HS 285 - FBF The Creature from Jekyll Island with G Edward Griffin

Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family's insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario. You'll be ready. Welcome to Ballistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

Good day, this is Jason Hartman and I'd like to welcome you to the Holistic Survival show where we investigate how to protect the the places and the profits you care about in these uncertain times. We've been getting a lot of great feedback from you listeners. Please spread the word about the show. We really appreciate you listening and glad the topic is of interest to you. Today we're going to actually republish an interview from one of my other shows, the Creating wealth show. And it's a interview that was done a while back, but I think it will be very enlightening for you and it is very fitting for the Holistic Survival Show. And it is the interview with the very famous G. Edwards, Edward Griffin, as he talks about his renowned book that is just the sort of the extensive exhaustive study on the subject of the Federal Reserve. And that book of course is entitled the Creature from Jekyll Island. So I think you'll really find this interview very interesting, very enlightening and there's just a lot of good information here that you need to be aware of even if you are a listener to the Creating wealth show. And you heard this interview, it was quite a while back, so please do listen again as there are some good insights here. And I just finished another interview that I recorded today. That will be show number 15, which is all about human trafficking and the dangers of that. You should be aware of what's going on there. It's very disturbing and it's something you definitely need to protect yourself and your family from. If you have children. You do not want to miss the Next show number 15 talking about human trafficking, even if you don't. Okay. It's important. Anyway, so let's go to the interview with G. Edward Griffin. I think you'll enjoy this one and we've got a lot more coming at you on the Holistic Survival show show. Also just want to mention, please be sure to listen to my other shows. As well. They're all free. The Creating wealth show, of course, if you're an itunes user, you can just search Jason Hartman at the itunes store and find them all. Also, the Speed of Money, which is our very short, two minute long show. We are publishing episodes there. There are 10 episodes up and I think you'll enjoy that one. Creating wealth show, of course, has I believe, 133 episodes now. And the Creating wealth video show, which I believe has about 40 or 45 episodes and totally different unique content there. So be sure to get that one as well and keep on listening. We've got a new show we're about to launch called the Jetsetter show where we're going to explore lifestyle friendly destinations worldwide. And if you've ever thought about expatriating about living in a place that has a low cost of living and a high quality of life, places that are particularly friendly around the world for business, for retirement, for getting out of the rat race for whatever reason, I think you'll really like the travel show. We'll also talk about vacation destinations and so forth. I'm a big traveler. I've been to almost 60 countries myself, some countries many, many times. So pleased to announce the jetstider travel show. So look out for that one. It's coming up. Here's the interview with G. Edward Griffin. Thanks for joining us today. Let's go to the discussion about the Creature from Jekyll Island.

It is my distinct pleasure to have G. Edward Griffin, the author of the Creature from Jekyll island, on the show with us today. He also has an interesting and varied background that he may want to share with us. It's great to have you on the show.

Well, thanks a lot, Jason. Good to be here.

Well, it's good to have you. We've been anticipating your interview for a couple of months now and it's definitely a great opportunity. I am a huge fan of your work. I discovered the Creature from Jekyll island, oh, I'm going to say maybe back in 2001, something like that. When was the book originally published?

1997, I think it was.

Uh huh.

Great.

Well, tell us a little bit about your background and then maybe the book. And then I want to, of course, since it's a new year, talk about your thoughts on the outlook for the economy and so forth.

Well, my background is nothing particularly impressive, frankly. I'm just a writer. I became interested in issues that pertain to the future of our country and the future of my kids and my grandkids and that was pretty serious stuff early on. I became aware back in about 1960, that the world in which I thought I was living was quite different, that there were forces at work which were eating away at the freedom foundations of our way of life. I saw things happening in our government and trends internationally which greatly alarmed me. And I could see in the future that if we didn't reverse that trend, we might wind up at precisely the place where we are today. And so I became very alarmed and I started to research and read. And then I decided to write. Much to my amazement, people liked what I wrote. They bought my books, and so I kind of eased into it. My first attempt at writing was a very serious critique of the United Nations. It was called the Fearful A Second look at the United Nations. And that was back at a time when it was not popular to be critical of the UN because everyone, including myself, when I went through school, we had been taught that the United nations was our last, best hope for peace, that it was a forum where we could expand brotherhood and peace and harmony and improve trade and all of the good sounding things. And I bought into that. It sounded good, but no one began to check into the reality. It was quite different than the promise. And so I started to write about it. And I received quite a bit of flack in those days.

What year was that?

About 1967.

67, okay.

Yeah.

Of course, you know, the unit, the post World War II era was thought of as something that would curtail nationalism. And of course, Hitler exploited nationalist fervor quite a bit. So I could understand why you would get some flack with that. But what people so many times just don't understand is that they take everything at face value. And on the face of it, it sounds like the UN mission is a good one. Without further investigation, I can see why people would believe that. But it's good that you were critical of it.

It's a political game that occurs internationally and nationally and locally. Anybody that takes a politician at face value is kind of naive. I think politicians, regardless of where they are in the scale of things, they all try and make things look very favorable. And so if you're not critical, you say, oh, that's wonderful. This political system is great and this movement is great, and I support it. But, boy, after you start becoming a little skeptical and healthy skepticism about world events, you begin to realize that things are not really what they are. So anyway, that's how I got started. The United nations picked my curiosity. Then I got into an upstream category with a natural control for Cancer. A substance which is commonly known as Laetril. I had in those days a very close friend who was a doctor in San Francisco. Who began to use this substance. And he ran crosswise with the medical establishment and the media and every. They all started to call him a quack. It didn't make any difference that he was saving lives when others were not. He was still a quack. Why? Because he was using a substance which was not approved by the fda. So that got my curiosity. And then started down that area of research. To find out what kind of system do we have. That would prevent a person from saving lives. Because it wasn't investigated by some government bureaucracy.

I think what you're pointing to right early in our talk here. Is that every institution, its goal is to perpetuate its existence. And increase its power and influence. You look at the UN you look at the Federal Reserve, of course, you look at the medical establishment. You think, why would that be suppressed? I mean, it's always about money, it seems. Are we taking away money from the powers that be, the oncologists? What was the outcome of that?

Well, that's exactly it. You find out that all of these huge institutions become monopolistic. Or at least cartelistic in their nature. And they don't like competition. And they form very close liaisons with politicians. So that their industries are protected by law. They get laws passed that are favorable to those industries. And then anybody who bucks the success of those industries. Is labeled as a criminal. Because they've violated some kind of a law. And, boy, once your eyes are open to this, you're never the same, you know, you can never go back. And that's why we call our little business over here. We call it the Realities Zone. Because once you step into the Reality Zone, you can never return to the Twilight Zone from which you came. You realize that there is this corruption at all levels of these huge industries. And then you pursue it even further. And you find, well, why is this end and how is this? And how do they make it happen and all of that. And you come to the realization that at the core of the whole thing is an ideology. It's called collective. And it's the concept that we've all been taught in school. Certainly I was taught that in school. The concept that government is the arbiter, the source of solutions for all problems. Government is more or less our mother, our father, our big brother. And that if we have any problems, we turn to government to solve those problems. And we think that because we vote for our political Leaders, therefore we are the government. We think, because we vote for these people, we think that we are in control of our own political destiny, when in reality it's no such thing at all. Because we find out that the mechanism of voting is tightly controlled by a very few people. The process by which candidates are selected is totally beyond the reach of the common voter.

You're absolutely right. This two party system that we've got is such a sham. When you see a guy like Ron Paul who can't get any traction and he's the most honest guy you see running.

That's right. And then you find the two political parties apparently fighting each other. But it's more like a TV wrestling match in which someone behind the scenes has decided who's going to win this match, but still they have to put on a good show show, otherwise you'd never get the fans coming out and buying the tickets and sitting there in the seats and watching the match. So yeah, the two candidates, the two political parties fight against each other, but not on major principles, always on secondary issues and on personality and style and things like that. But the issues are never discussed, the principles are never discussed. And as a matter of fact, the average American today doesn't even have any political principles. They vote on such things as the words like change. Well, change. What do you mean? Well, I don't know, just it's time for a change, don't you think? You know, very shallow thinking. So as a result, they get no change at all. They change personalities, they change name tags, but they don't change political movements. So all of these things gradually occurred to me over the years, Jason. And so I became concerned about it and, and I started to write about it. And so that's what I do.

Very, very interesting and I completely agree with you. When people vote for what I call the personality ethic over the character ethic, and they have such shallow ideas of I'm a Republican or I'm a Democrat and they're so attached to their beliefs of those parties and those parties. They're in the same club. I mean, they're friends, you know, these people are really opponents. It's like a wrestling match. That's a great analogy. Maybe we'll talk before we get into the subject of the Federal Reserve and the outlook for the future in terms of our economy and our financial lives and what we can all do to protect ourselves. I wanted to just touch a little bit on the concept of the UN real quickly, if you will, because that was interesting what you said previously. This Whole concept of the One World Government and the New World Order, you hear about it, a lot of it is written off as conspiracy theory wackos. It doesn't get any real traction in the media, of course, although, when you look at alternative news and you go on the Internet and so forth and listen to various podcasts, you get a much different view of the world. What do you have to say about that?

Well, there are two topics that kind of stick together there. One, one is the reality of the United nations, and the other is the vocabulary used to describe it, and especially the vocabulary used to describe those who are not fans of the un. They call them conspiracy theorists. So let's take the first one, which is the UN itself. There's nothing wrong with the concept of world government, I don't think, especially the way it's sold to the average person, sold as an international forum where people can talk and share ideas and expose their cultures to other parts of the world and improve trade and preserve peace and all these things. That's all wonderful. The reality, however, is nothing like that. The reality is that the nations of the United nations, most of them, are totalitarian in one form or another. All the way from massive total totalitarian systems, the major countries, all the way down to little tin horn dictatorships in Third World country. The great majority of the governments that go to the United nations are totalitarian in nature. So it is absolute insanity to think that you're going to create a world forum based upon little modules of totalitarianism that's going to produce anything other than totalitarianism at the international level. And so the people at the un, while they talk about these wonderful things of peace and brotherhood and commerce and trade and all these things in reality, when you look at the decrees and the laws that are being generated there at the United nations, every one of them has as its core the expansion of government power and the reduction or elimination of personal freedom at the local level. It's the constant aggrandizement of government, the building of government power, first at the national level, then the international level, and to the point where the subjects of the world will absolutely have no voice whatsoever in the government, this international government, that will run their lives. That's what you find when you start to look at it. I'll give you just one little example that might pick some of the. The curiosity of some of your listeners to delve into this a little bit further. The UN has what they call a draft Covenant on Human Rights. And it sounds pretty good when you read all of These human rights that they talk about, the right to freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, and all of the things that we have in our own Bill of Rights, plus a lot of things that are not in our Bill of Rights, like the right to a job, you know, the right to health care, the right to a decent standard of living and all of these things.

The right to a government bailout.

Yeah, the right to everything. You name it, there's a right for it. But now you take a look at the way it's written and it gives. And then it takes away, for example, the Draft Covenant on Human Rights. It said everybody has a right to peaceful assembly except as where may be prescribed by law.

Well, that sounds like you don't have the right then.

Exactly. And everyone has the right to freedom of speech except as provided by law. Everyone has a right to a job except as provided by law. Everyone has a right to this, that and the other thing. And in every case it's followed with that little clause that nobody reads, nobody thinks about except as provided by law, which means you've got a right until they pass a law that takes away your right and you don't have it anymore. Now you compare that to the Bill of Rights. It says everyone has a right to peaceful assembly, period. It says Congress shall pass no law, taking away the right to freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, right to bear arms, and all the other things that we've got. It says Congress shall pass no law, not except as provided by law. It's just 180 degrees out of phase and yet the average gum chewing public reads those draft Covenant on Human Rights and oh, that's wonderful, let's vote for that. And it just shows you how, how naive the average citizen is. And that's not their fault. Where do you get these ideas? Well, they get them in school. And who runs the schools? The government.

A collectivist organization. A collectivist organization called the nea, the National Extortionist Association.

So we are the victims of a very carefully programmed educational process that teaches us to want collectivism, teaches us to believe in big government. And so it's not surprising that when we come along and we've presented these propositions by politicians, we think they're a good idea because we were taught that, you see. So anyway, that's the United Nations. The United nations is a totalitarian concept. It's built on the model of collectivism. And those who, like myself, who are opposing this and trying to point out the reality, they like to call us conspiracy theorists. Well, I would challenge that somewhat a theory is something that hasn't been proven. I would say. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm a conspiracy historian. I'm talking about the fact that in history there are conspiracies. As a matter of fact, people who scoff at conspiracies. I have to feel a little bit sorry for them because that tells me they've never read a history book.

Well, I mean, a conspiracy by definition is just more than one person engaging in some activity they're keeping secret from others. Right.

I mean, yeah, that's basically it.

That's not a very complicated thing.

Yeah. The activity has to be either illegal or immoral.

Okay.

And in this case, we would certainly say it's an unethical immoral activity because they're trying to enslave people. Now they don't look at it that way. They think, oh, this is the new world order, we're trying to help people, it's for their own good. That's how they justify it. So they wouldn't call that an immoral object. But I think most of us who have to live under this collectivist, totalitarian system, we would call it an immoral object. And so therefore we're certainly justified in calling it a conspiracy. But as I was saying a moment ago, anybody that's read anything in history must understand that every major event in history has been formed by conspiracies. I mean, I can't think of any event, major event in history that wasn't the result of one or more conspiracies. Conspiracies abound in histories. Conspiracy are the. Conspiracies are the norm, they're not the exception. And so when some pundit comes along and says, well, you think that there's a conspiracy out there to do? Come on, man, of course I do. You think there isn't?

I mean, it's so obvious what you say. It's just a self evident statement what you're saying. Because if you think about the founding of the United States of America, well, of course the people in England would have thought that to be conspiracy.

It was a conspiracy.

Of course it was a conspiracy. Of course, a good one.

Every major act of history has a conspiracy at its fountainhead. And so these people think that now that we're living in this current, modern, enlightened age, that conspiracies are impossible. It's absurd to think that they're conspiracy. Just go to any courtroom today and if you sit there long enough listening to the cases that are brought before the judge, a huge Percentage of them involve conspiracies of one kind, conspiracies to defraud the stockholders, conspiracies to violate the law, conspiracies to do this. That conspiracies are everywhere in our history and in our current history as well. And here we are talking about a government where the temptation for conspiracy and the rewards for conspiracy are the greatest of all. And we're supposed to think that conspiracies don't exist there. Come on, give me a break.

Yeah, of course not. You know, back to your talk a few minutes ago on the concept of the un, the world government and collectivism and rights, and put the rights in, quote. Okay. What people don't realize also is that every right for one person is a burden to another. They like to chunk things up in the political arena into groups. Here we've got to help this disadvantaged group or give something to that group. Well, the obvious thing that amazingly so many people don't seem to ever think about is in order to get give one group something, you have to take it from another. You have to redistribute wealth or redistribute resources in some way. So one person does not have the right to impede the rights of another. And the smallest minority on earth, I love the way Ayn Rand says it, is the individual. The individual is the world's smallest minority, each individual human being. It's just amazing, as you say, that people are so shallow in their thinking so many times that they don't understand what they just think the government has this endless amount of resources that they can just dole up and give to people. Well, it's being taken from somebody.

It's being taken from the very people who are supporting the program. And they don't even realize it. You know, when we talk about how ill informed the public is, it's always dangerous because people, people who are hearing that think that we're talking about them. And in a sense we are, but we're also talking about us. I mean, I was there. It's not something that's someone's fault for not picking up on this because they're not being exposed to the truth in the media or in the schools. And certainly the politicians are not telling them the truth.

Yeah. And no question. And of course, you know, by the very fact that they're listening to this show, they, they are wanting to be more informed.

Yeah. And I think about the poor guy that's driving down the highway and he's looking for something interesting to keep him awake. Behind the wheel and he stumbles across your program, Jason, and he hears us talking. He thinks this guy is insulting me. Well, that's the point I'm trying to make. No, I'm not insulting. I don't want to insult anybody. We're all victims of our training and our media. My message is that, come on, everybody, we're all in the same boat together. Let's find out the truth and let's break free of those chains.

You are absolutely right. Well, talk to us a little bit about the Federal Reserve. I just don't want to make it the whole show because I really want to get your take on the current climate and your thoughts on the future. But give us a little background on the creature from Jekyll island, if you would.

Well, the creature from Jekyll island, of course, is the Federal Reserve System. And the reason I called it the Creature from Jekyll island, well, it has kind of a mysterious sound, so it's a good title, but it has substance to it because Jekyll island is a real island, and it's off the coast of Georgia. And it was on that island back in 1910, that the federal Reserve System was created. And it was created there away from the eyes of investigators and journalists and anybody that was interested back in Washington, they had to get away from Washington, and they went to this private island. It was owned, completely owned, by a small group of billionaires from New York, people like JP Morgan and William Rockefeller and their associates, business associates. It was a resort island. That's where their families went during the winter months, and they had a beautiful clubhouse there. And so they went there for the privacy of creating the Federal Reserve System. And they denied that they went there. They kept it a secret for quite a few years. And anybody that said that they went there was accused of being a conspiracy theorist and so forth. And then after the Federal Reserve System was finally enacted into law, then they began to talk openly about it. They said, yes, well, of course, there was a meeting there. Yes, I was there. And yes, we conceived the Federal Reserve System. And when I ran into that history, I thought it was interesting that something like that would be done under conditions of great secrecy. And I was well aware even then, early on in my investigation, that when people do something in secret, there's usually something to hide. And I was curious as to what it was. Well, I found out, and that's what caused me to write the book. And what I found out, in a nutshell, is that the Federal Reserve System is not federal, has no reserves and in fact, it's not an agency of the federal government. And in fact, it's a cartel. It's no different than a banana cartel or an oil cartel. Sugar cartel happens to be a banking cartel, which means it's made up of the largest, most powerful banking interests in the country. And there's some connection, by the way, to foreign banking interests as well, but primarily American. American banking interests. And they went into partnership with the federal government, they took their cartel agreement, and they convinced the politicians to pass that cartel agreement into the form of law. Now, that means that the cartel can force its internal agreement on everybody in the United States because they paid off some politicians and they passed it in the form of law. So if you don't do what the cartel wants, you go to prison. And that, in a nutshell, is what the Federal Reserve System is. It's a private banking cartel that's been given by Congress the power to enforce its dictates on every man, woman and child in the country. And the people think it's a government agency of some kind. And can you think of anything more absurd than that? So the fruits of that fraud are finally playing out, just as I predicted when I wrote the book back in 1997. I predicted everything that's happening today in rather accurate detail, I'm sorry to say. I wish I had been wrong, but I could see it coming. The system that they created had to melt down. And since they had the power of law, they were going to pass along their losses to the taxpayer. And I predicted all of that. And I said the that there's going to be a bailout of massive proportions. And that's happening. And it's not that I'm so smart. It's not that I have any clairvoyance. It's just that I could see where the graph led. You know, if you take a graph and you see that there's a line that moves up every year at a slope of 30%. Every year, 30%, another next year, 30%. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to project that line out into the future and see that it's going to continue to go up 30%, 30% in the future, unless major changes are made.

What line are you referring.

Oh, well, that's sort of a figure of speech. I'm just saying that you could see the growth of government and you could see the expansion of the money supply rather consistently occurring. And I'm just using that as a figure of speech. It was an economic trend that you can plot in Your own mind, it just grows and grows and grows, grows. And the bubble gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And what I'm really saying is that unless that trend is changed, you can see that it's going to go to full term. The growth of government will go to 100%. It grows every year it grows what, 6%? Let's put a number on it. Approximately 6%. Well, how many years can it grow before it's 100%? And when you've got 100% government, you've got got totalitarianism. Sure, that's what I'm talking about.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, on the subject of the Federal Reserve though, what has really happened is the money supply has increased and increased so much. I mean, since the creation of the Federal Reserve. And I believe this is according to the creature from Jekyll island, although I'm not sure the dollar is now worth 4 cents. That same dollar, it's still called a dollar. Of course, that's what, what we call nominal terms. It's still named a dollar in name only, but the value of it is only 4 cents today, I believe is.

The number maybe even less now.

Yeah. So we've seen the dollar become devalued. And one of the strategies that we recommend is that most people, you know, they see this devaluation of the dollar and they're gold bugs. And I agree with the premise of the gold bug argument. However. However, I don't think the conclusion is as good as a debt bug. Debt gets destroyed as the value of the currency is destroyed. And I've learned to like debt as long as I'm not paying the carrying cost on it. And that's why I like my rental properties so much. I know that may sound crazy to say in this market, but real estate in cheap areas has performed pretty darn well. When you take out the bubble markets, even last year, you know, you know, 2008, which is a terrible year, stock markets around the world are down about 60% on average. Debt seems to be a pretty decent protection strategy. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I agree with you, but there are two caveats, and I'm sure you talk about those as well. The one caveat is that if people are going to go into debt, they should do it, not exposing their own security base. In other words, for your own home. I would say to anybody that would listen to my advice is to get your own home paid off as quickly as possible so that regardless of what happens, they can't take that away from you. Now, if you've got funds beyond that and you're trying to make money with it, then I'd say, okay, now we're talking about risking some capital. And if you lose everything, okay, you lost everything, but you still got a home.

You know, I would agree with you on that completely if it wasn't for the fact that the government maintains a perpetual lien on everybody's house called property taxes.

Well, that's true.

And you just can never get rid of that, you know, you can never pay it off.

That's true. And it indicates that you don't really own your own home anyway. But I'm just talking about relative security. Sure, yeah, you do have to be able to pay your taxes and you would have to do that too, even in the investment scenario.

Right.

But anyway, that would be my first caveat and the other is that there are some people that maybe don't have an aptitude for investing in real estate or in anything else for that matter. And for those people, if they're not willing to do some research and to do some serious study and become fairly expert at the field in which they're investing, they probably would be better off not doing it because they'll be easily fooled. They'll be taken by some slick operator. So if you're going to become an investor, you need to become an intelligent and well informed investor and be willing to put some time into it. So those are my only two caveats. Having said that, I think your, your strategy is absolutely correct.

Yeah, I completely agree. The first of what I call my ten commandments for successful investing is education. So I absolutely agree with you there. Tell us what your thoughts are about all of the scandals on Wall Street. I think that Wall street has really hijacked Washington. You mentioned earlier that these various concerns go and enact laws and hire lobbyists and influence the legal and political process. And that's how they sort of maintain their power base and grow their enterprise. What do you think about all these? I mean, it is so disgusting what has been going on in 2008. And there were a lot of things leading up to that, of course.

Course.

But wow, we really saw it come home to roost last year in 2008, didn't we?

Yeah, we certainly did. And your statement that Wall street has hijacked Washington is absolutely true. But the thing is that they hijacked it back in 1910 when the federal Reserve System was created. Once that relationship was created, then it was just a question of when, it was a question of timing, and it was, is it inevitable that it would work out this way. You can see the results in the principle. And it has been working out over the years. There have been many bailouts before this. People didn't pay too much attention to them. But they bailed out Penn Central Railroad, they bailed out several of the big banks along the way. They bailed out New York City, they bailed out a lot of third world countries. And what that really means is they didn't bail out these institutions at all. They bailed out the banks that were loaning money to those institutions. Well, let's just say Mexico can't pay its interest on its debt to Chase Manhattan or whatever banks it's borrowed from. The politicians step forward and say, well, we got to help Mexico. No, they're not helping Mexico at all. They're helping Chase Manhattan. So they give the money to Mexico so Mexico can give it to Chase Manhattan and pay the interest. And that's how this bailout works. They're not bailing out General Motors or Ford Motor in this case. They're bailing out the banks that have loaned money to these institutions. So Ford Motor and General Motor can continue to pay interest on the debt. And this is what people don't realize. And all of this was set in stone back in 1910. And there's no way to change it until the Federal Reserve System is abolished. As long as that creature is in place place, it's going to dine on us. And that's the hard reality, and that's the message of my book.

So how do we end the Fed?

We end the Fed the same way we created it. It's an act of Congress that created it. It's going to be an act of Congress that uncreates it. It's as simple as that. That means, of course, that we've got to get an entire new slate of congressmen and senators in office, because the guys and gals that are there today are not going to do that. They're too beholden to the system. So it means a complete political upheaval. It means an awareness, a growing awareness on the part of the voters. It means an understanding of how the system works. And it means a political resolve to replace the people who are committed to the existing system, replace them with ones who understand the. The principles of economic freedom.

Unfortunately, entrenched interests and people have a way of replicating and perpetuating themselves. I mean, one example that is very topical right now is the new Kennedy that wants to come in and has absolutely no experience whatsoever, hasn't voted in 18 years. You think you should come into the government because your name is Kennedy. This is just unbelievable.

Yeah, well, it could happen. Yeah, because they love the name Kennedy, and that's how the political system works today. And my friends, we better change it because it's going to continue to go down the tubes because of that, and we're going to go with it. Our freedom is going to be lost unless we change it.

It seems as though America is really on the precipice of some major, major changes. And everyone like yourself that I talk with says the same thing. You know, we've got to do something. We've got to do something. And I don't know, what can you do? I mean, is it write your congressman? I doubt that's going to make any difference. It's certainly voting isn't going to make much of a difference.

No, not write your congressman, replace your congressman.

Right, but how do you do that?

Well, I'm glad you asked that, Jason, because back in 2002, this issue came very much to head in my mind, and I decided that what we needed was a movement to do exactly that. Quit talking about it. Quit educating ourselves about it. Enough of us know what the problem is. Let's do something about it. Well, what? So we created an organization called Freedom Force International. And the purpose of this organization, which, by the way, now has members in 60 countries. So this is a global problem, and it will have a global solution. The solution is to, as I said before, replace these congressmen with people who have the right view, people with an understanding and people with a loyalty to freedom and not to some political party. And how do you do that? Well, how do you change the political structure of a nation short of a violent revolution? It can be done. We know it can be done because it was done right under our noses. We had a great republic when this nation was created, in the first 80 years or so, maybe the first hundred years ago, it was fantastic. But then the collectivists began to move into politics and they began to take over the educational system and they began to take over the media and consolidate their power. So they began to change the thinking of the American people. Who then? The American people themselves brought about the change or allowed the change.

Can you sort of mention some time frames in there? I think.

Let's go back to the Woodrow Wilson administration, which is where it really began in full force. There's an organization that I know we don't have a lot of time to talk about, but it's called the Council on Foreign Relations. Sure, which was. It's really the. The hidden elite. It's the rulers of America today. There are only about 4,000 members. And you find them everywhere, at the tops of. Of critical organizations, the power centers of society. You find them in the tops of both political parties. You find them in all the major media outlets and all of the major corporations and so forth. And only 4,000 people. They run America from behind the scenes. In the early days of the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the creators of it was Colonel Edward Mandel House. And that's a name that many people have never heard of, but they should. He was the actual president during the Woodrow Wilson administration. He lived in the White House. He had several rooms in the White House. Woodrow Wilson considered him as his alter ego. He asked for House's advice and direction on every matter. It was Colonel House actually selected Woodrow Wilson and ran him as a candidate for the presidency. So he, here was the guy who was one of the founders of the Council on Foreign Relations, which was dedicated to global collectivism, the elimination of the United States as a nation. Living in the White House, actually serving as the president. He actually served as an advisor to President Roosevelt. That followed. And from that day forward, Jason, the Council on Foreign Relations began to move its people into all the key positions in America. That is the turning point right there.

Right.

And we have never had a true republic from that date forward. And the growth of collectivism has just been exponential ever since.

So these people are going to retain their power however they can. I mean, that was in the early 1900s. And of course, we saw the creation of the Federal Reserve. We saw the income tax right about the same time.

Yep. These people created all.

So how would we ever get rid of them?

Well, we have to get rid of them the same way they got in there. We have to, first of all, have our own forces to field. Most people have no idea of what are the principles of freedom. You ask them, well, define freedom. Well, how do we preserve freedom? What is the essence of freedom? And unfortunately, many people think that freedom is just being out of jail. They have no concept of the idea of human rights and the obligations, obligations of the citizenry to protect the individual. They think that the group is more important than the individual. For example, they've been taught that as long as that continues, the collectivism will reign supreme. So where do we start? We start by educating a small cadre of people who will understand and who will then get up off of the couches and away from the television sets and go into the organizations to which people belong. We are asking our people to become active in politics, to go into both political parties or more than both political parties, all political parties. We're asking our people to become active in media, to go into education and all the places where you can influence and lead our fellow citizens. This is the way our enemies have done it. They've taken away our freedom because they moved into the organizations that lead the country. They've captured control of the organizations to which people belong. And that's how it's done. So we're asking our people to go back into those organizations and become active and influential and try and get these people out of the heads of those organizations. That's how it can be done.

Yeah, that's a good point. And it seems as though that the reason these groups are so entrenched nowadays and have been able to maintain their power base is media. You look at media, it is so scalable and so pervasive. And fortunately, the alternative media, and I'm going to call that talk radio and the Internet, I call this the dialogue media. In other words, people can talk back to it and it can withstand the power of debate. Whereas you look at the more collectivist side of the equation, they control all of the monolith media, publishing, newspapers, old media, television, movies, things like that, where you don't really get to talk back to it. Now I know you could say, well, you know, there's an op ed page and editorial page and so forth. That's not really talking back talk radio. People call in and they debate issues. And talk radio has been more to the right, more to the libertarian side, more to the conservative side. Because I think those arguments or those philosophies can withstand debate better than the left side of the equation. The more collectivist, the more liberal side of the equation. It's so dissected in terms of who controls what media, the monologue or the dialogue media. That monologue media is still very big, you know, it's scalable. So when it's scalable, it can influence a lot of people.

Well, it does. It dominates. There's no question about it. Of course, we're living in a very interesting and perhaps a short period of time in which the Internet is still pretty much open to alternative voices. That's one of the reasons the establishment is so concerned and so determined to control the Internet. We see the major move being made right now for the United States nations to be given the authority to regulate the Internet worldwide. Oh yes, and the kind of censorship we now see in China and in other countries around the world and somewhat in the United States increasingly is going to become universal. If we don't stop it, you won't even be able to mention the word freedom. It'll probably be blocked, you know, and they're putting all of this in place. They're working on it very feverishly as we speak. And they'll sell it to the average person who think that, oh, this is to stop pornography or this is to stop treason or sedition, or this is to stop terrorism or something else. They'll tell them all of these things so that people will say, oh, okay, I guess it's a good thing to have the government control the Internet. That's how they do it.

Yeah, good point. And that is the way it's sold. No question about it. So tell us about some of your thoughts on predictions, if you have any. I might be putting you on the spot here. What do you think is going to happen to the dollar? Are we going to have anything called a dollar in ten years from now? Is it going to be worth anything?

I always hesitate to make predictions, but I can certainly talk about trends and I can say that if the trend is not real reversed, this is where it's going to go. Hopefully we're going to change the trend. But if the trend is not reversed, then the dollar is going to go into continuous decline. It will probably disappear. It'll be replaced by the Amero, the currency for the North American Union, which would be Mexico, the United States and Canada.

Many people that debate the Amero say that Canada and Mexico wouldn't want to be a part of that.

Well, what difference does it make what Canada, the United States and Mexico wants? This is not determined by the people of those countries. This is determined by the CFR rulers. They make these decisions for us.

What is the CFR relations?

Okay, sorry, that's primarily in the U.S. but they have their counterparts in other countries. This is not a question of what you or I want or what the voters want. No, see, that implies that these people who say that have no realistic appraisal of what is really going on in the world. The people in Europe, the European Union for the most part, didn't want that. Doesn't make any difference. They got it. You see, these things are being determined by forces that are far above the voter desire level. Anyway, what's going to happen to the dollar if the trend continues? We'll be replaced by the Amaro. It'll be sold to the people as a great solution to the problem of the disappearing value of the American dollar. When the dollar buys less and less and less, people will be told, well now we got the Amuro, now you can buy more with it. And they'll say, oh, thank you.

So what would be if we have an Amero, if we have another currency, if we have still a dollar, but maybe the dollar is sort of revalued or whatever happens. If that scenario occurs, what are your thoughts on what would happen to denominate debt? So if I have, you know, a million dollars in mortgages on a few different rental properties, how are they going to evaluate that debt and what the value of it is?

Well, typically what they do, Jason, is the all wise politicians are asked to step in at the behest of their manipulators and funders. Behind the scenes, the banks and the politicians will pass a law and they will say, well, this is the conversion rate. That would be 500American dollars for one MRO or whatever number they come up with might be five for one instead of 500. They just come up with a number just like FDR came up with a number back in the depression and said gold is now going to be sold at $35 an ounce. They just pronounced it, and if you don't follow it, then you go to prison. So they'll just declare a number, an exchange ratio, and then they'll tag onto that another provision of the law which says that all existing contracts must be converted into that same ratio. And then they'll probably tag on another provision which says any contract other than in MROs or dollars or whatever units they're talking about will be declared null and void so that they will not be legally possible to do a contract in gold or silver.

In other words, a legal tender law.

A legal tender law, yeah, but they'll go one step further and just outlaw contracts even in anything other than this fiat money, this funny money. So in other words, we're talking about a totalitarian intervention where the state just moves in and says this is it and you will follow it or you will go to prison.

Right?

Yeah, that's probably what will happen because that's what always happens when the government's money falls apart. The government doesn't want you to go anywhere else, so they force you to stay with it all the way down.

Let me mention something I've heard about that. You know, when those conversions occur, I was in eastern Europe about a year and a half ago and I took a trip of five countries and looked at real estate and all of them, it was sort of a scouting trip and I was looking at real estate deals which I found were all overvalued in my opinion and walked away. I'm glad I did. But one of the things I've heard, I talked to a lot of people over there and I was in Bulgaria, Romania, who were still on their old currency but had just joined the EU earlier that same year and were planning to convert to the euro the following year. And I said, you know what happens when this type of conversion occurs? And they said it's inflationary because there's an automatic rounding up of all of the merchants. Any vendor that's selling anything is afraid that they will be burned in the exchange. And so they just round up. If something is call it 89 units, you know, dollars, whatever it is. Right. If it's 89 units, they'll just call it around hundred on the day that conversion occurs because they are afraid that they will get hurt in the conversion ratio and it will put them out of business or get them into trouble. Do you see that as a possibility?

Yeah, well, I hadn't thought about that, Jason. That's sounds plausible to me. And in a way you might consider it as a catch up because usually the merchants are always behind the curve in inflation. The supply of the money goes up, up, up, and then finally the merchants are forced to increase their prices just to catch up.

They're a lagging indicator. Yes.

Lagging indicators. Yes. So here it's a chance for them to make up what they've been losing for quite a few years.

Yeah. Okay, so we're going to see a collapse of the dollar. Can I sum it up saying that?

Yes, you can say we're going to see it if the present trend does.

Not change any time frame.

I have no time frame.

Okay, I thought I'd try and pin.

You down on that one. I've learned not to know. I'm usually pretty bad on time frames because I always think it's going to happen sooner than it does.

Right.

And logically speaking, I would have to agree with you. You know, you think, why hasn't it happened already?

Exactly.

But they can keep that scheme going pretty well. Although last year it certainly looks like the jig is up in a lot of ways.

Yeah, they found ways of passing along the hanging over part, as they call it, passing it along to the taxpayers, that's for sure. The present bailouts are perfect example. How can they keep this thing going and they just keep passing it along to the taxpayers in terms of inflationary measures.

Yeah, I know. Obama's going to give everybody a check for $500 and it's going to cost them 10,000 in the devaluation of their currency and higher taxes and people will.

Cheer him for that.

It's insane.

It is.

So any other trends if not predictions?

Well, yes. My mind always turns to something even more important than money, and that's to freedom. We talk about the Amuro, okay, What happens if the Amuro is finally given to us? All right, we can talk about the conversion ratios and what that means to our balance sheet and all of that, but what comes along with that is the loss of our national sovereignty. If we don't have an American currency, we don't have an America. That means that even theoretically, even though we think we're voting for people in the Republican and Democrat party and we know that that's a scam, now all of a sudden, we're one more huge step removed from recovering our freedom because now our country is no longer our country. It's part of a regional system and we have to worry about the politicians in Mexico and Canada as well. And we have no control over the that. So we've lost. We've lost our nation at that point and we've lost our sovereignty. We've lost almost the last vestige of regaining our freedom again.

Well, you certainly see that happening in the European Union, don't you?

Yes, yes. Yeah, the people in the European Union just don't. They don't have any voice really at all anymore. The rulers are appointed by somebody. They don't even know who's appointing their rulers.

Amazing. Really amazing. Okay, so definite concerns for freedom. Any thoughts on the stock market? You going to give us a number on the Dow or the S and P? I doubt.

No. It's so far removed from a free market. You know, if this were a free market, the old rules would apply and you could say, well, when stocks go up, bonds go down, and when inflation occurs, occurs, the gold goes up. And all of these things that used to be true are not true anymore because just about every aspect of the market is now controlled by government power. So you're not allowed. These forces are not allowed to work anymore.

What are your thoughts on gold price manipulation or all the metals really, gold especially?

Well, there's no doubt in my mind that the price of gold has been manipulated severely for quite a few years in order to protect those banks which have been selling gold that they don't own, you know, leasing forward their gold. And they're being allowed to lease their gold and still carry it as an asset, as though there was no liability against it, which allows them to expand their asset base on their books considerably. And it's very profitable for them to be able to do that. But when those contracts come due and they're being asked to maybe deliver the gold or whatever, it gets very complicated. But they don't have the gold, so they have to go out and buy the gold at the current market. So it would be devastating to the banks to have to go out and buy the gold that they promised at a high price. And so they'll move heaven and earth to keep that price low. And basically that's what's been going on. The price of gold has been manipulated to protect the asset base of the banks to keep them from going bankrupt.

And it would also seem that that little gold Ponzi scheme that they're running is a way to increase their fractional reserve lending.

Is that correct?

Yes, exactly. Underneath it all, that improves their ability to expand their loans. So, yeah, there's no doubt in my mind that the price of gold has been manipulated and is manipulated even today. However, also in that picture is the fact that with the downturn of the economy, the demand for all minerals, all metals, all commodities declines. And traditionally that includes gold. I'm not quite sure why gold should follow all of the commercial commodities, but it always has. And I suppose there is some gold being used in commerce and gold, electrical plating, electrical switches, and all that kind of stuff. Although I think that gold is mostly a monetary and an ornate type of asset. But moving away from gold for the moment, I don't think that the price of silver, copper and, and nickel and all these others are being manipulated. I think they're just in a natural decline because of the decline of the demand for these metals in production. So that is also present in gold, but to what extent, I don't know. I think it's minor. And yet we see, when we compare the decline of commodities in general and minerals and other metals in general with gold, gold is doing better, better than the others. And we would expect that because gold is also a monetary metal. And so there's a demand for gold far above and beyond what is needed for production.

I agree.

Well, any other thoughts? In closing, this has been a fascinating interview and I thank you so much for being on the show. We want people to get your book and read it. It was very enlightening to me and it has been to many, many other people. Kind of wrap this up for us, if you would.

Two things come to mind. We're living in very, very serious times, and if we don't turn things around pretty soon, it's going to adversely affect our personal lives even more so than it already has done. And we must prevent that. So the next part of my closing thought is that let's do something about it. I urge anybody who wants to become a change agent and really become active and do something about it to come to our website for Freedom Force International. Take a little time and see what our plan is and then become a part of it. Let's change history. Let's not just complain about history. Let's become a change agent. So I urge anybody that wants to do that to come to www.freedom freedomforce international.org so that's freedomforce international.org and I think you're going to like what you see.

Yeah, good point. Is the book available at that website as well?

Not directly. The book is available from our commercial site, which is the Reality Zone. We have about 100 different items there. The book is one of them. But that's simple enough. Reality Zone.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, G. Edward Griffin, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been a pleasure and an honor to talk with you and keep getting the message out and keep up the good work.

Well, thanks a lot for inviting me, Jason. Good luck to you.

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