[xanaxist]

I'm not sure if I believe in Lincoln and JFK being assassinated for that reason, but I suppose it's possible. Lincoln did refuse to pay the bank's ridiculous interest rates when he needed funding for the Civil War.

I have no idea why the government doesn't issue its own money. But the following might be helpful in understanding:

Yet another thing to understand is that there is far more "money" in the economy than there are currency notes floating around. I'm sure you know about fractional reserve banking. I don't know what the current reserve requirement is in the US, but I'd be willing to bet its close to 0%. But for the sake of explanation, let's assume the requirement is 10% (I'm sure it's actually far less). That means if you deposit $1000 in the bank, the bank can then go and loan out $10,000 against your deposit, while charging exorbitant interest rates.

This is obviously unethical...the bank is making money off of assets it doesn't have (that's on top of the fact of riba being unethical to begin with). I doubt the Federal Reserve even has 1% in reserve, which would explain why they so vehemently refuse to allow auditing of their books. The banks and government regularly screw around with the reserve rate and other economic tools, and in the process, the wreak havoc on people's lives. People see their assets depreciate, their jobs disappear, etc. But the banks and the government always benefit.

So the "money" supply isn't even pieces of paper with some value determined by the government, it's a bunch of 0s and 1s on a computer drive. When the government needs money, they go to the bank and tell them how much is needed. The bank will transfer the "money" (the digits on a computer screen) into the relevant accounts. In exchange, they get some promise of repayment at a given rate of interest (for example, Treasury bills/ government bonds).

It's all just one big scam. Heard of the revolving door in Washington? It's basically the phenomenon of bankers and heads of corporations going to work for the government for a few years. While working for the government, they enact legislation and policies that benefit their banks or corporations. Then after a few years, they go back to work for those very same institutions, in which they doubtless own shares. So it's like a revolving door between gov't and banks/corporations. It's all the same people getting rich off these scams.

This video might be informative, it came up on a quick Google search:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc3sK...eature=related