Do you know or do you know anybody who does know, or have you a friend who knows of anybody who knows of any such gigantic banking predacity on earth? The people through their ownership of the member banks in the Federal Reserve System provide the capital--commandeered from them--for these Federal Reserve octopi. Why should they be restricted to a 6 per cent dividend when these Federal Reserve Banks "earned" 160 per cent or over 25 times as much? How do you like to have your money commandeered for capital and get for one year less than one dollar out of twenty-five dollars made? Is that "democratizing" banking or is it bourbonizing banking? Is that "emancipating credit" or is it shackling it with you wearing the shackles? Can any sane or honest man--outside the ranks of its lolling beneficiaries--defend any such division of profits as fair or just or equitable? In this banking the lamb (the people) and the lion (the Federal Reserve System) lie down together--with the lamb inside the lion! But you say you're not a stockholder in any of the commandeered Banks of the Federal Reserve System and aren't hurt. Very well then. But the chances are that you are a depositor in one of those member banks and you are furnishing the Federal Reserve System with a part of its huge conscripted reserve deposits with no interest paid on them. If member banks were getting the interest they should get from these octopi they could pay you more interest than they do pay you. The fact is that the real owners of the commandeered capital and of the conscripted deposits get the "rind" only of the huge "melon" when it's cut. The juicy interior of the "melon" goes to the Federal Reserve bureaucrats and to their money-masters who batten and fatten and thrive on the pillagement of real production. CHAPTER VII HOW THE LOOT IS GATHERED MEASURE now the reservoir of liquid capital--the hugest on this planet--siphoned into the coffers of the Federal Reserve System. The first pool comes from the capital of upwards of $100,000,000 commandeered at 6 per cent interest from the member banks. That is but a little pond or lakelet. Then there comes the ocean of money, over $1,800,000,000 conscripted at no per cent interest as reserve deposits from the member banks. This capital and these deposits--almost $2,000,000,000--are held practically in perpetuity. It is the hugest reservoir of liquid money on earth, it costs its manipulators and managers and controllers not one red cent of their own money and only a petty 6 per cent on a petty $100,000,000 of the gigantic sum. In other words, for an interest charge of practically $6,000,000 a year the Federal Reserve System gets the use of practically $2,000,000,000 or $2,000,000,000 at the absurd interest charge of three-tenths of one per cent!