================= HES POSTING ======================= To clarify, on the Federal Reserve Conspiracy. (This is kind of ironic, since it was Professor Boettke's web page that helped stimulate my interest in Austrian economics a while back. . ..) There are three versions of it. All of them contend that a meeting at Jekyll Island, Georgia, in 1910 with Nelson Aldrich, Paul Warburg, and assorted Rothschild folks, set up the Federal Reserve, which is designed to (at minimum) protect its members from competition and begin the process of establishing a one-world government. There is an anti-Semitic version, associated with Eustace Mullins (a friend of Ezra Pound) and his book The Federal Reserve Conspiracy--this one appears to be circulating among various black nationalist groups as well; there is Pat Robertson's version in The New World Order, which blames the Illuminati and Satan; and there is the more "moderate" version by G.Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island, which is represents the John Birch Society position--basically a one-world conspiracy, without the religious or anti-semitic trappings. All three work in Cecil Rhodes, the Fabian Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, Carroll Quigley, and Communism. Griffin's book has blurbs on the back cover from Texas Congressman Ron Paul and Mark Thornton (both of who are associated with the Mises Institute at Auburn). There are numerous "Christian economists" (several I've noted with degrees from Auburn) who cite the Austrian critique of the Federal Reserve and free banking as part of the evidence for the conspiracy. --I am NOT accusing Austrian economists (for whom I have considerable sympathy) of participating in this lunatic conspiracy. I'm just puzzling over these connections. My original request was to see if anyone knew of any decent scholarly accounts of this sort of pseudo-economics. Jim Aune ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]