G. Edward Griffin on Quick Fixes, the Looming Great War and Loss of Elite Moral Authority!

• G. Edward Griffin on Quick Fixes, the Looming Great War and Loss of Elite Moral Authority! 
  by Anthony Wile, http://www.thedailybell.com/ 
  The Daily Bell is pleased to present this exclusive interview with G. Edward Griffin.
  Introduction: G. Edward Griffin is a film producer, author and political lecturer. He is the founder of Freedom Force International, a libertarian-oriented activist network focused on advancing individual freedom. First released in 1994, Mr. Griffin’s best-selling financial book, The Creature from Jekyll Island, is a no-holds-barred look into the inner workings of the Federal Reserve banking system, or cartel if you will. Mr. Griffin’s literary contributions are especially noteworthy given the validity of his vision and the exciting and troublesome nature of the times in which we live.
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  Daily Bell: Let’s jump right in. Are we seeing significant price inflation now?
  G. Edward Griffin: It depends on how you define significant, I suppose. I think it’s significant.  My personal feeling is the price index is greatly distorted. They keep fiddling with the formula to make it look as good as possible but real inflation, at least here in the States, in terms of the major components of what people buy to live day to day, such as groceries, gasoline and clothing, my feeling is that inflation is already at the double digits. I think it’s ten percent if not more. That I think is significant but then again it’s nothing compared to what I think we are going to see.
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  It seems to me that probably within the next two years we will be experiencing 15, 20, 25, 30 percent and so forth.  It may be much higher because I have a feeling there is a certain tipping point coming when people finally realize – and they always do – in any country where the currency is grinding down. There comes to be a point, like in Russia or in Germany, for example, when inflation was modest and then within a period of a few weeks inflation was way, way out of proportion. It was a psychological factor that made the difference. Nothing else changed except the awareness level that the money was no good. So I kind of think we are going to see similar psychological influence like that here and probably we will catch up with all the inflation that should have been in the market very quickly.
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  Daily Bell: Are the elites running scared?
  G. Edward Griffin: I don’t think the power elites are running scared, no. I think they are very confident that everything is under control. I think they are not worried about the crisis because they want the crisis; the crisis is part of the plan. The monetary crisis, the military crisis, social crisis, racial tensions, crime crisis, environmental crisis – those things all feed into their plan because that’s what frightens people and what makes them passive to accept all these programs that they offer to expand government and increase taxes.  So I don’t think they are running scared. I think they’re saying to themselves very comfortably that ‘everything is on track and things are going according to plan and exactly as we wanted.’
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  Daily Bell: Is the central banking economy breaking down?
  G. Edward Griffin: I think the answer to that is yes. It has been breaking down since the day it was created but it’s a question of how obvious it is and a question of how tolerant the population will be to allow it to continue to crumble.  Yes, it’s coming down to some very serious challenges to the various governments as they try to figure out how to patch up the ship, to patch up the holes. Maybe that’s a bad example. Maybe what I should be saying is they are finding some way to continue to pump up the bubble, making the bubble go bigger so it doesn’t blow up.  They have to pump it bigger because if they don’t they lose control.
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  Now, that doesn’t sound like a good answer to your question but I really don’t think so because the assumption in that question is that the banking system has been running correctly in the past or is running correctly now, or there is some way to save the banking system.  I think the implication of that question is that the banking system is ok, or it has been ok, or is coming apart now.  I think that is the wrong assumption because the system has been built on fraud from the very beginning and, as I said, it started to fall apart from the very day it was conceived.  I don’t think we should worry about how to save the banking system. I think we should be thinking about how we could let it blow up and get it out of our way, and how to restore a real, honest banking system and not one based on fraud and political favoritism.
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  Daily Bell: Do you see the elites losing moral authority?
  G. Edward Griffin: I definitely think the elites are losing, if they’ve not already lost, the moral authority with most thinking people. Now, how many are in that category? Let me think about that. People who really understand what’s going on in the news I don’t think have had much feeling about moral authority of the elites for a long, long time. But I think the great bulk of the people who are turning to government for salvation, for benefits, for leadership and all that sort of thing still have it somehow in the back of their minds that these political and financial leaders are looking out for their best interest, that large group of people, whatever size that group may be. I don’t think they are losing moral authority.
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  I think it’s like the situation described 100 years ago by Fredrick Bastiat in his book, The Law. He said when you have a society where people expect the government to take care of them and to solve all the problems, then when things start go bad people blame the government for it. That doesn’t mean the government loses moral authority; it means the people become angry with the government. They say, “This person isn’t doing the job right so let’s find another person who will” – essentially, let’s start switching from one dictator to another. They all want dictators to run their lives for them so they give those people, those dictators, the moral authority to run their lives and they don’t object to that but they get mad at them because they’re not doing a good job.
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  For example, you see that in our election this year one candidate from one party is debating the candidate from the other party and they are talking about jobs. They say, “Vote for me and I’ll bring jobs back to America,” as though the president of the United States has any right or authority or power to create jobs.  Who the heck expects the president to create jobs?  If people expect the government or the president to do all these things for them and then they fail to do so, they get mad at the president or the dictator but they don’t want to change the system.  I am trying to make a distinction here between this moral authority, which I think a lot of people still grant to their leaders, and the fact that they become angry with them because their leaders don’t give them enough benefits.
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  Daily Bell: Do the elites intend to plunge the world into war and recession?
  G. Edward Griffin: I am trying to be very precise in my thinking on this.  I think the elites are prepared to plunge the world into utter chaos, if necessary, for them to maintain their control. It’s not that they want to or that they intend to but they have no qualms against it if it becomes necessary.  They don’t really care about mankind; they look at the average working person as an asset, like cattle on a farm or a piece of livestock. They don’t want to jolt the livestock with a cattle prod.  It’s not that they want to do that but if cattle get out of line, well, where’s the cattle prod? I think that the people who are really calling the shots in the major societies and governments of the world are really pretty indifferent to the personal suffering or the personal lot of the individual citizen.  They may talk a lot about it, they may give speeches about it, they may give lip service to human rights and these things but when push comes to shove, they are only concerned about one thing and that’s the perpetuation of their own power.
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