CHAPTER VII

HOW THE LOOT IS GATHERED

MEASURE now the reservoir of liquid capital--the hugest on this planet--siphoned into the coffers of the Federal Reserve System. The first pool comes from the capital of upwards of $100,000,000 commandeered at 6 per cent interest from the member banks. That is but a little pond or lakelet. Then there comes the ocean of money, over $1,800,000,000 conscripted at no per cent interest as reserve deposits from the member banks. This capital and these deposits--almost $2,000,000,000--are held practically in perpetuity. It is the hugest reservoir of liquid money on earth, it costs its manipulators and managers and controllers not one red cent of their own money and only a petty 6 per cent on a petty $100,000,000 of the gigantic sum. In other words, for an interest charge of practically $6,000,000 a year the Federal Reserve System gets the use of practically $2,000,000,000 or $2,000,000,000 at the absurd interest charge of three-tenths of one per cent!

That is what it really costs the money masters, the Invisible Empire of the U.S.A. and the Federal Reserve System--three-tenths of one per cent--for the practical control in perpetuity of the mightiest mass of liquid wealth ever massed on earth! Look at this in cold blood! Figure what it would mean to you if you could get the use of a petty $100,000 at three-tenths of one per cent interest! Then figure what it means to them to have the use of 20,000 times $100,000 at three-tenths of one per cent interest. Gives you an attack of vertigo, doesn't it?

Member banks and their stockholders and depositors furnish this titanic amount of practically $2,000,000,000 at three-tenths of one per cent interest and then member banks are graciously permitted to borrow from the Federal Reserve System _their own money_ at rates varying from _six to eighty-seven and one-half per cent per annum_. Impossible, you say? Not even organized Federal Reserve banditry, not even Amalgamated Shylockery, would have the supernal gall to so sandbag productive industry?

Here are the figures taken from the records of the Federal Reserve Bank at Atlanta, from the records of the Federal Reserve Board at Washington and from the records of the Comptroller of the Currency at Washington. The Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank at Atlanta, the Governor of the Federal Reserve Board at Washington and the Comptroller of the Currency at Washington--each of them and all of them--are hereby challenged to refute or question their absolute correctness and authenticity.

In a small town in Alabama was struggling a small National Bank. Its capital was $25,000 and its surplus was $12,500. It was a compulsory customer of the Federal Reserve Super-Shylockery sucking blood at Atlanta, Georgia. Its money had been commandeered by law to buy stock in the Super-Shylockery. Its reserve deposits had been conscripted by law to feed pap to the same parasite. It served the cotton industry--the breath of industrial life in its territory. Its name is not given because identification might work it great harm--but the Federal Reserve Oligarchs know its identity. Don't you ever doubt it.

This little National Bank in Alabama was in the grip of the Federal Reserve Octopus. It had to move the cotton crop in its territory. Farmers, planters, merchants--and in short, all industry in its territory including its own salvation--depended on the moving and on the marketing of the cotton crop. It was "root hog or die" and this little bank rooted and was looted precisely in this wise: It had to borrow from the Federal Reserve Super-Shylockery at Atlanta. It had no other house of refuge. It had to borrow something over $100,000 from the Federal Reserve Bank at Atlanta and for the week's period ending on July 31, 1920, it was charged and it paid as high as _thirty-one per cent per annum interest_! Two months later when its loan reached as high as $115,000 it was charged and it paid as high as _eighty-seven and one-half per cent per annum interest_ to this subter-human super-Shylock. For the two weeks ending on September 30, 1920, it was borrowing an average of $115,211. Two weeks' interest at six per cent would have been $288, but the records show that this little bank paid the Federal Reserve Pawnbrokery at Atlanta for interest on that amount for that time $2,189--running all the way from six to _eighty-seven and one-half per cent per annum_! The actual average time for this loan for that two weeks' period was almost exactly at the rate of _forty-five per cent per annum_, or at the rate of $51,884 per year for the use of $115,211! In about nine months that loan of $115,211 at that rate would have eaten up the capital and surplus of that little Alabama National Bank. Was that banking or was it putrid pawnbrokery? Oughtn't the Federal Reserve Bank at Atlanta to put the three ball sign of pawnbrokery over its portals?

And yet you read subsidized headlines sprawled athwart the columns of a lick-spittle press about "Agricultural Interests Fostered by Federal Reserve Banks" and "Farmers Aided by Federal Reserve System" and messes of the like "bull" and "bunk" fed out by paid press agents and absorbed by a befooled people chained to such pawnbrokery! "Aided" by a sandbag! "Fostered" by pawnbrokery thuggery! It's enough to make a "kike" pawnbroker sob and moan at his soft-heartedness. It's enough to make Olomon Solomon Levi pull down his three balls and wail in the Synagogue!

Later on and for what real reason no one knows--except that it wasn't from soft-heartedness--a portion of the usurious loot was disgorged by the Atlanta Federal Reserve pawnbrokery. That isn't really interesting. What is really interesting is the super-supernal and subter-brutal gall to first extort it. Many a usurer when caught and cornered has disgorged loot--that's as old as usury. Jesse James' press agent could boast of as much. When grilled on this interesting subject the multi-initialed Governor Harding of the Federal Reserve Board chittered and chattered about "basic lines of credit" and "progressive rates of interest," but that doesn't chlorinate such sandbaggery. Any pawnbroker can mutter and mumble such phrases.

When a bank has to pay up to _eighty-seven and a half per cent_ interest you can imagine what its customers must pay it.

And at the very time--during these very two weeks ending September 30, 1920--when this little Alabama National Bank right at the door of real production was being charged those Shylock rates for a paltry loan, banks in New York were getting as high as $100,000,000 handed out to them at from _five to seven per cent_. And yet you read about the Federal Reserve System "equalizing interest rates," "emancipating credit" and the like bunk! Why, it's enough to make Shylock and Pecksniff rend their cerements and jump from their graves and have another try at extortion and at applied hypocrisy. A difference of _eighty per cent per annum_ between New York City--where nothing but parasitism is grown--and Alabama--where real wealth of real cotton grows--is some difference, isn't it? And the eighty per cent difference coddles parasitism and penalizes production. This isn't the only sandbaggery of extortion perpetrated by the Federal Reserve oligarchy. But it's a pretty good example, isn't it?

Now take a look at the twelve regional pawnbrokeries for the year 1921 in the order of their pillagements. Here they are:

Location Paid in Capital Net Earnings Atlanta $4,189,500 131.18% Chicago 14,307,000 101.31% New York 27,114,000 96.23% Minneapolis 3,569,000 88.21% Richmond 5,428,500 80.94% Kansas City 4,570,500 66.86% San Francisco 7,374,500 66.72% St. Louis 4,603,000 64.13% Philadelphia 8,736,500 61.11% Cleveland 11,134,000 56.44% Boston 7,935,500 53.94% Dallas 4,203,000 38.40% ------------ ------ Total Capital $103,165,000 Average 79.56%

You would expect to find--from the facts set forth in the first part of this chapter--that the most conscienceless of these gentry, the Atlanta super-Shylockery, would show the hugest pile of pillage, and it does! On a paid in capital of $4,189,500, it vampired and blood-sucked out a net profit of $5,496,000, or 131.18 per cent. What the other vampires blood-sucked out you can read from the above table. You know the net earnings made by banks where you live. You know that a net earning of 12 per cent is a large one, but here--in a year of general disaster and of huge losses--you have an average net earning for these twelve vampires of production of 79.56 per cent or over six times the average net earnings of National Banks for a long term of years!

Ask yourself if this enormous net earning percentage, made out of commandeered capital and out of conscripted deposits, isn't outside the realm of banking and in the realm of unconscionable vampire pawnbrokery? Ask yourself--in a land where pawnbrokers are licensed and restricted to two to three per cent a month or 24 to 36 per cent per year--if 79.56 per cent per year doesn't brand such a system as outrageous Shylockery?

But that isn't the worst of it. Before making these net earnings this Federal Reserve System sandbagged out an "expense account" of $36,066,065, or an average of $3,005,083 for each regional pawnbrokery. The most reckless expense squandermaniac was the New York sandbaggery with an expense account of $8,167,780, and the most economical was the Minneapolis satrapy with an expense account of $1,325,867. In a succeeding chapter reference will be made to these expense orgies. But ask yourself if, in a year of commercial disasters and of enforced economies, such leviathan expenses aren't an outrage? Ask yourself if such squandermania--imposed upon the producers of real wealth--by bureaucratic pillagement isn't alone and in itself an alarm clock?

Here is a table showing the location, the capital and the piled up pillagements of these twelve regional pawnbrokeries:

Surplus Location Paid in Capital Percentage New York $27,114,000 222 Atlanta 4,189,500 217.6 Kansas City 4,570,500 211 Minneapolis 3,569,000 209.2 Boston 7,935,500 207.8 San Francisco 7,374,500 206.2 Philadelphia 8,736,500 205.4 St. Louis 4,603,000 204 Cleveland 11,134,000 203.2 Richmond 5,428,500 203.2 Chicago 14,307,000 202.8 Dallas 4,203,000 176 ------------- ------- Total $103,165,000 Average 209

Upon this capital (commandeered at a petty 6 per cent) and from its gigantic deposits (conscripted at no per cent) this super-vampire Federal Reserve System has in a few brief years--after paying stupendously extravagant expense accounts--piled up an accumulated pillage of $215,523,000. Do you know or do you know of anybody who does know--outside the magic circle of Hebraic pawnbrokery pillagement--of any such banking pillagement for the years 1914-1921, inclusive?

And incidentally these mazuma monarchs have $42,231,240 invested in the palatial emporiums where they ply their traffic and gild their pills of pillage--to which reference will later be made.

Why don't you find these facts elsewhere? Why have they been hidden from you? Why doesn't the "Independent Press"--about as "independent" as a shackled slave--blazon them forth? Why don't editors of "Fearless Magazines"--about as "fearless" as a galley slave at the oars--ring the tocsin of alarm? Learn why here and now. Because in plain Americanese, they haven't the "guts." These Federal Reserve money despots have the press of this land "buffaloed" and "hog-tied"--and "hog"-tied is particularly right too. Through their credit channels these Federal Reserve despots have a strangle hold on the banks and on the advertisers of the U.S.A. and the banks and the advertisers have a strangle hold on the press and there you are! Federal Reserve propaganda tinted and tainted with the extract of gold is published by the yard. But the real facts, the interesting details of pillage are all surrounded by Maxim silencers!

The next chapter will tell you of the Partiality of the Pillage.