Answers to your questions:
1) Regular banks tie in like this: They are backed up by the general health of the Fed banking industry... to keep confidence in the system. They
also get money that comes from the regional banks, which comes from the fed itself. Using fractional reserve policies , if the Fed creates a billion
dollars, the regional banks can create ten billion, so that the commercial banks can create 100 billion dollars in loans. All debt money, all with
interest.
This process can work in reverse. All the fed has to do is call in a little bit and it will suck up a huge amount out of the economy.
So it's a pyramid scheme, with the economy at the control of one lever at the top. Each layer has its importance.
2) The little banks are owned by wealthy people and investors. They could be a guy you play golf with, or multinational banking empires owned by the
superrich. It's not always easy to find out.
3) Stock in the Fed is owned by astronomically wealthy families who have been in this business for many generations.
www.save-a-patriot.org...
4) There was no central banking system before the Fed. (Well, there were several that started and died, due to horrendous effects on the economy:
massive debt, unemployment) Before the fed there were many banks of every size imaginable. Some created their own "bank notes". Depending on how
trustworthy a bank was, you could put your money where you trusted it, into currencies that performed. Today, all our eggs are in one basket.
Another analogy would be a ship with no bulkheads. If one area gets flooded, the whole ship can sink.
In other words, rather than banking being a free-market competitive industry, it is a monopoly with one currency which can be easily manipulated.
People right now are talking about putting a lot of money into gold and silver, which is one of the last places you can try to put your stored value,
because much of the other currency competition has been eliminated.
5) We've been told we must file income tax because somebody wants us to. It is an invasion of privacy, and the taxation itself is unconstitutional
because it is an unapportioned and direct tax on individuals.
6) Know that money is created. Either the country of the US can print money and spend it into circulation (by paying government employees and
government projects with it, and not requiring taxation of the public at all)...
OR...
The government can go to banks for the "money" that is created. (Whether the government creates the money or the banks create the money, someone
has got to create those dollars we use.)
But when a government surrenders its right to create money to a bank which charges interest on it, the entire economy of a nation becomes guided.
Rather than government funding what the people want, banks fund what the banks want.
And never forget all the interest banks charge on money that comes from computer entries or paper. They don't work for the money, the money they
charge interest on comes from the imagination.
[edit on 24-5-2008 by ianr5741]