On this Flash Back Friday episode, Jason Hartman hosts G. Edward Griffin for the third time. Griffin is often quoted in the podcast with his book, The Creature from Jekyll Island. He gives us another look at the Federal Reserve, discusses our freedoms and liberties being depleted, and the monetary scam that has created unrepayable debt.

Jason Hartman 0:00
I’d like to introduce someone whose voice you’ve heard on the show before. And that is Chad, and we have a fantastic little YouTube raffle for you, Chad. What’s it all about? Yes, we have an exciting opportunity coming up for you to be able to win a free ticket to meet the Masters coming up in March or a $500 travel allowance. Here’s what you need to do to be able to win one of those things. We will be selecting a winner on March 4 when the contest ends. And all you have to do is go to the YouTube channel, which is youtube.com slash Jason Hartman real estate. Subscribe if you haven’t already, then pick any video to watch. There’s a variety of categories everything about real estate investing from finding the right markets, analyzing real estate deals, the economics of real estate investing, property management financing, there’s a whole wide range of videos that you can choose from, and choose one that you think would be interesting to you watch it, and then go to the comments section. And comment just a quick one sentence comment. Something that you learned from that video and make sure to include the hashtag j. h live in the comment and that will enter you into this raffle. Okay, so that’s real easy. Just go to youtube.com slash Jason Hartman real estate, subscribe to the channel, and then watch any video you like and make a comment below the video of one thing you learned include the hashtag j h live and that will enter you in the raffle to win a free ticket to meet the masters or a $500 travel allowance. This ends on March 4, so be sure to get it done before March 4. We look forward to seeing you at meet the masters. Thanks for joining us, Chad.

Chad 1:44
Thanks. Welcome to this week’s edition of flashback Friday,

Jason Hartman 1:47
your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason is hand picked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.

Announcer 2:01
Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it. And now here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Jason Hartman 2:51
Welcome, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me today. This is your host Jason Hartman Episode Number 664 six six four. And I am glad you’re here with me today because we are doing something we have never done never ever. This is the first time there’s always a first time for everything right? And this is one of those times it’s really not that big a deal but we do flashback Friday as you know you regular listeners and our flashback Friday was a fascinating interview if I don’t say so myself. I was not the guest so I was only the interview or I was interviewing g Edward Griffin from creating wealth Episode 291 on flashback Friday, and our episode today is a brand new just recorded hot off the press, literally recorded about four days ago. Interview with none other than g Edward Griffin. So that’s what I’m saying we’ve never done. We’ve never done back to back like that. And of course he is the Very famous, well known author of the book, The creature from Jekyll Island fascinating look at money, freedom, conspiracy theories, the Federal Reserve, the banking cartel, the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, all of these institutions that control our lives in so many ways that we literally don’t even notice them. In talking about that, think of it from this perspective, think of the perspective of content in our lives, all the stuff we see, and we’re familiar with, and we usually spend time rearranging, we’re always rearranging the content of our lives, right? Let’s get some new stuff, a new car, a new house, a new boyfriend, new girlfriend, a new husband, a new wife. We’re rearranging things right. We’re always rearranging stuff. Some people rearrange a little too often, admittedly, but we always have this stuff where we’re rearranging The content of our lives and we really noticed the content. The content is very apparent to all of us. But there is another thing that plays a much bigger role in our lives. And that is the context, the context, the environment, the overriding theme, the backdrop of our lives, out of which everything comes. Remember, it’s that that concept of the chicken and the egg, what came first? I bet you don’t know. I’m about to tell you. Just kidding. I don’t know either. So what came first the chicken or the egg? I don’t know. And none of us know probably. But here’s the thing with context and content. We know that context j Rates content. So why am I talking about this? When we talk about monetary policy, when we talk about deflation, inflation stagnation, the economy in general, the marketplace that supposedly which it isn’t much true anymore the supposedly free market? Haha, Joke’s on us. The market is not very free, but it should be. So we have this context and the context is like the air we breathe unless we live in Beijing or Mexico City or Cairo. I remember when I went to Cairo, I got so sick from Cairo, Egypt, of course, I got so sick from the smog like the air, you could literally see the air it was so bad. I went to go see the pyramids and stuff and it was just really, really polluted. Okay. And so the air in which we live the environment in which we live, that is the context of our lives. And we don’t really usually notice it unless it’s really polluted.

Jason Hartman 7:12
And fish, you know, they live in a context to write. What context do fish live in? Well, that would be water. But do they notice the water? I don’t know. We don’t know. Okay. In fact, there was an interesting little a little aside tangent alert here. A little aside. They did a study recently there, you know, who knows how they do these studies, but they whoever they is, don’t you love that they write well, some scientist ostensibly scientists did a study I was reading about it. That said, the average person nowadays has the attention span of a goldfish. That’s scary and I will admit, I am One of those because my attention span has declined quite a bit. In the New World, I used to just sort of sit down and read stuff, read a book, read the magazine, whatever. Now it’s like, wow, read for a little bit. I’ll have to check my email what’s going on on social media? I think I need a drink of water. You know, it’s like too many distractions nowadays, right? Well, he still needs a drink of water either way. But so

Jason Hartman 8:28
context and content understand that the banking cartel, the Federal Reserve, being the largest member or participant or really the leading the leader of the banking cartel, the Federal Reserve, which is about as federal as Federal Express, we don’t really notice it, you know, most people don’t even know what it is. Unfortunately, of course, all of you do, because you’re well informed listeners, right? You study this stuff, you listen to it, you hear me talk about it, but it influenced Is everything. Think about it from a smaller scale even think about Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Association. So what that stands for? Yeah, can’t even remember. I used to know what the FHA, the Federal Housing Administration, gosh, wow. It’s, that’s amazing. You know, you take these acronyms for granted after a while you don’t even remember what they stand for NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Association, okay, we got it. So, context and content. When we’re investing in real estate out there in the marketplace, we sort of take the secondary mortgage market, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, we take these, these organizations that really provide a lot of the context in which we invest because they influence prices. They influence rental rates, they influence, obviously, financing, availability and the amount we pay for financing and all the stuff. So that’s part of the context, right? Even things like Zillow, things like certain books, certain themes, certain types of education out there, influence the context, the environment in which we play the playing field. So it’s very important to always think about context versus content. And everybody notices the content. Few people notice the context. And when we talk about the central banking cartel, that is a huge part of the context of our lives in so many ways. It influences our wealth, our savings, our you know, God forbid, hopefully we don’t own any stocks. We’re just real estate investors, but the price of stocks, real estate, precious metals, every everything, the cost of a new car, the cost of a TV set everything the price of oil, the price Other forms of energy. It’s just omnipresent. Right? So this is very important stuff. Now, we’ll stop talking about it after today for a while. But we’ve got our venture Alliance mastermind trip to Jekyll Island coming up in just a couple of weeks here. Well, I guess it’s about 10 days away looks something like that. It’s going to be a great time. If you’re interested in taking your entrepreneurship and real estate career and really becoming a real estate entrepreneur of sorts. to the next level, check out venture Alliance mastermind.com venture Alliance mastermind calm and you can join us as a one time thing as a guest on historic Jekyll Island where the Federal Reserve was founded. And so this additional new brand new conversation with G. Edward Griffin, who’s really the the foremost thinker and author on this subject, I think you’ll find it to be fascinating. But it also influences another huge context. And that is the context of freedom. Because your resources are really nothing more than your time and talents, right? So we all go out into the world, we contribute our time and our talents, and we get something back for it. We call that money. It’s really just currency. And there’s a difference between money and currency, money having intrinsic value, currency being a symbol of that intrinsic value, not really value. currency is like a derivative. You know, my definition of the derivative is the thing about the thing, right? And that’s really what currency is, that’s what dollars or euros or yen you want. realsies pesos, any currency on Earth. Those are all currency. It’s just a symbol. It’s a derivative. It’s not the thing. It’s the thing about the thing. And so the value of this thing about the thing that we’re all chasing After the almighty dollars, they say,

Jason Hartman 13:03
is constantly fluctuating because of this fake man made artificial context in which we must live. And before we get to our interview, I just want to say the most important thing that has been the theme of my investment education for you over the last 12 or 13 years and on this show for the last 10 years, what is that theme? The theme is align your interest as an investor, align your interest with the most powerful forces the human race has ever known. Remember, you’re listening to flashback Friday. Our new episodes are published every Monday and Wednesday. Central Banks Governments align your interests with them. Fools try to fight them. fools who are eating refried beans in the woods stocking up for anarchy and civil unrest and societal collapse. They refuse to align their interests with these incredibly powerful entities. Now, listen, I’m not saying I like it, I don’t like it. I think philosophically it’s disgusting. But you know the old saying, if you can’t beat them,

Jason Hartman 14:36
join them. So, there you go. Align your interests with them, understand and be critical of them for sure. But in at the end of the day, this investment philosophy that I’ve been teaching you is about an alignment of interest. You’re not jumping into part of this scam. That they have the They’re perpetrating on humanity. But you’re just aligning your interest with what they’re going to do most likely. And you know what that is? We’ve talked about it on the last 663 episodes. Right. So let’s jump over to our interview with G. Edward Griffin check out property investments at Jason hartman.com. Join us for our Ohio property tour coming up soon. Jason Hartman calm in the event section, early bird pricing for our Ohio creating wealth seminar and property tour. And of course, as I mentioned, venture Alliance mastermind calm for the Jekyll Island trip, the mastermind weekend. All right, here we go. Let’s welcome g Edward Griffin back to the show. And hear more about money and freedom. It’s my pleasure to welcome g Edward Griffin back to the show. He’s been on twice before. He is the author of The seminal work the creature from Jekyll Island a second look at the Federal Reserve. You probably know his name by now. He is just such a prolific guy and really has has the the seminal work on this topic. He’s founder and president of American media reality zone, also founder of freedom force International. g. Edward Griffin, welcome back. How are you?

G. Edward Griffin 16:23
Well, thanks for inviting me. I’m very well today. Thank you.

Jason Hartman 16:27
It’s good to have you back on the show. And you’re coming to us from Westlake Village, California. Yep, that’s it. Fantastic. Well, we are we are taking a trip for my venture Alliance mastermind group to Jekyll Island. It’s coming right up. And we’re so excited about that. And I thought in this interview, of course, we want to talk about the updated version of the book. you’ve updated this book so many times. It’s such a fantastic profile of the Federal Reserve and the banking cartel. And what it means to us and in the future. But I also wanted to talk a little bit about the place itself, because we’re about to go there. Where do you want to start? Maybe just give a little quick overview on the Federal Reserve what it is what it’s not. And then we’ll take it from there. How’s that sound?

G. Edward Griffin 17:16
Well, that’s good. You can start almost any place and this topic and it doesn’t make any difference which way you head out. You’re going to cover some very interesting landscape. But I suppose Jekyll Island itself, this is a good place to start this time because it’s of course the included in the title of my book The creature from Jekyll Island. And since you have a lot of your friends and listeners who are going with you to Jekyll Island, I don’t have to explain that it’s a real Island but you know, a lot of people think it’s a fictitious place, because I attached the word creature to it. So I guess they they have the they conjure up this image of you know the Creature from the Black Lagoon or Then, of course jeckle conjures up the thought of, you know, Jekyll and Hyde and all these things. And I have to confess that I deliberately did that in concocting the title because I wanted to get people’s attention. But the main fact is that and the important fact is that Jekyll Island is a real Island, and it’s off the coast of Georgia. And the significance of it is that that is the place where the Federal Reserve System was actually conceived. Well, that’s an interesting fact that in itself, when you think about it, that here’s something that most people think, is a government agency, when it’s not, and we’ll maybe talk about that a little bit later. But it’s certainly a very important institution. In the United States. It’s the institution that controls our money supply and interest rates and, and the velocity of money and the economy to a large extent. And so it’s a very important institution and instead of being created under the spotlight of political observations in Washington, DC, and, you know, pros and cons and debates on the floor of Congress and committees and all that sort of thing, it was done at a highly secret meeting over there, off the coast of Georgia on Jekyll Island. And that is it is an intriguing fact. In fact, that is the fact that caught my attention. When I first started down this research path many, many years ago, I noticed that all of the information that was available, whether it came from Friend or Foe was in agreement that, indeed, the Federal Reserve was conceived on Jekyll Island and that it was a secret meeting. So I thought, well, that’s interesting. Why, first of all, why would it be there? Instead of in Washington and why would it be secret, you know, because it occurred to me and then that it when people do things in secret, there’s usually something Hi. So my curiosity was that tonight, tried to find out what it was that they wanted to hide. And I found out and that’s the reason I wrote the book is to explain what it was that they were hiding, and what impact that has had throughout history, and certainly what impact it has on us today. But now, Jekyll Island itself, in those days, was privately owned by a small group of millionaires. So today, we would call them billionaires or trillionaires. But in those days in 1910, this all happened to be a millionaire was the equivalent of being a billionaire today. And it was owned by a small group of those fellows. People like JP Morgan and

Jason Hartman 20:46
William and I must just I must just insert the irony of that is that one of its mandates was to control inflation. That’s just so ironic. That comment, you know, yeah,

G. Edward Griffin 20:58
the mandates of the alleged mandates the Federal Reserve come to that, you know, they say they are supposed to do one thing, but when you analyze who they are and what they are, you realize that that is mostly for show that their real objectives and their real goals are quite different. And fighting inflation is not one of them, anyway. But anyway, so the island back in 1910, was owned by a small group of very wealthy people, but people like JP Morgan and William Rockefeller and their business associates, and it was a resort island. It’s where their families came to spend the cold winter months to get out of New York and New Jersey. And they go down there to the balmy shores of Georgia. And they had built a magnificent clubhouse. They’re still standing, by the way, very nicely restored is, as you’ll see, I guess your meeting is going to be held there. It’s a magnificent structure. It’s, it’s great exam beautiful. No, yeah, it’s an example of the architecture of the time opulent architectures, all wood, and then nicely carved and lots of filigrees and decorations and, and, you know towers and spirals and things like that is beautiful. But then the families themselves had built their own. They call them cottages in that area. That’s a funny word for them, because when you see them, they’re quite large mansions, each one, but to them, they were cottages and many of those have been restored to and I enjoy taking a trip around the island, they have a tour, and you can visit several of those cottages. And it’s very interesting to see how the super wealthy lived in those days. And in those days to have a bathroom was considered to be a big event. And some of these had more than one bathroom. I remember the one I was in I think they had Five or six bathrooms. While you can imagine, that’s like having five or six airplane hangers, you know. So anyway, it’s a great place to visit because of the history and lots of interesting photographs. And certainly one of the highlights of any trip there is to visit the the little library and gift shop bookshop. And I’m advisedly saying that now because I’m going to be promoting my own book, but one of our one of our customers sent me a letter about magesh, nine months ago with the photograph he had visited this bookshop in the gift shop there in Jekyll Island, and lo and behold, right as you walk in the door, there’s my book sitting up there on a shelf, the most prominent sales space in the old store is loaded up with with my book and and recordings. The creature from Jekyll Island, and I had been told that is one of the Best Sellers there in the in the gift shop, which is just It tickles me pink because my story is not a very

G. Edward Griffin 24:10
flattering

G. Edward Griffin 24:13
well it has nothing negative about Jekyll Island but not very flattering about the people there. So anyway, that’s just a little aside, it’s a nice place to visit and I am sure you and your guests will have a great time enjoying that, that history. Now in those days the island was not connected to the main land. You had to take a ferry boat to get across it, which these guys did. When they visited the island. They took a train from New Jersey to two nights in the day, train trip a shot off and when they got to Brunswick, Georgia, they had to get off the train. And then they were taken down to the inland straight there where there was a ferry boat that took them over to the island. Now you can just Drive right across a nice big, broad bridge. And if you’re not paying attention, you’re not even aware that you’re going over water. But anyway, all bets and very a secondary that the main thing is what happened there, these these fellows, that who actually were the top bankers in the United States, representing the biggest investment houses of the world, you know, like killing obon company, and we get the Morgan bank and the insurance group that was owned by Morgan and the Rockefeller group, you know, the main banks, the biggest banks in the in the world really well, maybe second only to the bank of London. Were all represented at this meeting. And the purpose of the meeting was to draft the the terms the outline of what became the Federal Reserve back. And then as you just said, A moment ago, it was advertised partly to control inflation. Although inflation in those days was not a big factor, because there hadn’t been a lot of it, in fact, it was very stable currency because up until that time, real money was backed by gold and silver. And in many cases, it was gold and silver. A lot of transactions were conducted in the real bullion itself and then coins and the dollars themselves were supposed to be backed by gold and silver, although we found out in later years that there was a lot of criminality in the banking system. And even though imagine that, yeah, yeah. And and so this, they weren’t backed by gold or silver. And that’s the reason that there were bank runs because when people got with the smell, that their money wasn’t really in the bank that it had been multiplied, went out and multiplied, and claims made against it far in excess of the units that were behind it. And they began to think, Well, you know, maybe my money isn’t secure, and they went to ask for their money. Well, all of a sudden, that was what we call a bank run. And people lined up to get their money out. And the first

G. Edward Griffin 27:18
5% got their money and the rest

G. Edward Griffin 27:21
were greeted by a closed door. And so that was the real banking crisis of the era, the the bankruptcy of the banks, state banks primarily. And so that was great hue and cry in Congress to pass legislation, to reform banking to stop that kind of thing. It wasn’t inflation that was destroying the economy. It was the failure of the bank, to deliver on their promises to their depositors. That was the problem and the banks were folding, closing their doors, people were losing their savings and so forth,

Jason Hartman 27:52
and what what your give a context for the that

G. Edward Griffin 27:56
the meeting that we’re talking about took place in November of 2000. Then 10 Oh, yeah, the creation meeting creation. Now the the Federal Reserve Act was passed in December of 2013. And you mean 1900? Right? I actually did that. I did say 2000. Well, there you go. Thank you for correcting me, of course, yeah, 1910 and 1913. And that was the three year period, that was essential to promote the concept, not only to Congress, but to the voters, because it had to be presented as a very popular item, something that was good for America, good for business, good for the economy. And above all, it was presented as something to control those big bad bankers, you see, and what the reason for the secrecy turns out to be that had anybody known that this bill to control the big bad bankers was actually drafted by the big bad bankers. Why Then the cat would have been out of the bag, and nobody would have fallen for the trick. And the the Federal Reserve Act would not have been passed. So that was the reason basically for the secrecy is to conceal the fact that the bankers themselves were drafting the legislation to control their own industry. And in the process of that when you sort of back off of the historical facts and look at the landscape in general, you realize that what they were doing is creating a cartel and it was no different than a banana cartel and oil cartel sugar guards or whatever. This just happened to be a banking cartel

Jason Hartman 29:38
and this this one, I would argue, and I’d love to see if you agree with this already interrupt but is this the biggest scam in the history of the world. I mean, it may be that this affects almost everybody on the planet, in terms of the value of their money of their currency. It’s just this is this is huge. I mean that the scope of this is monumental.

G. Edward Griffin 30:06
Yes, there’s no argument on that. And I would, I would be tempted to say it is the biggest scam, but one has to be a little cautious on that. It is Think for a moment of history, you know, perhaps, perhaps wars are the biggest scam? I don’t know. You know,

Jason Hartman 30:25
but who are they financed by?

G. Edward Griffin 30:28
Right central bank’s wars finance. It’s all kind of a can of worms at a certain point. But I certainly agree with you. This is as as our friends in the political arena say this is huge. It’s really huge. Yeah, because money is at the center of every human just about every human transaction. And when you realize that the way the system now is set up, the money is created by the banking system itself, which is not So bad it that fact alone is not really the slammer here, because the money could be created by the banking system. And if it were backed by gold or silver or something of tangible value, that would absolutely prevent human intervention or willful intervention, just political intervention, to create money out of nothing, none of that money had to be created out of human effort. So that money would pay for everything else in the world goods and services that also are created out of human effort, then it’s an even playing field, and the money would hold its relative value throughout long periods of time, there would be no inflation, there’d be no loss of purchasing power, and that there are long periods of history that prove that point. When money was in fact gold or silver or backed by gold or silver, there was no inflation because they couldn’t be because the money itself was limited. By the degree to which humans were willing to create it by digging it out of the ground or refining it. And that took human effort, just like human effort was required to, to make a suit, or to brew a cup of coffee or anything else you might want to buy with that money, right. And

Jason Hartman 32:15
so that’s an important thesis, I just want to make sure the listeners really get that, because supply is limited. And the effort is great to mind something that by by virtue of that, it gives the currency that is related to it, it makes it true money because it gives it a real intrinsic value, versus what we have now when it can be created out of thin air. You can constantly debase the value of that currency and make everybody on the planet poor and poor, by Fiat, just by a decision that Janet Yellen makes. I mean, it’s it’s it’s really mind boggling.

G. Edward Griffin 33:00
boggling Yeah. And where I was going with that long discourses is that the reason this is such a huge topic, as we agree, is that since money is at the center of every human transaction, almost every human transaction, money is constantly moving or potentially being reserved to be moved to, to balance the ledger on everything we do. This telephone call right now is involving a transfer of financial credits between you and me and the telephone company and, and indirectly through all the people that service the lines and you know, all of the manufacturers of the telephone and the wires and drove or it involves a transfer of money. And if the money is created by the banking system, and all of it is based on debt, now we’re getting to the real interesting part. All of the money in the world today is based on debt, not on gold or silver which is based on value. It’s Based on debt, in other words, it comes into being only when someone borrows it. It doesn’t exist before them. And so they have to borrow it from the banks. So all the money in the world is created by being lent as a loan by some bank, it is so hard for people to get their head around it. It took me really literally at it, it took me years to get my head around that idea. And to be very honest, I still don’t know if I understand that. I mean, I understand fractional reserve banking or fractional reserve lending. It’s referred to both ways. But the the

Jason Hartman 34:40
idea that money is lent into existence, it’s sort of like you can maybe understand that intellectually at some point, but sort of grappling with the impact of that and what that really means is, it’s it’s profound.

G. Edward Griffin 34:56
It’s very profound, and especially when you realize that It’s it’s ethically highly questionable and that’s the understatement of the century. into my mind it is a scam. It’s it’s something that was developed over the centuries as a very elegant scam. And that’s one of the reasons people have trouble getting their heads around it as I did too, because I kept expecting it to make sense. And suddenly I realized it went way This doesn’t doesn’t make sense in terms of my morality, or in morality of most people who you know, want things to be fair and just an honest, but if you suddenly switch the morality and say now I’m a con artist, now does it make sense and all of a sudden the light went on. Now it makes sense. Of course. That is exactly what it is. This whole thing is dreamed up by con artists and poly Stover and painted over and decorated to make it look like it very, you know, very sober secure banking system. You know, and But it’s a scam. And the reason it’s a scam is because the money is lent into existence with no effort or real effort in terms of producing anything except producing numbers. Now it’s true. You do have to have employees and buildings and desks and typewriters and computers and all that sort of thing, but it’s relatively low cost of production, compared to digging something out of the ground and grinding it up and extracting the precious metals out of it and so forth. It’s Nope, no comparison at all. And so it’s you might say, it’s practically free to create this money and lend it into existence. But the kicker is now you it’s not that you use use the money for your own purposes. you lend it for other purposes. And that could be good that that that is good. People often need to be able to borrow money in order to engage in business enterprises and so forth. But now you’re collecting interest on what you’re collecting interest on. Nothing. Now there is the scam That’s a

Jason Hartman 37:00
great deal. I would love to do that deal.

G. Edward Griffin 37:03
That deal. Yeah, sign me up. You know.

G. Edward Griffin 37:06
Trouble is we’re about 300 years too late.

G. Edward Griffin 37:11
Yeah, they figured it out. Yeah. And, and we’re just trying to get our head direct today. And it’s been going on for centuries. Say. So anyway, that’s, as I said earlier, no matter which way you go on this topic, you’re running into some very interesting terrain. And that just happens to be

Jason Hartman 37:28
one of them. What is that quote by one of the Rothschild families? Let me control the money and I care not who makes the laws or something like that. Exactly. Yeah. That’s it’s much more powerful. Yeah, it really is.

G. Edward Griffin 37:41
Well, think about that. If you control the money, you can buy the politicians. And they do that it’s as simple as that. The politicians are bought, like so many pounds of hamburger and you know that That I visited one of my more popular editorials just two weeks ago and the headline was con artists make the best politicians. And, you know, it’s a harsh thing to say, and all of that. But I really believe when you look at the political scene, especially today, the major politicians on the stage, look at them. They’re con artists.

Jason Hartman 38:23
Everyone, of course, yeah, of course. I don’t think you’ll get too much argument on that. Can I fire a few quick questions at you? I there’s so much ground we could cover. I just want to I just want to get a couple of things out there and see what you think of them. But didn’t Did you kind of wrap up to some extent what you were saying? Yeah,

G. Edward Griffin 38:42
sure. Well, in with this topic, you never wrap it up. You just started rolling. Oh, right.

Jason Hartman 38:47
Right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, so you wrote the creature, the original version of the creature from Jekyll Island back in the 90s. Just any thoughts on how they’re playing out today with Janet Yellen. And the bomb administration and just kind of a general, you know, maybe a comment

G. Edward Griffin 39:03
on that, well, everything is unfolding exactly as it was predicted, as I predicted it in it in sometimes people say, gee, how, how come you’re so smart that you were able to make these amazing predictions I have a chapter toward the end of the book called The pessimistic scenario. And it was followed by a realistic scenario, which was not nearly as, as bad. But the realistic scenario was what I thought we ought to be working toward. So because we can get out of this mess, but the pessimistic scenario is where people just are, are dumped into the morass, and they do know nothing about it. Don’t know under they don’t understand it. They don’t know how to get out of the problem. And so it just gets worse and worse and worse. That’s the pessimistic scenario. And, and so I played it out like it was actually happening like, you know, like a novelist would describe, oh at 330 The lights went on and on the computer And the automatic buzzer went off. And so the president of the bank got up to see what was going on it told her like a little story was actually happening. And to make it interesting, and it’s just amazing. People say, Well, how did you know that’s what happened last last week? Or that’s what happened last year, and so forth. And I think I’m a genius. Well, none of the above I just, it just know what what’s going on. You know, it’s easy to predict the future, if you understand two things, if you know where you are now. Well, that’s not so easy. A lot of people have no idea where they are. Now,

Jason Hartman 40:34
we all asked actually my next question about that, but go ahead.

G. Edward Griffin 40:37
Yeah. And then the other point you need on the graph is where you came from, where were you? Well, a lot of people have no idea about that. Either. They don’t know about the history of money, or the history of our system, or they have no they have no they have no two points at all. So they’re totally lost. But if you understand where we came from, you understand that you know where we were, where we are today, you know, All you gotta do is lay a little mental ruler between those two points. And you can draw a line and projected into the future. And you can say very confidently, that unless there are some major changes in the forces, we’re going to continue heading in exactly the same direction we’ve been traveling. And there had been no changes in the forces. In fact, it just been the same force is getting more and more powerful. The people that created the problem in the first place are the very ones who we are now turning to to solve the problem. It’s It’s

Jason Hartman 41:32
so ironic. I did just ironic. Yeah, you can’t make this stuff up. makes it seem like this. It’s crazy.

G. Edward Griffin 41:40
Yeah, yeah. So so it was easy to push to see what the future looks like. And so yeah, everything is unfolding exactly as I was afraid it would. And I mean, what can I say beyond that? If anybody just reads to that chapter, they can see that this was easily for foretold Well, the book was published in 1994. But that part of the book was written I think, or developed, at least in my notes about 1992 91.

Jason Hartman 42:13
Now just a reminder, you’re listening to flashback Fridays are new episodes are published every Monday and every Wednesday. I want to wrap up with that optimistic scenario and pessimistic scenario with it’s pretty much history now. It’s already happened. But maybe you have you touch on the optimistic one, but let me just fire off a couple quick questions for you. And the diluted really to your last comment of people not knowing where they are, you know, when when you’re looking fish exists in water, yet they I would assert that they don’t notice the water. Okay, we exist in air yet. Unless we live in a really polluted place. We don’t notice the air hopefully, right? It’s just something it’s just the content. context, it’s our environment, you know, we don’t notice it right. And this is especially bothersome, and I’m looking, I’m a Gen X or Okay, so I don’t even have really that much historical context myself. But I try to be a student of history. And it is so frustrating to me. When I talk to Generation Y, when I talked to the millennial generation, and they just, they just

G. Edward Griffin 43:25
don’t

Jason Hartman 43:26
get it. I suppose every generation feels this way, about the generation, what one step removed from them, or maybe two steps removed from them, but they just don’t know where they really are. They don’t understand, seemingly, and I’m sure there are many things I don’t understand either that baby boomers would say to me that I don’t get, but what does it really mean to be free? What does freedom mean? Because you write a lot and talk a lot about this. People just they just come I don’t know where they are right? They don’t they don’t really understand that they are not free. Are they?

G. Edward Griffin 44:05
Yeah, that’s a great topic. In fact, it’s it’s the one that occupies most of my time of late, as I think I mentioned to you before the program, I’m living and breathing, an organization that I created a few years ago called freedom force International. And that is really the central focus of our of our efforts is to create a better awareness of what does it mean to be free? What is it? How do we, how do we defend freedom? Do we just go out in the battlefield and, and killed somebody? Is that what it is? because somebody’s trying to take away our freedom? Or do we have to defend it in our schools, in our textbooks, in our halls or legislative halls? You know, do we have to defend it in debate? Do we have to understand it? And of course, you can tell by the way I’m asking those questions that that’s how I think the entry our freedom is something we have to understand before we can really defend it because it’s It’s been loaded with examples that people that rise up against some great tyrant, and a great cost and treasure and blood, they’ll overthrow the tyrant. Because I hate him. He’s a tyrant. And first thing you know, the guy that replaces him turns out to be no different, if not worse, because they didn’t understand what makes a tyrant. They think that a tyrant is just a bad person. And they don’t realize it’s a system. tyranny is an outgrowth of a system of the concept of what is the proper function of the state? What should the state be allowed to do? And what should it not be allowed to do? Those are issues that are not taught in school or they’re not not even discussed in philosophy classes or political science classes? Well, the

Jason Hartman 45:42
whole the whole agenda of school is controlled by especially now by I call it communist core set of Common Core.

G. Edward Griffin 45:51
Well, yeah, and it’s not a bad word, except, you know, one of the things we try and make very clear in freedom for us is that all of these words communism and fascism and Nazism socialism, and in some of these so called opposites like capitalism. And you know, we got all these words like floating around there, and very few people can define them, and even look them up in the dictionary. And there’s a lot of contradictory definitions. And I discovered a long time ago that you have to peel off those labels and look underneath at the ideology. And when you do that, you find that in the Western world, at least, there are only two ideologies only to ever clearly defined, and the rest of them are just garbage. The words don’t mean anything. And the two ideologies on the one side were those words we just mentioned fascism, communism, Nazism, so but those are merely variants of one concept, which is called collectivism. They’re all all of these isms that we’ve talked about, believe the same thing. It’s collectivism and that not they get a different flag and a different uniform or they come from a different nation, and we call it something very special, like not Judaism, or communism, communism came from Russia, Nazis and came from Germany, and so forth. And so but there, what’s the difference between Nazi ism and communism? I defy anybody to find a significant difference between the two because there isn’t any. I mean, I’ve studied workship Marx and Lenin and Stalin and Mao Zedong and Hitler, I mean, I could probably, you know, pretend like I was a true believer and make it sound pretty authentic. Because I studied this stuff when I was younger. I said, What are these guys up to? Why is this so appealing? And I made the most amazing discovery A long time ago that they’re all the same. Basically, they all Billy had this. One of the principles, there are eight of them and I was able to identify major ones. One of them for example, is that they all believed that the group is more important than the individual and that the individual must be sacrificed if necessary. for the greater good, of the greater number. Now that’s fundamental to all forms of collectivism with finding communism. They made that idea sound so noble No, no, no, I was taught that in school. I was taught that in an American school, and I bought into it. I thought it sounded so good. It wasn’t until later years I began to read and understand deeper issues that I saw through the facade. Talk about a con artist promoting an idea that is one of the top

Jason Hartman 48:29
we’ll just briefly just tell us in like a sentence. What is that? What did you see what why is that a facade? Why is that idea? faulty is if I didn’t know. But I’d love to hear your thoughts on

G. Edward Griffin 48:39
Okay. Well, it’s a Yeah, it. Boy. I don’t know how much time we have. But here we go.

Jason Hartman 48:44
Well, we’ve got as much as Yeah,

G. Edward Griffin 48:47
yeah, the idea the idea that the group is more important than the individuals is based on an assumption. And the assumption is that there is such a thing as a group There isn’t, there is no such thing as a group. Okay? The word group is an abstraction in the mind. It doesn’t exist. You cannot touch a group, you cannot see a group, you can only touch and see individuals and group. This word group is a mathematical abstraction in the mind, it doesn’t really exist. It’s like the word forest. There’s no such thing as a forest. There are only trees, right? And you can, you can’t cut down a forest, but you can cut down trees. And so when you say that the group which doesn’t really exist, has rights that are superior to individuals, which do exist, they’re the only thing that exists. You’ve made a huge blunder. And if we set it in motion, a concept in which some leader is going to step forth and say I represent the people I

Jason Hartman 49:57
represent themselves Yeah, that’s me represent Yeah.

G. Edward Griffin 50:00
Well, it’s either you have it that the Nazi Party, the Communist Party, what are they, they are the representatives of the group. And there’s always a great leader at the head of that

Jason Hartman 50:10
party leader always is the one who’s living in absolute luxury, enriched and has

G. Edward Griffin 50:16
power and, and he can, he can execute anybody who wishes its absolute tyranny of just like from 1000 years ago, you know, it’s all polished over with these phrases like, you know, the greater good for the greater number. Oh, my gosh, well take take a lynch mob, for example. Now, this is sort of wrapped up in the word democracy, the greater good, the greater number that’s, you know, majority voting. So if I take a lynch mob, well, there’s only one dissenting vote, the one who’s being lynched. Yeah, he’s at the end of the rope. So what’s wrong if it’s for the greater good of the greater number, and if democracy is a great concept, and that the majority should always rule, then what’s wrong with the lynch mob? Right. Absolutely. They are

Jason Hartman 51:01
very good point. I and I love the way you said that. I also love the way I in ran said it. When she said in one of her essays she said, There is no such thing as group rights. There are only individual rights, the smallest minority in the world is the individual. And you that, like you said, it’s an abstraction that the group does not exist. There are just a bunch of people, you know, when people clamor about, oh, well, we got to have Hispanic rights or African American rights or rights for overweight people or rights for males and females, and yet

G. Edward Griffin 51:39
everybody’s entitled to an individual right, regardless of their ethnic origin, race, religion, nationality, everybody is entitled to an individual rights that should be the same as everyone else. not different. Yep. The simple as that, well, these are the things these are some of the things that distinguish individualism from a collectivism and so we have to start with an understanding of what freedom is freedom comes from Alright now we’re talking about individual rights freedom comes when the individual You and I are protected by the state protected again against the passion and greed of the group yeah right majority that once the majority can vote anything at once can both take your money away can vote to put you in prison can vote to make you conform to a certain code of ethics or whatever make

Jason Hartman 52:39
you pay for someone else’s college or healthcare

G. Edward Griffin 52:42
once once you let the majority have the power over you as an individual simply because it’s supposedly in the greater for the interests of the greater good up you’ve had it brother you’re through your your slave you are

Jason Hartman 52:55
Yeah, it’s amazing that people think that other people should be enslaved literally, quite literally at the point of a gun, if you do not pay your taxes, someone will at some point visit you with a gun. And say, you either put these handcuffs on and come off to prison where you will be spend your life in a cage, or we will shoot you with a gun. That’s literally what happens in the United States of America. How do people not understand that idea that that is that

G. Edward Griffin 53:32
that that happens that happens in every country in the world, which has adopted the ideology of collectivism. And that means that happens in every country in the world period, because they all at this point in history, have bought into this concept of the greater good for the greater majority, you know, the greater number and all that sort of thing. That you know, there are, as I said, there are eight important characteristics that’s we’re just talking about one of them now. But all of the world’s nations had bought into that today, and that’s the problem. And yeah, it is. This is one of the points where mouth a tone was absolutely right. Now I’m not endorsing magic Tommy’s one of my all time. Bad Guys, as far as I can say, because he’s an advocate of collectivism.

Jason Hartman 54:16
You have to love his branding and marketing. It’s the Cultural Revolution.

G. Edward Griffin 54:22
Well, yeah, but but he said, and correctly, I believe he said, all political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Of course it does. Of course it does. And you may hate it. But it’s true. That’s the way it is. So let’s face reality, once you give the state the authority to do something, you’re actually saying, okay, the people working for this state now have the authority to carry guns and to shoot others if they don’t comply with what they want. That’s the understanding. That’s political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and once you pass a law and the legislature Then people must follow that law or they’re going to be facing the open end of a barrel of a gun.

Jason Hartman 55:05
Yep, absolutely. Right. That’s it. Yeah. What else did you want to say? Do you want to highlight one or two of those other principles? The eight?

G. Edward Griffin 55:11
Well, let’s just start with the top one on the list, and not necessarily the most important one. But I think it’s extremely important. And that is the origin of rights, human rights, where do they come from? An important question? Well, they’re the collectivist believes that human rights are granted by the state. You get them from the state. You get them from other people who have been elected to office, or who have assumed office because of the superior army. Anyway, the state however, it got to be the state, grant you your rights, they believe that and the problem with that is that the state can grant you your rights, and it can also take them away, which they always do. I mean, and so this is the basis of collectivism that state grants you right? You’ll find that in Soviet the old Soviet constitution, you’ll find me The Chinese constitution, communist constitution, you’ll find it in all the communist countries, you’ll find it in not the What about it in Nazi Germany? You know, rights come from that you find it at the United Nations, they have a document called the draft covenant on human rights. It says they’re in very planes link language in the issuance of the following rights which are issued by the state. And is this right as plain as you can be? They come right out because they believe it. All right. And okay, the individual so the other hand thinks that the rights are ingrained in the individual, they’re, they’re part of the individual, when you’re born with them. Now, you may have to defend them. And of course, you have to defend them because remember, political power comes out of the barrel of a gun. If you cannot defend your rights, you lose them, but you’ve they were entitled to them because some people would say God gave them to you. Others would say well, you were just born with them because it’s an intrinsic right however you want Describe it. The end, the individuals believes that rights are hardware. They’re not software, they come with you. They’re not added to you. So it’s an important distinction. And which one you believe makes a tremendous difference in what kind of society you’re going to live in.

Jason Hartman 57:19
It really does. Wow, that’s it’s just really profound. We’ve gone much longer than we anticipated. You’re, you’re such an interesting guest always. Can we wrap this up with the optimistic scenario in the end, maybe touching on the pessimistic scenario, which was a prediction but now is history. In any action steps anything we can do about this would be great if if there is anything,

G. Edward Griffin 57:45
always there always is something and it’s plenty. You know, it’s never too late to stand for freedom. And this battle will be going on probably for as long as human life exists on this planet. Even if we should go down the tubes in President era, there always will be this force for freedom that is disappointing in all of us. It’s fire in our bellies. And sometime in the future, there’ll be a new, a new civilization springing up from the ashes, perhaps, I don’t know. But it’s the battle will be going on forever. So it’s never you never give up. least that’s my view. I can summarize this, I think but in perhaps even best that we’re running short on time, because it’s easier to understand what you just condense it down into almost like a sound bite. We’re rapidly losing our freedom right now. And nothing has changed yet in to change the force of that direction. So I can predict that in the next. Probably the next 10 years at least. We’re going to continue going down, down down because nothing is in place yet to reverse it. It’s a locomotive coming down the track, and you just don’t stop a Local Motors and send it back the other way instantly. First, you have to slow it down, and then you have to turn it around or at least throw a lever and throw it into reverse, then you have to gain momentum and get going backwards again, it doesn’t happen. Like it’s not going to happen at the next election. Let’s just put it that way. So, yeah, we’re going in a bad direction. Now, the good thing is that there is a tremendous awakening going on at the grassroots level. I all Yeah, absolutely. When I first began to talk about these issues, had some kind of a real substantial platform was back in 1994. Wow, there’s very few people interested everything like this good. You know, oh, you’re just some kind of a conspiracy theorist. You’re just the sky is calling, calling. You’re just a Chicken Little and so forth. A lot of name calling going on. Now everybody’s interested. Now they say, Well, how much time do you think we have left? You know, questions like that. So it’s a whole different atmosphere out there. People know something about Wrong. And so this is the first step to being able to change something now they’re willing to listen and begin to consider some of these issues. So that’s very, very encouraging to me. So what that will lead Don’t ask me what’s going to happen in the meantime, because I’m kind of pessimistic on the next 10 years. But where that leads, no matter what happens in the next 10 years, where that leads is very encouraging to me, it means it means that there will be finally will come to that tipping point where it’ll just be impossible. Almost impossible. I’ll have to always caution and condition my words, but nothing is impossible, you know, but almost impossible to keep this desire for freedom down I think that there will be a surge for freedom and this time if we do our job correctly, and we’re not just saying go out and and meet the bad guys and replace them with good guys it we’re talking about principles instead of personalities. Like we do now, I mean, when you look at the presidential campaign, nobody’s asking these people what they believe. They just ask him, Well, what would you do under these circumstances? And how do you answer his criticism and so forth? You know, it’s kind of like a little show. Once we get rid of that nonsense, once we get rid of thinking that political parties mean anything except ways of controlling us, and start thinking in terms of principles, like we were talking a moment ago, you know, what is the group more important than the individual? Where do our rights come from that kind of thing, talking about principles, then at last will be ready to rebuild. And that is where I that’s the the optimistic scenario that I see. The optimistic scenario comes to a point where we can change society, and we will. And part of that of course, we started off talking about the Federal Reserve. Part of that is to return to a sound monetary system. And we can do that easily. Just too much we’ve ever resolved to do that. What we have Understand that fiat money is not the solution. It’s It’s It’s bad that bankers can create money out of nothing. But it’s not any better if politicians can create money out of nothing either. there’s a there’s a,

Jason Hartman 1:02:12
I’d say it’s a little better but a little, it’s a little bit. Yeah,

G. Edward Griffin 1:02:15
it’s three. It’s 3% better, you’re going to die anyway. But maybe you’ll live three seconds longer, you know? Yeah. So anyway, once we get these principles clearly in mind, then there’s hope for the future. And that’s what it all adds up to.

Jason Hartman 1:02:31
Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. give out your website and tell people where they can find out more about what you’re doing. Now. Of course, the book is available. It’s fantastic. But you know, your work with freedom force and so forth. Tell us where they can find that.

G. Edward Griffin 1:02:44
Yeah, well, first I’ll start with the commercial side where we we try and make some money. We have to sell things that keep going and now so we sell books and and we sell recordings and DVDs, it’s we have about 100 different educational items there. And that’s all found on reality zone calm. So if you want to really dig into the literature and, and read some of the history and all of that, you’ll find all those things. At reality zone calm. Now, the think tank side of this, we had nothing to sell over here. And this is where I’m spending all my time is freedom force international.org freedom force international.org. That’s where we get into the, the ideology. That’s where we get into the strategy. That’s where we get into the concept of how can we work together? How can we reclaim control over our own system? How can we replace those collectivists who now are literally in just about every political office out there? How can we replace them with individualists who have no axe to grind except to restore freedom? And is there a strategy that can be done for that it show what is it? And how do we start? That’s all At freedom force international.org

Jason Hartman 1:04:03
Yeah, fantastic. Well, G. Edward Griffin, thank you so much for joining us again, third time on the show. And it’s always fascinating to talk with you. Very interesting, very engaging. I cannot wait for an upcoming trip to Jekyll Island, the place where it all happened. And I believe I mentioned to you last week that our meeting is taking place in the exact same conference room. They call it the Aldrich Federal Reserve room. So literally, if those walls could talk, right, yeah,

G. Edward Griffin 1:04:33
yeah. And they do talk, they talk through my book and over the fireplace in that room, you’ll see a big composite photograph of the of the men who sat in there in 1910 and created the Federal Reserve. They got their pictures up there on the wall. Wow.

Jason Hartman 1:04:49
Amazing stuff. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Okay, thank you for inviting me.

G. Edward Griffin 1:04:55
never really thought of Jason as subversive, but I just found out that What Wall Street considers him to be? Really? Now? How

G. Edward Griffin 1:05:03
is that possible at all?

G. Edward Griffin 1:05:05
Simple. Wall Street believes that real estate investors are dangerous to their schemes? Because the dirty truth about income property is that it actually works in real life.

G. Edward Griffin 1:05:15
I know I mean, how many people do you know not including insiders who created wealth with stocks, bonds and mutual funds? those options are for people who only want to pretend they’re getting ahead.

G. Edward Griffin 1:05:27
Stocks and other non direct traded assets are a losing game for most people. The typical scenario is you make a little you lose a little and spin your wheels for decades.

G. Edward Griffin 1:05:38
That’s because the corporate crooks running the stock and bond investing game will always see to it that they win. This means unless you’re one of them, you will not win.

G. Edward Griffin 1:05:48
And unluckily for wall street. Jason has a unique ability to make the everyday person understand investing the way it should be. He shows them a world where anything less than than a 20 6% annual return is disappointing.

G. Edward Griffin 1:06:03
Yep. And that’s why Jason offers a one book set on creating wealth that comes with 20 digital download audios. He shows us how we can be excited about these scary times and exploit the incredible opportunities this present economy is afforded us.

G. Edward Griffin 1:06:17
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G. Edward Griffin 1:06:28
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G. Edward Griffin 1:06:36
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G. Edward Griffin 1:06:43
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G. Edward Griffin 1:06:52
If you want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month, just like a banker Jason’s creating wealth in encyclopedia series is for you. This show is produced by the Hartman media company All rights reserved for distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www dot Hartman media.com or email media at Hartman media.com. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax legal real estate or business professional for individualized advice. opinions of guests are their own and the host is acting on behalf of Platinum properties, investor network, Inc. exclusively.