CodalSearch this book — or all of Codal…⌘K
Projects
Sign inStart a book
nydus/The Legalized Crime of BankingPublic

Silas Walter Adams critiques the Federal Reserve Banking System, arguing that its monetary policies have significantly inflated the costs of war and national debt. The book examines the historical impact of private banking practices on the American economy and proposes a constitutional alternative for the management of the nation's money supply.

Page 76 of 211
Table of Contents

Chapter VII Simplified Mechanics of Reserve Banking

over to the banker your deposits, and he credits them to' the bank's account. That is the whole sum and substance of lending money, and buying investment obligations. The bankers use a lot of gobbledegook explaining what they do and then turn to the Congress of the United States to have it write a set of rules as a cover up. . . the last one written and passed this year, covers 250 pages. But shorn of all of the camouflage, the rules of banking are: Buy notes and other investment obligations, and pay with new deposits; sell notes and other investment obligations, and take deposit credits for them. Pay nothing for what they get; get cash for what they sell. Of course, readers, I know that as you read you are saying, "But that can't be true; bankers couldn't make money that fast; and of course I have cash on deposit; why if the banker got the depositors' deposits every time they hand cash out to customers, and then created new deposits every time the depositors hand cash back to them — why in a few days these banks would be bursting with their own money — nope, it's my cash and the banker just hands it out to me free, and takes it back to keep it safe for me.". And some of you are going to persist in believing all the lies and cliches bankers have fed you on, and refusing to believe what anyone else says about banking. The facts of their multiplying, creating money out of thin air remains, whether you admit it or not. If all monetary values-bank deposits, time and demand, and bank surpluses, deposits, those shown in bank statements, and those not shown, were in $1.00 bills, the banks' vaults and whole buildings would be bursting with them; but you must understand that these monetary values are just figures on the books of banks, dormant and unseen, until you write a cheque and give it to a seller for his goods and/or services. It takes a very few seconds to write $1,000,000,000, or even $1,000,000,000,000 on a page of the bank ledger; and one page would hold many entries; so one sheet of paper can evidence billions of monetary values to the credit of many persons. Congress, by laws they passed, assigned to the banks the credit of the Nation, gratis; then it empowered the Reserve authorities to write a cheque against no funds,

76