One of my favorite readers wrote to pose this excellent question. Where does our money come from? Who owns the dollar? We the People-or those Chinese we keep hearing about?  Few of us really understand our dollar isn’t just issued by our government and then printed at the U.S. Mint. It is financed as a debt by the Federal Reserve System, a Banking system, and when you learn about its function and its history, you can hardly believe it. So I’ve created a new page on the subject.

In the meantime, though, take a look at your dollar bill. What does it say? Issued by the U.S. Mint? Nope. It is signed by the Treasurer of the United States, not to be confused with the second signature, the Secretary of the Treasury. Huh?  My page on the Federal Reserve explains this.

dollar-bill

Note the dollar is labeled a Federal Reserve Note. The Treasury goes to the Federal Reserve and says, hey, we need this much money to pay the nation’s bills. The Federal Reserve then writes a check whose account is never reconciled, like yours and mine, and prints up these debt-notes. Every dollar we use costs Americans a dollar plus interest, the reason for inflation and rising prices.

We pay a growing percentage of interest each year in the federal budget-and to whom? To private financiers, including some nations’ banks, who “buy” U.S. bonds, auctioned off internationally by the Federal Reserve. Like many financial terms, the “buy” part of this is misleading. These buyers are actually “loaning” us money, at an interest price determined by the Fed, a private banking system in touch with world bond and currency “markets.” How much will the market bear? How long will the Fed keep writing us checks and running up the Treasury’s credit card?

If big money, behind even Central National Banks and the IMF, is buying anything, it’s buying a piece of us. Americans are being sold into debt-slavery, similarly to other nations’ citizens who have been auctioned off before us. (See Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine.) What fascinates me today about currency and monetary issues is the way only the far edges of our political spectrum, both left and right, have picked it up. I can’t believe my page on the Federal Reserve recommends you watch a lecture delivered to the John Birch Society! I’m a leftie!

But in this political climate, with this media framing the issues, we must not stay confused. To Americans any “socialism” is bad, except when the rich owners of corporations or banks benefit. Yet some on both sides of the aisle are talking about the same systemic problems, however different their approaches.  Shouldn’t American women citizens understand this conversation?

Meanwhile, mainstream politics continues to leave the Federal Reserve issue completely alone. Why? Maybe because potentially, it’s incendiary.

We women, who have been encouraged not to worry our pretty little heads about the nation’s budget and big finance, are the very ones who might bridge this political gap between the far left and the far right and promote public education about the usury that threatens to bankrupt the nation. All the candidates for President in the last election were millionaires, with the exception of one, which might explain why this present system doesn’t seem to bother too many of them.

Do you know the one non-millionaire who ran?  The answer is in the middle of my new page, About the Federal Reserve. Check it out!