Overflight, 64

“The main function of the Federal Reserve is to regulate the supply of money. Yet, if no one is able to define what money is, how can we have an opinion about how the System is performing? The answer, of course, is that we cannot, and that is exactly the way the cartel wants it.
The reason the Federal Reserve appears to be a complicated subject is because most discussions start somewhere in the middle. By the time we get into it, definitions have been scrambled and basic concepts have been assumed. Under such conditions, intellectual chaos is inevitable. If we start at the beginning, however, and deal with each concept in sequence from the general to the specific, and if we agree on definitions as we go, we shall find to our amazement that the issues are really quite simple. Furthermore, the process is not only painless, it is — believe it or not — intensely interesting.”
G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jeckyll Island, A Second Look at the Federal Reserve

“3. Debt has thus become not only a means of pushing these countries into extreme poverty, but also a tool for domination and exploitation, phenomena that one might have supposed to have disappeared along with colonialism. Worse still, it has facilitated a transition from public to private colonization, virtually a return to slavery as we knew it in the nineteenth century. …
38. The current debt management process will also enable the transnational corporations to put paid to any notions that the debtor countries might have about affirming their sovereignty and determining their own path to development. Because of the role it plays nowadays, debt is a terrifying instrument of domination that transnational companies wield against developing countries to dangerous effect. … This failure, coupled with the policies of the transnational corporations and the selfishness of the developed States, has led to the creation of two harmful and destructive practices, namely, structural adjustment programmes and, more recently, the devaluation of developing countries’ currencies.”
United Nations, Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, Sub−Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Effects of debt on human rights, Working paper prepared by Mr. El Hadji Guissé, as found at cetim.ch and quoted in Marco Saba, O la Banca o la Vita (Your Bank or Your Life)