Prescient Voices: Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.

Charles August Lindbergh Sr., the father of the more well-known Charles Linbergh who made the famous New York to Paris flight, was a Congressman from Minnesota. He represented Minnesota's 6th congressional district from 1907 to 1917, and here is a small taste of what he had to say at the time about the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913:

"This [Federal Reserve] Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President [Wilson] signs this bill, the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be legalized. . . . The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking bill." --Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.

"To cause high prices, all the Federal Reserve Board will do will be to lower the rediscount rate..., producing an expansion of credit and a rising stock market; then when ... business men are adjusted to these conditions, it can check ... prosperity in mid career by arbitrarily raising the rate of interest. It can cause the pendulum of a rising and falling market to swing gently back and forth by slight changes in the discount rate, or cause violent fluctuations by a greater rate variation and in either case it will possess inside information as to financial conditions and advance knowledge of the coming change, either up or down. This is the strangest, most dangerous advantage ever placed in the hands of a special privilege class by any Government that ever existed. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money. They know in advance when to create panics to their advantage, They also know when to stop panic. Inflation and deflation work equally well for them when they control finance." --Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.

Birth of a Monster?

On December 23, 1913, the United States Congress passed and President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Federal Reserve Act. This Act created the Federal Reserve System, with control over the money and banking system in the United States (and after World War II, as the U.S. dollar became the reserve currency, the entire world). But, much of the history of how the Federal Reserve came to be and what it consists of at its core has been lost to the current generation of Americans. We, the current generation of Americans, owe it to ourselves and our posterity to learn the lessons of the past and to reacquaint ourselves with the nature of this beast.