as "a cartel operating against the public interest"; Griffin believes that the Morgans, the dominant American bankers at the time of the Fed's creation, were agents of the Rothschilds.Of course not all critiques of the Fed are antisemitic. Congressman (and 2008 presidential candidate) Ron Paul has long advocated a return to gold and silver-backed currency; he would eliminate both the Fed and the IRS (he published a book called END THE FED just last year). But your question was about JFK's assassination; specifically, if he was killed because of Executive Order 11110 (click here to read the order), which gave the Treasury Department the right to issue silver and gold certificates, allowing the government to issue money itself, instead of through the Fed. According to Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, author of JFK: THE CIA, VIETNAM, AND THE PLOT TO ASSASSINATE JOHN F. KENNEDY (1992) and the inspiration for a character in Oliver Stone's JFK (Donald Sutherland's 'X'), two executive orders sealed the president's doom: National Security Action Memorandum 263 (click here), in which Kennedy ordered the withdrawal of 1,000 troops from South Vietnam by the end of 1963, and EO 11110.
Mr. Kennedy challenged the government of money by challenging the two most successful vehicles that have ever been used to drive up debt - war and the creation of money by a privately-owned central bank. His efforts to have all troops out of Vietnam by 1965 and Executive Order 11110 would have severely cut into the profits and control of the New York banking establishment.
Edward Flaherty, Ph.D. Department of Economics College of Charleston, S.C., debunks a number of myths about the Fed at the website of the think tank Public Eye--that the Fed was created in secret, without any Congressional oversight; that paper money is unconstitutional; that the Fed is privately owned by foreigners; that it charges interest on our currency; that it is the chief cause of the national debt--click here to read the whole thing. Regarding EO 11110, Flaherty writes, "The executive order modifies a pre-existing order, E.O. 10,289 issued by Harry Truman in 1951. E.O. 11,110 did not create authority to issue new silver certificates, it only affected who could give the order. The purpose of the order was to facilitate the reduction of certificates in circulation, not to increase them. In October 1964 the Treasury ceased issuing them [silver certificates] entirely.....In summary, E.O. 11,110 did not create new authority to issue additional silver certificates. In fact, its intention was to ease the process for their removal so that small denomination Federal Reserve Notes could replace them in accordance with a law Kennedy himself signed. If Kennedy had really sought to reduce Federal Reserve power, then why did he sign a bill that gave the Fed still more power? "
