The Choice Is Ours Page #4

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inside of a power vacuum really

who see it as in their interest

to perpetuate the conflict.

(Narrator) But it does benefit

the few at the top who live parasitically

by the manipulation and control of money.

[Dylan Ratigan, Author & Host] The banking system

right now is effectively enslaving individuals

enslaving students, enslaving institutions

and sucking resources from them.

[Karen Hudes, Economist & Lawyer] They set it up

so that there would be private central banks

that could charge everybody

interest on the currency

and allow themselves to get rich

without having to do anything.

Who's been doing all of this?

It's a group of bankers,

the Federal Reserve System;

that's a private system.

- The Fed is a private bank

owned by private stockholders.

Do not let the name 'federal' fool you.

(Karen) In 1913, which is when Woodrow Wilson

allowed the Federal Reserve System

legislation to be passed

most of the Congress people had gone home.

(Narrator) This legislation

turned the central bank system

of the United States

over to the Federal Reserve Board

making them the only group

that could issue Federal Reserve notes

or US dollars.

(Karen) President Wilson regretted that.

He said that he had just

sold this country downstream.

"A great industrial nation is controlled

by its system of credit.

Our system of credit is concentrated.

The growth of the nation,

therefore, and all our activities

are in the hands of a few men.

We have come to be one of the worst ruled

one of the most completely controlled

and dominated governments

in the civilized world;

a government by the opinion and the duress

of small groups of dominant men."

~President Woodrow Wilson, 1916

[Erin Ade, Reporter & Host]

It's a fiat system that we operate under.

It's actually someone punching numbers

on a computer somewhere;

that is how we manufacture money today.

(Karen) There's nothing backing it;

there's nothing behind it.

(Narrator) When government spends

more than it collects in taxes

and needs money, it does not print its own money,

but borrows from the federal reserve

in exchange for US bonds

which the fed provides at interest.

When people in corporations want money,

they go to banks as well.

The system is rigged. If a bank buys a $100 bond,

the bank gets to lend out

10 times that amount, or $1000.

They created the extra funds from nothing:

no money, gold, or anything to back it up.

The bank also gets back the loans

with interest for all the money lent.

Money is created in this way

from the simple signature

of a borrower with a promise to pay it back.

To make matters worse, very often,

people are paying the amount back

many times over due to the interest.

This is the process by which individuals,

companies and governments acquire money.

It is respectably referred to as

'fractional reserve lending'

and is used globally by most other banking systems

keeping people and entire nations in perpetual debt.

(Karen) If you just keep printing dollars

with no backing, at a certain point

people lose confidence in the currency,

and that's what has happened.

(Dylan) The banking system right now

is in the business of manufacturing risk

by creating debt for individuals and people.

There is the risk that those people

will not pay that debt back,

but the liabilities for the risk have been

and continue to be assigned

to the US taxpayer and the US currency.

(Karen) We're now sitting in a situation

where the world's currencies are about to crash.

Nobody knows how long it's going to take,

but the Federal Reserve System

has been printing dollars like there's no tomorrow.

(Dylan) You have what is effectively

a criminal enterprise

based on the manipulation

of people's attention, resources

and time, in order to extract value from them.

(Karen) They're stealing money from us that way.

They're stealing the results

of our efforts and our labor.

(Dylan) That is something that has grown

as a cancer on our society.

(Karen) These bankers are all part of a system

called the Bank for International Settlements.

- Most people, even in business

and banking, don't understand

this bank and its role; the BIS.

(Karen) They own 40% of the assets

of the 43,000 companies that are

traded on the capital markets.

- The bank runs itself.

It has a board of directors which is composed

of 15 governors of central banks

from around the world.

(Karen) ...and they pull down 60% of the annual earnings.

They bought off all our media,

and that media is hoodwinking citizens.

(Abby) The media's morphed into just

peddling the corporate interests of

the money masters

that control the political establishment.

There's about 118 boards of directors that sit

on these five giant media corporations.

They all serve different boards, from Monsanto

to weapons, to food...

When you have all these interests bleeding together,

it's that much harder to differentiate

what interests you're seeing

laid out in the mainstream media.

(TV Announcer) Fair, balanced.

(Dylan) If you want to understand power,

you have to understand

who nominates candidates,

not understand who votes for candidates.

Our system is not a democracy.

The percentage of our population that

participates in the nomination process

is literally less than 5% of the population

and really less than 1% of the population.

If I was in control of the nominating process

of everything that everybody ate

and I always nominated

cheeseburgers or fried chicken,

and I told you that it was a democracy

and you could eat anything you want

as long as it was a cheeseburger or fried chicken.

Would that be a democracy?

I could sell it to you as a democracy

because I don't decide whether you eat

cheeseburgers or fried chicken.

You get to vote in a very large

and well-publicized election

as to whether we're going with

fried chicken or cheeseburgers

as people organize into very tribal groups

very anti-fried chicken and very pro-cheeseburger

or, they'll explain to you exactly why

cheeseburgers are going to be

the end of the world,

and why fried chicken is going to save you.

WHO MAKES THE RULES?

(Narrator) Those who can afford it

hire lobbyists who essentially buy politicians.

Most of the time,

either party will suit their needs.

[Professor James Thurber, Host] The definition

of a lobbyist in the United States is someone

who advocates for someone else

and is getting paid for it.

(Narrator) The laws then enacted

are quite often written

by the corporations to benefit themselves.

Professor Thurber sees

an underground explosion in lobbying

and estimates the industry actually brings in

more than $9 billion a year

exceeded only by tourism and government.

- The reason that we aren't

changing things right now is

the banks have lobbyists in Washington

in numbers I've never seen.

(Narrator) Lobbyists are

strictly there to buy access.

They are not there to

enhance the democratic process.

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