The Creature From Jekyll Island (G.E.Griffin)

The basic plan for the Federal Reserve System was drafted at a secret meeting held in November of 1910 at a private resort of J. P. Morgan on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia. Those who attended represented the great financial institutions of Wall Street and, indirectly, Europe as well. The reason for secrecy was simple. Had it been known that the rival fractions of the banking community had joined together, the public would have been alerted to the possibility that the bankers were plotting an agreement in restraint of trade – which of course is exactly what they were doing. What emerged was a cartel agreement with five objectives: stop the growing competition from the nation’s newer banks; obtain a franchise to create money out of nothing for the purpose of lending; get control of the reserves of all banks so that the more reckless ones would not be exposed to currency drains and bank runs; get the taxpayer to pick up the cartel’s inevitable losses; and convince Congress that the purchase was to protect the public. The bankers would have to become partners with the politicians and that the structure of the cartel would have to be a central bank.