Book Review: The Creature from Jekyll Island

A second look at the Federal Reserve
by G. Edward Griffin
Review by Brian R. Wright

1994, American Media , 601 pages

Reposting of original review, 8/29/07.

A friend of mine—who is one of those rare fellows who actually worries about the national debt (which according to this link is ~$9 trillion and counting… fast)—laid Creature on me last time we broke bread together.  In this tome, author Edward Griffin delivers a devastating expose on the background, execution, and remedies to the Federal Reserve Banking system (FRBS).

The system, which amounts to a national bank under control of (surprise) the money interests who dominate the government of the United States, was rather sneakily enacted into law by Congress just before Christmas recess in 1913.  Creature shows how this surreptitious meeting on Jekyll Island, a private resort off the coast of Georgia owned by J.P. Morgan and associates, led to the FRBS and its seemingly unlimited license to steal continuously from the productive class.

The well-dressed thieves on the inside track were as follows:

  • Nelson W. Aldrich, Republican Whip in the Senate, chairman of the National Monetary Commission, business associate of J.P. Morgan, father-in-law to John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
  • Abraham Pitt Andrew, Assistant Secretary to the United States Treasury
  • Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of New York, the most powerful of the banks at that time, representing William Rockefeller and the international investment banking house of Kuhn, Loeb, and Company
  • Henry P. Davison, senior partner of the J.P. Morgan Company
  • Charles D. Norton, president of J.P. Morgan’s First National Bank of New York
  • Benjamin Strong, head of J.P. Morgan’s Bankers Trust Company
  • Paul M. Warburg, a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Company, a representative of the Rothschild banking dynasty in England and France, and brother to Max Warburg who was head of the Warburg banking consortium in Germany and the Netherlands

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Movie Review: The Aviator (2004)

Short version of Howard Hughes’ remarkable life and times

Written by John Logan
Directed by Martin Scorsese

Leonardo DiCaprio … Howard Hughes
Cate Blanchett … Katharine Hepburn
Kate Beckinsale … Ava Gardner
John C. Reilly … Noah Dietrich
Alec Baldwin … Juan Trippe
Alan Alda … Senator Ralph Owen Brewster
Ian Holm … Professor Fitz

This review stems from a “rewatch,” the first viewing occurring on New Year’s Eve.  It’s a fairly long movie and our group was there through the ending into the new year in a nearly empty theater.  But this is worthwhile moviemaking; the writers give us a true American hero who takes on the State and, at least for a while, wins.

Hughes was the son of a Texas oilman-inventor who set up a company and earned a fortune; the old man died when Howard was 18, leaving Howard as a multimillionaire engineering student.  The Aviator follows Howard from 1930, when he produced the movie Hell’s Angels, to 1947 when, at the age of 42, Howard flew the H4-Hercules aircraft he had designed and built (aka the Spruce Goose).

Following the death of his parents, Hughes moved to Hollywood and to become a movie producer.  He was instrumental in the launch of Jean Harlow’s career, and he took a special interest in other celebrity movie femmes in those days.  He produced and directed Hell’s Angels (Harlow) as well as The Front Page, Flying Leathernecks, and ScarfaceContinue reading