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Have you ever wondered how in the world you can explain complicated topics such as the Federal Reserve, fractional reserve banking and the creation of money in a way that your family and friends will actually understand? Well, the other day I was made aware of an amazing new 30 minute animated documentary entitled The American Dream. Considering the fact that this column is called “The American Dream”, that definitely got my attention, and when I sat down and watched the documentary I was absolutely amazed. What Tad Lumpkin and Harold Uhl have done is that they have created a very funny, very entertaining 30 minute cartoon that does an excellent job of explaining how our financial system really works and why the Federal Reserve is bad for America.

You can find out much more information about the documentary and about what they are trying to accomplish right here. The documentary is also posted on YouTube and I have embedded it below….

As you can see, this is the kind of thing that even many of the most dumbed-down members of our society will be able to relate to and understand.

Hopefully as we all work together, we will wake up millions of Americans to what is really happening to our financial system.

The truth is that government debt is a plague on our great nation. One of the founders of this nation, Thomas Jefferson, understood this threat very clearly and he tried to warn us. Posted throughout the rest of this article are quotes about banking by Thomas Jefferson. All of these quotes come from Wikiquote and the sources on Wikiquote have all been documented. Jefferson said that if he would have been able to add one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution, it would have been an amendment that would have taken the ability to borrow away from the federal government….

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

Where would we be as a nation today without all of this debt? We would be a lot better off, that is for sure….

But we didn’t listen to Thomas Jefferson, did we? Now we have saddled future generations with the biggest debt in the history of the world. Thomas Jefferson warned about this and he said that as far as he was concerned the debts of one generation should not pass down to the next generation….

I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.

Jefferson also knew that banking establishments would try to weasel their way in and convince the American people to borrow huge amounts of money which future generations would have to repay. To Jefferson, this was essentially theft on a grand scale….

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

In fact, Jefferson believed that the power to incorporate a central bank was not delegated to the Congress by the U.S. Constitution….

The incorporation of a bank and the powers assumed [by legislation doing so] have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution. They are not among the powers specially enumerated.

The funny thing is that if Jefferson was running around today he would probably be considered a “loon” by the mainstream media. Jefferson repeatedly warned us of the dangers of paper money just like a few current members of Congress such as Ron Paul are trying to do today. The following is one statement that Jefferson made about the dangers of paper money….

Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.

The truth is that when we allow private individuals to control the currency of a nation it gives them tremendous power to manipulate the financial system for their own gain. The following quote from Jefferson is simply stunning if you take the time to properly digest it….

Certainly no nation ever before abandoned to the avarice and jugglings of private individuals to regulate according to their own interests, the quantum of circulating medium for the nation — to inflate, by deluges of paper, the nominal prices of property, and then to buy up that property at 1s. in the pound, having first withdrawn the floating medium which might endanger a competition in purchase. Yet this is what has been done, and will be done, unless stayed by the protecting hand of the legislature. The evil has been produced by the error of their sanction of this ruinous machinery of banks; and justice, wisdom, duty, all require that they should interpose and arrest it before the schemes of plunder and spoliation desolate the country.

Have we not seen exactly what Jefferson was warning about happen in our own day? The housing bubble was caused by a flood of easy money, and then when the bubble burst the big banks moved in to foreclose on millions of American properties. In the chart below, you will notice that the banks and financial institutions now have a bigger share of U.S. home equity than all the rest of us combined. You will notice that residential mortgage debt (what we owe to the banks on our homes) is now much higher than the amount of residential home equity the rest of us have….

The banks are literally foreclosing on the American Dream. Will they eventually simply own it all?

In his day, Jefferson warned that we would be ruined by a deluge of paper money from the banks….

Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.

Once again, all of these quotes and their sources can be confirmed over at Wikiquote.

If we had listened to Jefferson, the federal government would not be drowning in debt. Our state and local governments would not be drowning in debt. There would never have been a housing bubble. There never would have been a Federal Reserve.

But we have lost our way. Sadly, our Founding Fathers probably would barely be able to recognize the form of government that they created if they were able to visit us today.

But hopefully by sharing videos like the one posted above and by sharing articles from websites such as this one we can start to wake the American people up once again.

The road that we are on is only going to result in economic ruin and the collapse of our society. We desperately need to get back to the principles that this country was founded upon, and we desperately need to reform our monetary system.

Hopefully there is still time to wake the American people up. If not, then we are all in a world of hurt.