If You're #FedUp, Stand Up: A Movement Grows to Nationalize the Federal Reserve

“Give me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.”

-Mayer Amschel Rothschild

One of the most profound signs I ever saw during my four months with Occupy Houston was during the very first week – it said, “I can’t afford a lobbyist. I am the 99 percent.”

Occupy Wall Street began with that simple, familiar, populist rallying cry that brought everyone out to the encampments and the street demonstrations. Our message was simple: We are the many, they are the few, and we refuse to play their rigged game any longer.

And no game is more rigged than our money system.

Every bill in our wallet, no matter how big or small, is a signifier of the debt you will always owe to the Federal Reserve as a result of its monopoly over our money supply. So on December 23, the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve, the #D23 Fed Up campaign is counting on people in every city where the Fed has a presence to demand that power over our economy return to the people.

One of the main reasons the United States went to war with the British was because of the crown's refusal to allow the colonies to operate their own currency systems, insisting they continue using the crown’s debt-based currency.

When we had won our independence, we realized we still needed to charter our own central bank to stabilize the new nation’s credit and finance necessary capital projects. Washington put Alexander Hamilton, who has been accused of working on behalf of the Rothschild banking clan in Europe, in charge of chartering the First Bank of the United States.

It was disbanded after its 20-year charter had expired. A second central bank was chartered for another 20 years from 1816 to 1836.

This month, 100 years ago, a new central bank was born in the wake of a panic intentionally staged by the bankers in 1906, as they planned a quiet coup to take over the U.S. money supply. The Federal Reserve Act was written by private bankers like Paul Warburgof Kuhn, Loeb and Company, passed hurriedly through Congress based on the bankers’ political connections like Senator Nelson Aldrich, and signed into law on the false premise that financial panics like the one in 1906 wouldn’t be repeated.

But President Woodrow Wilson soon learned provisions in the Federal Reserve Act allowed an elite 1 percent, if you will, to have ultimate control in how much money was in circulation, also giving them power to dictate interest rates on the debt that they now controlled, which was attached to all the money circulated by the bankers. Wilson later wrote,

“Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities, are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world. No longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." -Woodrow Wilson, 1919

However, it isn’t too late – the Federal Reserve is at a turning point. Janet Yellen is about to take over as the new Fed chair and she could take the Fed in a new direction with enough public pressure. By nationalizing the Fed and all 12 of its branches, we could turn our privately-owned central bank into a publicly-owned institution that works not for the benefit of a few wealthy 1 percenters, but for the good of all.

Under a democratized form of control held accountable to the people, the Fed could actually live up to its original mandate of full employment by lending out the capital necessary to radically restructure society, creating millions of good-paying jobs in, for example, renewable energy grids or a sustainable public transportation system that could replace interstate highways. The possibilities are endless.

Occupy Wall Street has shown the world that we have the power to change the national conversation around inequality, corruption and justice. On December 23, we have the power to change the conversation about the future of our global economy. All it takes is enough people willing to take a stand and to fight to make sure that happens.