Most people do not understand the nature of money or what it really is. This misunderstanding is the basis for most of our economic and legal problems today.

These are the words of our second president, John Adams: “All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their constitutional confederation, nor from their want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation”.

So what is money? Here’s a multiple-choice question.

1. Is it a piece of green paper with dead Presidents on it?
2. Is it a piece of plastic, a credit or debit card, as you might imagine today?
3. Or is money electronic accounting widgets in a computer somewhere?
4. Is it a tangible asset, something with inherent value like gold or silver?

For the legal definition of money, you would answer number (4). Money is a tangible asset, something with inherent value like gold or silver. According to the U.S. Constitution, only gold and silver money is lawful. Money, and the U.S. Dollar, is defined in weights and measures, not by some arbitrary value assigned by a central bank computer. The founding fathers knew that any defect in the monetary system would eventually create disaster for the new Republic.

So what is a Federal Reserve note and how is a FRN different than lawful money, or gold and silver? A FRN is defined as a corporation note of undetermined value. It is a piece of green paper with dead Presidents on it. It is also represented in a piece of plastic, a credit or debit card. A bank today is nothing more than a licensed computer in a vault.

A FRN is the private property of the Federal Reserve Banking system. The Federal Reserve rents the United States government corporation the use of the currency at a huge cost to your rights and freedom. Then income taxes are imposed to repay the debt with interest to the Federal Reserve. There’s more to come on the nature of social security and the income tax later in this course.

The government gets a pretty good deal also, for it can now borrow as much as it wants from the Federal Reserve and make you and I, the people, pay it back with interest. For more details on how all this intrigue came about, read Edward Griffins “Creature from Jekyl Island.” It’s a story not to be missed by anyone interested in discovering what went wrong with America in 1913.

Henry Cabot Lodge observed in 1913, “The Federal Reserve Act, as it stands, seems to me to open the way to a vast inflation of the currency. I do not like to think that any law would be passed that would make it possible to submerge the gold standard in a flood of irredeemable paper currency.”

The value of a FRN is arbitrary, not stable like gold and silver. It inflates and devalues over time. Your buying power decreases significantly from decade to decade. When you see prices going up, really it’s the value of the currency going down. When you see Wall Street rising, then crashing, it’s really the value of the currency adjusting. Well those adjustments cost you plenty, as any of you know who’ve lost big time in the stock markets.

Anybody interested in some Internet stocks? So how can you accumulate wealth and property when the currency is rapidly devaluing and your taxes are always increasing? The more you make, the more taxes you pay. The answer is simple, you can’t. It’s a doomed financial strategy and until you rethink your economic plan, beginning with real knowledge about the nature of money, wealth and international banking, you won’t get ahead financially. How can you be successful in life without a sound financial plan? We’ll be discussing more about financial planning later in this course.

For most people, money has a practical value only. If you have money, you can buy things with it. If you don’t have any money, then you can’t. Few have contemplated the design behind our present monetary system, or better stated, the lack of a monetary system. How can you expect to prosper if you fail to understand the nature of money, how it is created, and who controls it? Not having a stable and sustainable monetary system insures that 92% of all Americans are bankrupt at age 62. Will you be one of them?

“When there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.” Aristotle

There was a time in our history when the people had veto power over government spending. There was a time when most Americans owned their own land outright, in allodium, without government interference or taxes. There was no national bank that lasted more than a decade until 1913. Government remained small and appropriately sized for the population.

But since the glut of borrowed money and borrowed time, both the central banks and the central governments have grown excessive and fat from our ignorance regarding the monetary system. Most people have lost their land, their property and their rights.

Is it all a coincidence, or was there some design to all of this? This is the fundamental reason why the Republic was lost, for all practical purposes, back in 1933, when the United States government corporation declared bankruptcy for the first time. It began with the hypothecation of all the land, property, income and assets of the American people way back in 1913. It’s been a downhill ride ever since.

“Money is a new form of slavery, distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal, that there is no human relation between the master and the slave.” Leo Tolstoy

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There are new business and finance models on the way. And with a thorough understanding of the monetary system and a commitment to changing it, we the people can once again prosper.�