The White Knights Will Save Us
by G. Edward Griffin, 2018 September 30
with addendums added through 2020 July 20
We have been hearing a lot lately about a secret, underground movement within the highest echelons of the US government that is preparing to suddenly emerge into full view, arrest corrupt politicians and banksters, pay off the national debt with a huge trove of hidden gold previously stolen from the American people, and save the world from its current path of destruction. ‘Drain the Swamp’ has become the political slogan that we are told originated from within this group. It’s a reassuring story but, unfortunately, I heard all of this in 2003, and none of it was true.
It started when a series of emails started to go viral that were sent out by someone called the Dove of Oneness. The Dove’s message was that, even though there was rampant corruption in banking, media, schools, and government, the good news was that there was an underground group of good guys – called the White Knights – who were in high positions within all these institutions, who were fed up with the status quo and were planning a coup d’état that was going to happen “very soon”. Tens of thousands of Americans who were hungry for good news became ardent followers of the Dove and could hardly wait for the arrival of the next email to get the latest inside scoop from deep within government agencies, the military, and the Supreme Court.
I could smell the fraud a mile away – and said so as gently as I could so as not to be confrontational with my friends and supporters who wanted to believe. My view was that the Dove of Oneness was either some prankster trying to see just how naive the public really is, or a professional disinformation agency creating false hope to lull political opposition into complacency and inaction.
I intended to stay away from this issue as much as possible and just keep on pounding away on the need to take action and not expect someone else to do it for us, but eventually I was drawn in because part of the appeal to the hopeful was that there was a brilliant piece of legislation, called NESARA, that was about to be enacted that would tame the Federal Reserve and restore sound money to the nation. Because of my book on the Federal Reserve, there were many requests for my opinion of NESARA, which forced me to do some research and, eventually, to publish my verdict.
With this background, I have resurrected my analysis, which was published in March, 2003, on the Freedom Force International web site. If you make it to the end of this article, you will understand my skepticism about the White Knights of 2018.
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The following comment thread stretches over a two-year period and is longer than most people will want to follow. Unless you have a special interest in monetary policy, I recommend that you read up to the section headed DEBATE OVER NESARA and then skip to THE WHITE KNIGHTS.
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The National Economic Stabilization and Recovery Act (NESARA), and other myths from The Dove of Oneness and the White Knights
Analysis by G. Edward Griffin
2003 March 6 – updated 2006 May 5
NESARA is an old idea dressed in new clothing. The assumption is that those big, bad bankers are the cause of all our monetary problems. If we can just take away their power to create money out of nothing and let our trustworthy politicians create money out of nothing instead, everything will be fine. It won’t. The problem is not who runs the scam, but the fact that it IS a scam. Fiat money is fiat money no matter who makes it. Politicians are no more trustworthy than bankers – and often they are one and the same.
Point number three calls, not for abolishing the Fed, but for merely turning it over to the Treasury. Point number five calls for continuing the operation of the Open Market Committee, which is the primary mechanism by which the Fed creates money out of nothing.
Don’t be drawn into this trap. It is not a solution. The preliminary wording is very strong and positive sounding, but it is deceptive. It gives the false impression that something is being done but, in the end, the same people would be perpetuating the same scam as before. ~~Ed Griffin.
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What follows is a lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of NESARA. Unless you are deeply interested in monetary policy, I suggest you click on the following link, which will jump ahead to the point where the topic turns to the White Knights and the coup d’état that allegedly was planned to save America from the ‘bad guys’.
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DEBATE OVER NESARA
After publishing my initial appraisal of NESARA, the following exchange occurred between me and the NESARA group:
NESARA Commentary: Although we agree with Mr. Griffin regarding abolishing the Fed, establishing a sound currency, and preventing politicians from creating money, we are tempted to think that Mr. Griffin has not truly studied the NESARA proposal, but only provided a cursory glance. We only hope that Mr. Griffin will someday study NESARA.
We are posting the following message exchange for informational value. Responding to Mr. Griffin’s generic response, a NESARA supporter wrote to Mr. Griffin as follows:
Mr. Griffin, your Reality Zone certainly lost a lot of credibility with this posting. Have you actually studied this proposed bill and its underlying ideas?
The issues of fiscal and monetary policy are moral issues which dictate the rules governing the applications of the concept of money and the type of currency used within these systems. Of all the systems known, a truly free market system is by far the most moral.
I would suggest that you reread The National Economic Stabilization and Recovery Act, assuming that you actually read it once already, and its supporting ideas. It is both Constitutional and politically doable.
The problem with fractional reserve fiat currency banking is found not in its existence but in the allocation of the benefits to be derived from its ownership and control. NESARA insists that a sovereign people by moral right own the nation’s monetary system and are due the major benefits of that ownership. It is the government’s constitutional duty to establish the standards applicable to the monetary system and the rules and regulations for the banking industry. Neither the government nor the banking institutions are entrusted with control of the monetary system, that function being performed by a free market within the rules instituted by NESARA.
NESARA rests upon a new expanded theory of money derived from system theory and upon the same two legal pillars that [von] Mises applied: (1) the enforcement of contracts by the civil government; and (2) the right of peaceful, non-fraudulent voluntary exchange.
A few professionals may understand and debate economic theory and monetary policy, but the public’s primary interest will remain, as it always has, in voting for candidates who promise them immediate positive benefits in their daily lives. There lies the path to fiscal and monetary reform.
The nesara.org web site contains a lot of information but none of it is so complex that it defies understanding by anyone of average intelligence who takes the time to study it. I fail to understand how you could be so far off point. ~~J.B.
GEG’s reply:
Hello J.B. I suggest you read The Creature from Jekyll Island, especially the section called “A Crash Course on Money”. You may not agree with it, but it will give you an understanding of the reasons I cannot endorse NESARA. The problem is fiat money, not who makes it. NESARA does not eliminate fiat money. It merely turns the operation over to the Treasury. It is based on the assumption that we can’t trust bankers but we can trust politicians. History does not support that confidence.
In the Executive Summary, point number one says that the bill would establish Treasury credit notes. That means money based either on debt or state decree, not bullion or any commodity of intrinsic value. It is fiat money. Incidentally, credit notes are forbidden by the Constitution, which limits federal money to coinage of precious metals. Therefore, the claim that NESARA is constitutional is false.
Point number three calls for turning the Fed over to the Treasury. Point number five calls for continuing the operation of the Open Market Committee, which is the primary mechanism by which the Fed creates money out of nothing.
Don’t fall into this trap. It is not a solution. It will give people the false impression that something is being done but, in the end, the same people would be perpetuating the same scam as before. ~~Ed Griffin
J.B.’s response:
Dear Ed,
I have read all of The Creature From Jekyll Island and everything else that I can find on the subject and I do understand the creation of fiat money by the government and the banks.
Back in the early 1980s I attended lots of the Patriot meetings and know most of the people in the movement. At a meeting in Denver of about 400 people, I asked if anyone present could tell me how much money the Fed rebated to the U.S. Treasury that year. No one could tell me even though several knew that since W.W. II the Fed must rebate excess profits to the government.
During a break for lunch, I called the Comptroller’s office of the Fed in Denver to ask for that information. A nice lady answered the phone but said she couldn’t help me because all the officers of the bank were out to lunch. Then she gave me the 800 number for the Fed in Kansas City and suggested that I call them saying, “They have already had lunch.”
I immediately called the K.C. Fed and asked to speak to the Comptroller. When he answered the phone I asked him two questions: 1) How much money did the Fed receive as interest payments on U.S. debt that year? and 2) How much money the Fed rebated to the U.S. Treasury that year?
The Comptroller explained to me that he couldn’t immediately answer my questions because he didn’t have the numbers for the Fed, but he could give me the numbers for the K.C. bank, which should be typical, because he just happened to have them on his desk at the time I called.
Now I don’t remember the numbers exactly, but he said the K.C. bank had collected about $95 billion in interest payments on U.S. debt that year and had rebated about $112 billion to the U.S. Treasury. I told him that his numbers didn’t sound reasonable, that the KC Fed couldn’t be rebating more than they collected or they would soon go broke.
The Comptroller explained to me that he had answered my questions exactly. The KC Fed had collected the $95 billion on U.S. government debt and rebated the $112 billion to the Treasury because that number included the rebated interest they had collected on English, German, Japanese, etc. bonds also!
I provided that information to the conference attendees that afternoon. 1) They didn’t believe me because “the Fed Officers are all liars” and 2) They had never bothered checking the facts because, “Everybody at the Fed is a crook and we don’t talk to those people.” Needless to say, the so-called Patriots lost a lot of credibility with me that afternoon.
[Comment by GEG: I don’t understand what any of that has to do with the case in point. Had I been in the audience that day, I would have commented – what I wrote in my book – that the Fed does, indeed, rebate to the Treasury all of its interest payments less the cost of its overhead. In other words, the Fed gets its operating expenses paid by interest payments but does not make a profit on them. Furthermore, I would have explained that this is not where the action is. It’s not the interest collected on money created out of nothing and loaned to the government. It’s the much larger amount of interest collected on money created out of nothing and loaned into the private sector by the commercial banks. What would NESARA do about that? NESARA looks only at the smaller and relatively harmless part of the equation and ignores the larger and much more devastating part.]
[J.B. continues] I will certainly agree with you that the government gave away our monetary system to the Fed in 1913 and, in collusion with them, stole gold from the American people. I am mad about that and I want our monetary system and our gold back!
As a political strategist and consultant, I can tell you that NESARA offers the American people their best chance for recovery. The Fed bankers like fiat money so much, we should give them some! NESARA authorizes the Treasury to print new currency and deliver a pile of it to the Fed to repurchase all outstanding U.S. debt as provided in the original 1913 act which created the central bank.
[GEG comment: No matter how you slice it, this is still fiat money and, as such, is not a long-term solution.]
[J.B continues] The Secretary of the Treasury delivers the new fiat money to the Fed and fires Alan Greenspan. [GEG comment: The Treasury does not have the constitutional power to fire the Fed Chairman.] The U.S. Treasury recovers all of the nation’s debt held by the Fed and all of our gold for just a printing cost. And Alan and the other Fed officers don’t get to take any of that new fiat money with them because it all belongs to the Fed and they are just employees. That same fiat money now gets used to “buy” back all of the Fed stock held by the commercial banks and to recover any government debt paper they hold. And since the new fiat currency is the only thing they can use as bank reserves, it doesn’t enter commerce and doesn’t affect prices.
[GEG comment: And so, the Fed, now under control of trustworthy politicians instead of crooked bankers, can continue creating money out of nothing as it has always done. Yes, the Treasury would escape the onerous obligation to pay interest on its debt but, as you correctly observed previously, under the present system it gets all that back anyway, so there is no real gain even on that point. Clearly this is not a solution but a continuation of the problem.]
[J.B. continues] NESARA requires that all of the recovered gold and silver be coined and made available to the American people at market price in exchange for the fiat currency they hold. Seems very fair; we give them their fiat paper and get our gold back.
[GEG comment: Not a bad concept except there is no provision for creating a real money supply with gold or silver backing. The solution is still missing.]
[J.B. continues] The Constitution prohibits “Bills of Credit”, which were immoral because they promised redemption in gold when there was never enough gold to redeem the full amount issued. The new Treasury Credit Notes are Constitutional because they are not redeemable and their acceptance cannot be compelled. And if you don’t like any you may find, turn them in for gold coin.
[GEG comment: This is not realistic. In a free market where individuals are not forced by law to accept unbacked bills of credit, their value will be near zero. And if they have no market value, there is little point in issuing them in the first place. Besides, even if they are not bolstered by legal tender laws, they still are unconstitutional as federal money, because the Constitution requires federal money to be bullion coins.]
[J.B. continues] Point number five does call for continuing the operation of the Open Market Committee, which is the primary mechanism by which the Fed creates money out of nothing, but maybe you didn’t notice its structure or its limitations. Twelve good Americans make up the new Board, not one of which is a banker, lawyer or a politician. If you are fraudulently charged with a crime, you can expect 12 good people to come to your rescue. And if this system doesn’t work then nothing in the American system will work. The new Board works the same way and notice that they can only buy debt, which is immediately canceled, they can’t sell it, ever.
[GEG comment: Putting faith in “good” men is the greatest folly of all. That is the basis of the present system. Doesn’t the public generally agree that the Chairman and members of the Federal Reserve Board are “good” men? One of the main themes in my book is that the money supply must never be determined by a committee or a commission or an agency or any other group of wise and virtuous men. If history teaches us anything, it is that there is no such thing. Eventually, all such groups will be corrupted by the power that is in their hands. This proposition hardly needs explaining to any person familiar with the dismal evolution of political systems.]
[J.B. continues] I would be the first to admit that this is neither ideal or an end-all solution but it does make a good start.
[GEG comment: It definitely is not ideal and, in fact, it does not make a good start, either. It embraces the assumptions that fiat money in the hands of “good” men is acceptable. That is exactly the assumption that drives the present system. NESARA gives the illusion of reform but is merely a means of safeguarding the status quo.]
[J.B. continues] Under NESARA, the government sets the monetary standards but is not allowed to print currency other than that required to get back our monetary system and our gold. The Fed owners may claim that the Government is stealing their assets for a printing cost, but it would all be legal, using the same methods they used to steal from us in the first place. We learned this trick from their example.
[GEG comment: So, now we strive to commit the same crime they do. This is a solution?]
[J.B. continues] The new banking equations should provide sufficient reasons to pass NESARA (provided they ever learn about them in spite of a controlled mass media) or to get us a new Congress. The people can recover about $1-trillion in secured debt fraudulently taken from them in this fiat banking scheme but it doesn’t go far enough in returning properties, such as family farms, that were lost through government guaranteed loans.
I wish to encourage your constructive criticism of NESARA upon the facts. And if you have a better, politically doable plan, I would love to see your legislative proposal.
[GEG comment: My plan, as outlined in The Creature from Jekyll Island is simple: (1) prohibit the Fed or any other entity including the government from creating legal tender (the nation’s money supply) unless it is totally backed by a stated amount of gold or silver, and (2) let the free market gradually phase out the Federal Reserve Notes based on their perceived value relative to the real money. I will leave it to legislators to draft the language. Lord willing, it will not be anything like NESARA.]
[J.B. continues] Mr. Griffin did not reply.
[GEG comment: The first time I saw this letter was 9 days ago, and this is my reply.]
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The following message from J.B was received by email on October 8, 2003:
Dear Mr. Griffin,
I understand your desire for a strict hard-money currency having intrinsic value. Such a monetary system would provide two positive features. First, it would provide a natural limit to the amount of currency that could be produced; that is, the quantity in circulation could never exceed the total amount of gold and silver available on the planet. Second, the exchange value of this hard-money currency in commerce would be determined by a free market, or even a black market if legislators were to intrusively intervene by law in the system’s day-to-day regulation and operation.
While a hard-money system may sound ideal, it is far from practical. If the total amount of gold and silver available on the planet were coined and distributed equally among 6-billion inhabitants, each person would hold only a microscopic amount. This would most certainly be insufficient to support the current volume of commercial activity. And we have vivid historical examples of the problems caused by insufficient circulating currency – physical limitations during American Colonial times and artificially created shortages during the Great Depression.
That said, there is still that nagging Constitutional requirement for silver dollars, notwithstanding the fact that the powers-that-be distort or violate Constitutional provisions to their own ends whenever they can. Careful reading of the NESARA proposal will demonstrate that it addresses each and every one of your concerns, including this one.
I have taken the liberty of numbering your comments sequentially so that I might better respond to each of them.
Comment #1. The so-called Patriot community habitually denounces the Fed as a burden on the American taxpayer. Actually, if the numbers from the Kansas City Fed are typical, the entire burden for its operating cost falls on foreign taxpayers with enough left over for a positive return to the U.S. Treasury.
Your statement that the real “action” is in the private sector with the commercial banks is absolutely correct. The commercial banks derive huge profits by monetizing the debts of their customers. Because this is the source of almost all the nation’s more than 3-trillion dollars of circulating currency, that currency is said to be issued at interest. Obviously, gold and silver currency would not be issued at interest which neatly eliminates this objection.
NESARA mitigates much of this concern by setting standards for three types of currency: silver coin, gold coin and new U.S. Treasury credit-notes. The gold and silver coin, issued in the maximum amounts possible, provides a general circulation hard-money currency if the public wishes to use it. The new U.S. Treasury credit-notes are issued on a one-to-one basis to replace the current Federal Reserve Notes.
Notice that each of these types of currency is issued without any interest due. Furthermore, the character of the new U.S. Treasury credit-notes is explicitly stated in NESARA at Part I, Section 4(B), Provisions for United States Currency. Credit-notes have only limited legal-tender status meaning that an individual cannot be forced to accept U.S. Treasury credit-notes in payment of a debt specified as payable in gold or silver coin and that the Federal government must accept U.S. Treasury credit-notes as payment for taxes.
As to the “larger and more devastating part” of the monetary system being the profits private commercial banks make on “money (currency) created out of nothing and loaned into the private sector”, I would make the following comments.
Unlike the machinations of the “Mandrake Mechanism” where Congress certainly creates new circulating currency backed by no wealth, commercial banks do not create currency out of nothing; they create currency by monetizing the debts of their customers. True, bankers seemingly create out of thin air, but that is with reference only to their license. They cannot create without a corresponding borrower.
Understanding the concept of virtual wealth is important to realize the distinction between monetizing through debt and inflating the currency through the Fed. All currencies, regardless of form or substance, represent debt, not wealth. Currency represents an unfinished exchange of wealth. Unless you intend to change the U.S. Constitution to make private contracts illegal, including an individual issuing a personal IOU, I fail to see that the commercial banks can be prevented from offering monetary services. Moreover, I find nothing in the law to prevent the private issue of currency, NORFED being but one example.
NESARA allows new currency creation, but only at the local level through monetization of private debts. Such new currency is backed by virtual wealth, wealth that soon will exist. Congress is removed from the creation and inflation loop.
The NESARA Institute maintains that the nation’s monetary system, a true public utility, rightfully belongs to the American people. It does not belong to the politicians, who are responsible for setting monetary standards, and it certainly does not belong to the Federal Reserve System and the private commercial banks, who are responsible for its regulation and day-to-day operation.
NESARA authorizes fiat currency of a limited specified character and at Part I Section 7 and Section 8 provides for better public distribution of the huge benefits that the operation of this monetary system generates. In other words, NESARA proposes to make a 50/50 split of the “more devastating part” of the current system by returning something more than $5-trillion to the true owners of the monetary system. Of course, this does not immediately eliminate public indentured servitude to the private financial institutions, but that effort does go a long way in that direction and is a much better deal than the public gets today.
Comment #2 Fiat money, in and of itself, is not the problem. All currency represents debt, not wealth, and is a token symbol representing an unfinished exchange of wealth. The real problems are to be found in the specifications, regulation and day-to-day operation of the nation’s monetary system.
Comment #3 No. NESARA provides new standards, regulations and day-to-day operating rules for the nation’s monetary system. The design objective is not to eliminate every possible monetary problem, but to provide a simple transparent monetary system which has a much smaller set of problems than the current system and a much better distribution of the system’s operational benefits to the public, its true owners. The world is not going to migrate overnight from national currencies to private currencies. Thus, NESARA is a transitional plan to establish reforms and provide stabilization. NESARA allows opportunities for people to recapture more of the wealth they produce. Once that process is established, the warfare-welfare nation-state will begin to disintegrate, and private currencies will become more common.
Comment #4 No. NESARA, at Part I, Section 4(E), provides for production of standard silver and gold coins to the maximum extent possible, including encouragement of private coinage. Gold and silver coin thus become a part of the total money supply. Additionally, Part I, Section 4(I) authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to issue silver and gold certificates representing only standard silver and gold coin actually on deposit with the U.S. Treasury and redeemable on demand. You will not find a better transitional solution than doing all that is physically and politically possible to do.
All currencies are backed by wealth, not statutorily declared commodities. Although the definition of a dollar as a unit of weight is restored under NESARA, all currencies, including gold and silver coin, are token symbols of an unfinished exchange of wealth. Thus, to require that a paper currency be “backed” by gold or silver is irrelevant. Currencies must be backed by exchanges of wealth. The form or substance of that currency is a secondary issue.
Comment #5 Actually, it is very realistic. NESARA has no provision to force anyone to accept the new irredeemable U.S. Treasury credit-notes as payment for debts contracted in another form of currency. However, NESARA does require the federal government to accept U.S. Treasury credit-notes in payment of taxes. You could pay $100 in federal taxes with 100 silver dollars, which the government would be happy to accept. Or you might exchange a few of your silver dollars for $100 in U.S. Treasury credit-notes and use them to pay your tax. One of the major design objectives of NESARA is to maintain the commercial exchange value of U.S. Treasury credit-notes. There are no provisions to maintain the commercial exchange value of gold and silver coin. A free market will quickly establish their exchange value.
Treasury credit-notes (or FRNs for that matter) are not bills of credit. A bill of credit is essentially an IOU, a promise to pay in a specified amount and kind of wealth. Treasury credit-notes are merely token symbols of an unfinished exchange of wealth. The holder of any currency decides the amount and kind of wealth to exchange for that currency.
Gold and silver coin likewise represent an unfinished exchange of wealth. If a Treasury credit-note promised payment in a specific amount and kind of wealth, say a certain amount of gold or silver coin, then arguably the credit-note is a bill of credit. Yet, even then the definition remains cloudy because the credit-note would be exchanged only for gold and silver coin, another form of currency. As currency, that gold and silver coin would still represent an unfinished exchange of wealth.
Comment #6 We certainly are in agreement that “putting faith in good men is the greatest folly of all.” First thing you know, those “good men” in Congress would allow the President to start a war with some foreign nation whenever he thought appropriate or do some other foolish thing. NESARA does not place faith in good men but in a transparent, easily understood design for a new monetary system. True, there are men involved, but it would be impossible to design a public or private monetary system that did not involve individuals at some point. The key is a system that common folks can understand, and politicians find difficult to manipulate. As long as a national currency system exists, legislators will be involved.
Comment #7 Fiat currency is only one element of a monetary system, and not the most important element. The rules and equations that drive the system have far more impact in transferring wealth from productive workers to the nation’s elite masters and its large financial institutions.
Comment #8 Lawful action is not and cannot be a crime. And, if it serves the public interest, it can definitely be part of a solution. NESARA is not a ‘Robin Hood Plan’ stealing from the rich to give to the poor. The rich stole much of the nation’s wealth “fair and square” so they get to keep it. Trying to undo past damage would be incredibly difficult. NESARA simply provides a new monetary and tax system which allows productive workers a chance to keep more of what they have labored so hard to produce.
Comment #9 I believe NESARA is a practical application of your plan to the maximum extent politically possible. And I did not leave its draft language to a few good legislators. Having spent 10 years roaming the halls of Congress, talking to many legislators and closely examining their work, I have reached the inevitable conclusion that there are within this nation some cocker spaniels with a better understanding of monetary policy that some of the legislators I met.
I believe our disagreements are the same as with most disagreements. We disagree on the foundational elements of monetary theory and the supporting definitions. I think we have more in common that you might initially believe. Feel free to contact me at any time.
Dr. Harvey Barnard
GEG’s reply, October 7, 2003:
Dear Dr. Barnard.
Your letter contains numerous statements that deserve careful analysis and response. However, I feel that it would not be productive to address each issue because, as you stated at the end of your letter: “We disagree on the foundational elements of monetary theory and the supporting definitions.” As long as there is disagreement on principles, there can be no agreement on lesser issues based upon those principles.
For example, in your second paragraph, you state that there is not enough gold or silver on the planet to provide a practical base for the money supply. This, as you recall from reading The Creature from Jekyll Island, is what I consider to be a myth. In truth, quantity makes little difference at all. It merely determines the relative per-ounce value of the underlying unit. (For those who have not read my book and are not familiar with my reasoning on this issue, I urge them to see the section entitled “The Misleading Theory of Quantity,” found on pages 141 and 142.)
In another paragraph, you state: “NESARA authorizes fiat currency of a limited specified character and … provides for better public distribution of the huge benefits that the operation of this monetary system generates.” It is true that there is nothing that should prohibit private parties or commercial banks from converting debt into IOUs that can be exchanged on the open market as “currency”, but that is not the same as fiat money. Fiat money, by generally accepted definition, is created and circulated by “decree” of the state, and citizens are coerced into accepting it under penalty of law. I have no problem with voluntary acceptance of debt-based currency, but I have a big problem with debt-based fiat currency that I must accept or go to prison. You state that NESARA would not require public acceptance of its tokens by force of law. If that is the case, then I would feel better about the whole proposal, but then we would not be talking about fiat currency.
You stated further along: “Fiat money, in and of itself, is not the problem. All currency represents debt and not wealth and is a token symbol representing an unfinished exchange of wealth. The real problems are to be found in the specifications, regulation and day-to-day operation of the nation’s monetary system.” This is a variation of the error identified in the previous paragraph. You are implying here that there is no difference between fiat money and debt-based currency. In truth, there is a world of difference. I believe that history shows dramatically that fiat money, in and of itself, is the problem. And when you imply that the solution is to be found in “the specifications, regulation and day-to-day operation of the nation’s monetary system,” this reveals your faith in men, unfounded in my view, who must be entrusted with this awesome task.
You addressed this theme in your letter by stating: “NESARA does not place faith in good men but in a transparent, easily understood design for a new monetary system. True, there are men involved, but it would be impossible to design a public or private monetary system that did not involve individuals at some point. … As long as a national currency system exists, legislators will be involved.” Here, again, I am afraid you have equated two different animals as being the same. Of course, there will be men involved in any monetary system. That is not the issue. The issue is: What will these men be allowed to do? What roles shall they play? Basically, there are two optional roles, and they are quite different. Will they be allowed to manipulate the money supply in accordance with their best judgments (or political expediency) or will they be guardians whose sole function is to guarantee that the money supply is solidly linked to an absolute standard and is not manipulated?
Let’s face it. NESARA stands solidly on the side of giving “wise men” the power to manipulate the money supply. In my view, this means it offers no reform of the present system at all, because that is what we now have. All the technical details of how these men supposedly will discharge their duties are of no consequence. As long as the assumption is allowed to stand that it is acceptable for bankers or politicians to manipulate the money supply, the rules can – and will – be changed as political needs arise.
Thank you for affording me an opportunity to respond.
G. Edward Griffin
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MYTH OF THE WHITE KNIGHTS
On February 3, 2004, I received an email including a copy of a statement released from NESARA on the previous day with the heading: NESARA Is A Step Closer, No Weapons of Mass Destruction. It said:
“For those of you new to the nearly four-year history of NESARA since it was passed in March, 2000, a key element of NESARA is that both the U.S. Supreme Court and the International Court of Justice (World Court) have put very strict GAG ORDERS on everyone in any kind of official position who has any involvement with NESARA. The gag orders are why no official person is allowed to discuss NESARA in public or through any kind of communication with the public. There have been many people including G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature from Jekyll Island, who have said publicly that they “know about” NESARA but are under a gag order and cannot say anything further. A friend who was listening to the Thom Hartmann Show in August, 2003, heard G. Edward Griffin say this.”
That, of course, is pure fiction. The only true part is that I did appear on the Hartman show discussing the Federal Reserve. I do not remember offering an opinion on NESARA but, if I had been asked, I would have said that it was not to be taken seriously. The issue of being under a gag rule from the Supreme Court or the International Court is garbage. One needs to look no further for proof that the Dove of Oneness is a source of disinformation.
The saga continues! On March 16, 2004, I received an indignant email from a lady who demanded that I send an apology to Dove because I had the name of NESARA wrong. According to her, it was not The National Economic Stabilization and Recovery Act but The National Economic Security and Reformation Act. Sure enough, when I went to the Internet, there were now two web sites claiming to be the true NESARA. She said:
“I was shocked to see that G Edward Griffin mentioned the disinformation act put out by the Bush Junta. The real NESARA is at www.nesara.us and stands for NATIONAL ECONOMIC SECURITY AND REFORMATION ACT, NOT NATIONAL ECONOMIC STABILIZATION AND RECOVERY ACT. You will see by reading the real act that it is not fiat money at all… It is all constitutional. The announcement period begins on March 22 [2004]. I would appreciate if you would do your homework and realize you have been duped by the illuminati disinformation kings. I think an apology to Dove is in order, as she has warned people of the disinformation site for a long while now.”
This became more bizarre with each passing month. I went to the new web site to check out the constitutionality of the NESARA legislation, but it was not posted, just a lot of mumbo jumbo about a 1933 Supreme Court decision that practically everyone in Washington knows about but is sworn to secrecy under threat of being executed for treason. By the way, don’t expect to be able to look up the decision, either, because all mention of it supposedly has been stripped from the records to preserve the secrecy.
The material presented on both web sites was created by people who are sophisticated and talented. At first, I thought it was just a prank by someone testing the limits of human gullibility. However, now I must consider the possibility that NESARA is a strategic hoax perpetrated by a professional disinformation agency seeking two objectives: (1) to lull concerned citizens into a state of complacency based on a false expectation that everything is in good hands, and (2) to entice activists into publicly identifying with a program that is so absurd as to discredit themselves in the eyes of their friends. Once they are discredited, everything else they say – even when it is 100% true – will be rejected. It is an old tactic of disinformation. If deceivers do not want the truth to be recognized, their first choice is to hide it from view. If that cannot be done, they mix garbage in with it so that the whole lot looks and smells like garbage. In that case, it is very difficult for the public to separate one from the other.
Once again, NESARA has promised a deadline for announcing the wonderful news of its victory over fraudulent banks and tyrannical government. It is supposed to happen on March 22, 2004, just six days from now. If this runs true to form, there will be yet one more “postponement” due to some last-minute maneuver by the entrenched elite fighting desperately to hold on to their position. Meanwhile, don’t worry about it, folks, and especially don’t bother doing anything about it, because everything is under control.
Getting back to the lady who demanded my apology to Dove, it didn’t take long for a reaction. Almost immediately after sending my response, the lady replied that she had shared my message with Dove, and that Dove had written to her as follows:
“G. Edward Griffin has unfortunately been coerced into saying what he did under severe threats from the Illuminati. Don’t worry – the disinformation on the Internet will not hurt the true NESARA law and, as of today, the announcement IS coming on schedule. Blessings, Dove”
On March 22, I checked the NESARA web sites to see what excuse was used this time to delay the announcement. As expected, Dove was back at her old tricks. The deadline had arrived with no announcement, but we were being told that the White Knights were, at that very moment, being sent to various key locations to insure law and order when the disclosure is finally made – which will happen any day now.
The final piece of the puzzle finally fell into place in July of 2004 with a series of articles that appeared in the News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington. Reporter Sean Robinson located the so-called Dove of Oneness and revealed that she was Shaini Candace Goodwin, a local resident who had evolved her Internet business out of an investment scam headed by Clyde Hood, who was sentenced to fourteen-years in federal prison for mail fraud and money laundering.
None of that was surprising to me, but I was greatly enlightened to learn that she had taken the NESARA concept from a retired engineer by the name of Harvey Bernard, and it was this same Bernard with whom I had corresponded regarding what I consider to be serious flaws in his proposal. At the time, I thought it was strange that someone as flaky as the so-called Dove of Oneness would be able to intelligently discuss the finer points of monetary policy. Now the riddle is solved. All along, there have been two people involved. One is a very serious guy who spent a lot of time concocting what he believes to be a reasonable solution to our economic problems. The other is a gifted scam artist playing upon the gullibility of the public. The scam artist led her followers to believe that the NESARA proposal had been drafted by the so-called White Knights. This created a blur of confusion between the serious monetary proposal and the absurd claims about pending miraculous reforms being led by the Deep State. Now that I see there are two people involved, everything becomes clear. This case is closed.
*****
Addendum 2020 July 22
The previous commentary was published in 2004. Since then, parallels to the QAnon phenomena are obvious. In this latest version, however, there is the added feature of leading Americans to look with favor upon martial law that, supposedly, will be used by the good guys to arrest the bad guys and to stop the riots. If martial law comes to pass, however, its outcome will be quite different.
The enemies of freedom are masters at leading their own opposition.
G. Edward Griffin