Federal reserve involvement?

[R Croxford]

Executive Order 11110

AMENDMENT OF EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 10289
AS AMENDED, RELATING TO THE PERFORMANCE OF
CERTAIN FUNCTIONS AFFECTING THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY

By virtue of the authority vested in me by section 301 of title 3 of the United States Code, it is ordered as follows:

SECTION 1. Executive Order No. 10289 of September 19, 1951, as amended, is hereby further amended --

(a) By adding at the end of paragraph 1 thereof the following subparagraph (j):

"(j) The authority vested in the President by paragraph (b) of section 43 of the Act of May 12, 1933, as amended (31 U.S.C. 821 (b)), to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury not then held for redemption of any outstanding silver certificates, to prescribe the denominations of such silver certificates, and to coin standard silver dollars and subsidiary silver currency for their redemption," and

(b) By revoking subparagraphs (b) and (c) of paragraph 2 thereof.

SEC. 2. The amendment made by this Order shall not affect any act done, or any right accruing or accrued or any suit or proceeding had or commenced in any civil or criminal cause prior to the date of this Order but all such liabilities shall continue and may be enforced as if said amendments had not been made.

JOHN F. KENNEDY

THE WHITE HOUSE,
June 4, 1963.

[R Croxford]

Sec. 5301. Buying obligations of the United States Government

(a) The President may direct the Secretary of the Treasury to
make an agreement with the Federal reserve banks and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System when the President decides that the foreign commerce of the United States is affected
adversely because -
(1) the value of coins and currency of a foreign country
compared to the present standard value of gold is depreciating;
(2) action is necessary to regulate and maintain the parity of
United States coins and currency;
(3) an economic emergency requires an expansion of credit; or
(4) an expansion of credit is necessary so that the United
States Government and the governments of other countries can
stabilize the value of coins and currencies of a country.
(b) Under an agreement under subsection (a) of this section, the
Board shall permit the banks (and the Board is authorized to permit
the banks notwithstanding another law) to agree that the banks will
-
(1) conduct through each entire specified period open market
operations in obligations of the United States Government or
corporations in which the Government is the majority stockholder;
and
(2) buy directly and hold an additional $3,000,000,000 of
obligations of the Government for each agreed period, unless the
Secretary consents to the sale of the obligations before the end
of the period.
(c) With the approval of the Secretary, the Board may require
Federal reserve banks to take action the Secretary and Board
consider necessary to prevent unreasonable credit expansion.
Source
(Pub. L. 97-258, Sept. 13, 1982, 96 Stat. 993.)

[R Croxford]

This is long so if your bored!


THE JFK MYTH
Was he assassinated because he opposed the Fed?
© 2000 by G. Edward Griffin - Updated 2005 December 16

This is in reply to an e-mail I received pointing out the views of the Christian Common-Law Institute regarding an alleged conflict between JFK and the Federal Reserve. It also suggested that this could have been the reason he was assassinated. On their website, the CCLI stated:

On June 4, 1963, a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive Order 11110, was signed with the authority to basically strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government at interest. With the stroke of a pen, President Kennedy declared that the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank would soon be out of business. President Kennedy's Executive Order 11110 gave the Treasury Department the explicit authority: "to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the treasury."... Perhaps the assassination of JFK was a warning to all future presidents not to interfere with the private Federal Reserve's control over the creation of money.


This is what I refer to on page 569 of my book, The Creature from Jekyll Island, as "The JFK Rumor." I cannot accept this interpretation of history because of the following facts:

THE EXECUTIVE ORDERS
If you look at a copy of EO 11110 you will find that it does not order the issuance of Silver Certificates. It orders an amendment to EO 10289. If you then look up EO 10289, you will find that it says:

The Secretary of the Treasury is hereby designated and empowered to perform the following-described functions of the President without the approval, ratification, or other action of the President.


Those functions did not include the power to issue Silver Certificates. The purpose of EO 11110 was to add that power to the list. The exact wording of the Order was:

Executive Order No. 10289 of September 19, 1951, as amended, is hereby further amended (a) By adding at the end of paragraph 1 thereof the following subparagraph (j): (1) "The authority to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury."


Therefore, my statement in The Creature from Jekyll Island is correct. EO 11110 did not order the printing of Silver Certificates. It ordered the amendment of a previous executive order so that the United States Code would authorize or "empower" the Secretary of the Treasury to issue Silver Certificates if the occasion should arise. The occasion never arose. According to the Comprehensive Catalog of U.S. Paper Money by Gene Hessler, and also the Blackbook Price Guide to United States Paper Money, 33rd edition, the last issuance of Silver Certificates was in 1957. That was five years prior to Kennedy's EO 11110.

The following additional explanation was contained in a 1996 report from the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress:

What E.O. 11110 did was to modify previous Executive Order 10289, delegating to the Secretary of the Treasury various powers of the President. To these delegated powers, E.O. 11110 added the power to alter the supply of Silver Certificates in circulation. Executive Order 11110, therefore, did not create any new authority for the Treasury to issue notes; it only affected who could give the order, the Secretary or the President.

The reason for the move was that the President had just signed legislation repealing the Silver Purchase Act. With this repeal, the Treasury Secretary could no longer control the issue of Silver Certificates on his own authority. However, the issuance of certificates could be controlled under the President's authority. Hence, for administrative convenience, President Kennedy issued Executive Order 11110.

Ironically, the purpose of the order and the legislation was to decrease the circulation of Silver Certificates, with Federal Reserve Notes taking their place. As economic activity grew and prices rose in the 1950s and early 1960s, the need for small-denomination currency grew at the same time that the price of silver increased. The Treasury required silver for the increasing number of Silver Certificates and coins needed for transactions. But the price of silver was rapidly approaching the point that the silver in the coins and in reserve for the certificates was worth more than the face value of the money.

To conserve on the silver needs of the Treasury, President Kennedy requested legislation needed to bring the issuance of Silver Certificates to an end and to authorize the Fed to issue small denomination notes (which it could not at that time). The Fed began issuing small denomination notes almost immediately after the legislation was passed. And in October 1964, the Treasury ceased issuing Silver Certificates altogether. If anything, E.O. 11110 enhanced Federal Reserve power and did not in any way reduce it." (See "Money and the Federal Reserve System: Myth and Reality," by G. Thomas Woodward, Specialist in Macroeconomics, Economics Division, Congressional Research Services, Library of Congress, CRS Report for Congress, No. 96-672 E, July 31, 1996.)


Let's put this issue into perspective. The proponents of the JFK Myth assert that Kennedy was assassinated because he was about to issue Silver Certificates, thereby denying the bankers their customary interest payments on the nation's currency. However, the reality was just the opposite. Previously, the President could have issued Silver Certificates on his own authority; but, with the signing of E.O. 1110, he delegated that authority to the Secretary of the Treasury. At that time, the Secretary of the Treasury was Douglas Dillon from a well-known and powerful banking family. That means Kennedy surrendered the power to issue Silver Certificates and gave it to a member of the banking fraternity who could do with it as he pleased "without the approval, ratification, or other action of the President." Dillon, of course, would have strong motive to make sure that power was never exercised. The theory that Kennedy was getting ready to issue Silver Certificates is entirely without evidence.

The CCLI makes this additional claim in its report:

The Christian Common Law Institute has exhaustively researched this matter through the Federal Register and Library of Congress. We can now safely conclude that this Executive Order has never been repealed, amended, or superseded by any subsequent Executive Order. In simple terms, it is still valid.


This is not supported by the facts. The power granted to the Secretary of Treasury to issue Silver Certificates was rescinded on September 9, 1987, by Executive Order 12608, signed by President Reagan. The official purpose of the Order was stated as "Elimination of unnecessary Executive orders and technical amendments to others." It did not affect EO 11110 directly but did affect the parent EO 10289 - along with 62 other executive orders. That is how paragraph (j) was amended to remove the power in question. This Order can be found in its entirety in the Federal Register 52 FR 34617.

The picture is blurred by the fact that the Treasury did issue United States Notes in the same year as EO 11110 (1963) but, as discussed further along, U.S. Notes are not the same as Silver Certificates. Furthermore, their issuance had nothing to do with EO 11110. It was mandated by an 1868 act of Congress, which required the Secretary of the Treasury to maintain the amount of U.S. Notes outstanding at a fixed level. This did not originate with JFK and, in fact, he probably had no deep understanding of it. It was a routine matter initiated by the Treasury merely to replace worn and damaged specimens of older Notes in order to comply with the 1868 law. Apparently some of these new Notes did get into circulation but were quickly snapped up by private collectors. They never became a significant part of the money supply and, in fact, were not intended to.

THE SPEECH THAT NEVER WAS
The persistent rumor regarding the bankers' role in JFK's death was reinforced by several books circulated in conservative circles. They contained an ominous passage from Kennedy's speech at Columbia University, just ten days before his assassination. He is quoted as saying: "The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the Americans' freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of his plight." [Quoted by M.L. Beckman, Born Again Republic, Billings, Montana, Freedom Church, 1981, p. 23; also by Lindsay Williams, To Seduce A Nation, Kasilof, Arkansas: Worth Publications, 1984, p. 26.] However, when Columbia University was contacted to provide a transcript of the speech, it was learned that Kennedy never spoke there - neither ten days before his assassination nor at any other time! Ronald Whealan, head librarian at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in Boston, provides this additional information: "Ten days prior to the assassination he was at the White House meeting with, among others, the ambassador to the United States from Portugal." [Source: Hollee Haswell, Curator at the Low Memorial Library, Columbia University.]

It is possible that the President did make the remarks attributed to him on a different date before a different audience. Even so, it is a cryptic message that could have several meanings. That he intended to expose the Fed is the least likely of them all. Kennedy had been a life-long collectivist and internationalist. He had attended the Fabian London School of Economics; participated in the destruction of the American money supply; and engineered the transfer of American wealth to foreign nations. (See page 109 of The Creature from Jekyll Island.) There is little reason to believe that he had suddenly "seen the light" and was reversing his life-long beliefs and commitments.

SILVER CERTIFICATES VS. U.S. NOTES
These facts alone should be enough to settle the matter, but there is yet one more point of confusion to be cleared up, and that involves the difference between Silver Certificates and United States Notes. In monetary terms, a Note means a promissory note. A Note is any financial instrument that states in clear and unambiguous terms who is to pay what to whom on what date. All four elements must be included. [See Ewart, James E., Money (Seattle, Principia Publishing, 1998), pp. 27-29.] Therefore, any paper currency that displays a statement such as "The United States Treasury will pay to the bearer on demand twenty dollars in silver coin" is a Note. A Silver Certificate is just one form of a Note. Other forms existed in the past and included Bank Notes, United States Notes, Gold Certificates, and even Federal-Reserve Notes in those by-gone days when they were backed by gold.

Earlier issues of U.S. Notes displayed printed statements to the effect that (1) the bearer could redeem them (2) at the Treasury (3) on demand (4) either for dollars or a specified weight of gold or silver. During those years, a dollar was defined by law as 371.25 grains of pure silver, which was the amount contained in a One-Dollar silver coin. The law also provided that the metal could be in the form of coins, dust, nuggets, plate, or bullion. Therefore, whether the phrase printed on the currency promised dollars, silver, or gold, it ultimately meant precious metal in one form or another - usually coin. Since there was nothing ambiguous about that, those U.S. Notes were true Notes in the legal sense because they contained all four elements of a promissory note.

This tradition began to change in the late 1960s and, since about 1971, U.S. Notes have become very ambiguous, indeed, about what can be redeemed for them. The former clearly written contracts have now been replaced by random, unconnected phrases such as The United States of America; Twenty Dollars: This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private. These words look official and impressive but, in terms of a contract to redeem the currency for something of intrinsic value, they have no meaning at all. Silver Certificates once were a promise to deliver silver. U.S. Notes now are a promise to deliver taxes and inflation.

Even in 1963 when EO 11110 was issued, there were important legal and technical differences in the regulations that governed the issuance of Silver Certificates and U.S. Notes. These words were not used interchangeably. Regulations pertaining to the issuance of Silver Certificates could not be applied to the issuance of U.S. Notes, and vice versa. When EO 11110 authorized the issuance of Silver Certificates, it said nothing about U.S. Notes. The subsequent issuance of U.S. Notes, therefore, had nothing to do with EO 11110. And that is the point of this analysis. Without that understanding, one cannot grasp the significance of the JFK executive orders.

I do not claim to have the final answers on these issues, but this is where our research has led so far. I am open to additional information or interpretation. I would especially welcome a response from the Christian Common Law Institute.

G. Edward Griffin
October 15, 2000


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



IS GRIFFIN WORKING FOR THE OTHER SIDE?
When the previous material was posted to this web site, I assumed that would put the matter to rest – or at least would relieve me of having to repeatedly explain my position. How wrong I was. Those who had accepted the JFK rumor as fact were not pleased, and I began to receive angry letters suggesting that I was either an idiot or working for the bankers to cover their crimes. My analysis and the fact that key elements of the alleged evidence were non-existent made no difference. To them, a belief in the virtue of JFK and the evil of the banking fraternity were all that was necessary for proof. The myth had become an item of faith, not to be challenged by mere facts.

Recently, I received an exceptionally antagonistic email that made all the others seem like certificates of merit. It didn't introduce anything new to the debate but it was so heated and – shall we say colorful – that I thought it might be of general interest. The following excerpts are from an exchange of emails with Rich Loomis. I would not normally mention the name of someone who corresponds with me, but this is an exception because of the abusive nature of his remarks. It's not that I am overly sensitive to such things but, in his first emails, he accused me of hiding my true intentions and dared me to meet him in open debate where he could expose my duplicity and lack of scholarship – so I think it is only fair to accept his challenge and reply to him publicly by name.

I must warn you that what follows, even though edited to omit repetition, is still quite lengthy; so, unless you have an interest in this topic, you may want to find something else to do. However, for JFK afficionados, it will be worth it. For others, there may be entertainment value in the colorful barbs that Loomis throws at me. Regardless of what else we may think about him, he clearly is strong on passion.

There were several letters from Loomis. Both of them were primarily a recitation of the JFK rumor interspersed with barbs about how only an idiot could doubt that it was true. The best way to present this exchange is to reprint pertinent passages from his letters followed by my replies. Enjoy.

EG: Hello Rich Loomis. I have delayed responding for several reasons. First, things have been hectic here and my time is severely limited for polemics. Second, I wanted to cool down a bit to make sure I did not respond in anger. As you know, your communiqué was loaded with insulting statements and personal barbs. Nevertheless, I will now attempt to answer your points in the spirit of replying to someone who is honestly seeking information rather than an argument.

RL: Mr. Griffin – my tone was a bit harsh, to be sure . . but for me, it often takes a bit of outrage to move me off dead center and actually take the time to respond to items of concern, which surely barrage us all at an accelerated pace these days. Moreover, it especially irks me when someone of your mental stature and insight and public standing goes around doing “damageâ€

[R Croxford]

Now ask yourself???
Can the president replace the secretary of the treasury?
or lemme say can the president fire the sec of the tres.?
I do not know.

[R Croxford]

Now Dan I really love you trying to debunk something with some other mans definition.
If you like Phd dudes so much then you will love these guys.

Steven E. Jones, Ph.D.

David Ray Griffin, Ph.D.

James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.

lol
If this site spoke in definates we wouldn't be here.. would we.
The fed and the treasury are 2 diff things right.

Unless you can definitly say that people are wrong and you are absolutly right. You have 1 2 3 people who say it has nothing to do with it.... I have hundreds that believe it does. I bet you think the CFR and the Trilateral co0mmisions are harmless too huh?
ok I am done
Peace

[Dan]

You should learn how to read all of the print.

EO 10289 was revoked in part.

Do you know what in part means?

[Dan]

Thanks for the Edward Griffin material - it clearly restates Dr. Flaherty's argument.

Well done!

[myra]

francois bertrand wrote:myra wrote:Paul Pennyworth wrote:AL DATI wrote:...........Was JFK trying to shut down the federal reserve?,and who were the board members at the time? No, JFK signed executive order 11110 on June 4, 1963 Ordering that the Federal Reserve Banks be controlled by the government (remember WE The People) and not charge interest to the American people, by the practices of Christian lending. The Federal reserves bankers (Rockefeller ,Alan Dulles, etc) would be out of a job as federal reserve bankers. After JFK was assassinated , this order never was enforced ....I would think that this was also a factor in his murder. Another nail in the coffin. Didn't JFK already have several million dollars of non-Federal Reserve US currency printed (but not distributed) before his assassination?I have also read that President Lincoln was murdered for trying to do the same thing as JFK, print our own non-FR currency. Has anyone else read or heard that?MyraActually reading "Kill Zone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza" by Craig Roberts. Mr Roberts give all answers about that in his book.

Wow! What luck. I have that waiting for me at the library after ordering it weeks ago. Thanks!

[R Croxford]

You you removed part of it does that mean it is amended? Not revoked but amended. Why state revoke when all you did is amend it?

[Dan]

The only response is wow!