While sitting in the overly crowded T bus, gym-socks and other nasty smells dispersed into the ether. I usually read my security analysis book but I forgot it today so I had to amuse myself in another way. I let my mind wander today.

My imaginary self was walking down a warmly lit street, with the sun shining and a wonderful Bossa nova song rang throughout my head. Then a rustic torn up sack dropped down into my field of vision and hit the ground in front of me with a ballsy smack. I went over to it like any other curious imaginary mental me would, reached out and poked it with my index finger. A million thoughts rushed through my mind as to what it could be, but it crunched at the very touch of it. So, that means it couldn't be a box of rocks, though I would say I was dumb as a box of rocks for thinking that because clearly it was a bag and not a box. Also, it was crunchy. It also had a "n" smell, as sometimes I have synesthesiatic cross manipulations of my senses, that is very hard to describe. The only thing I can relate it to would be to a spring day after a cold shower and the smell that emanates from a cow pasture. If your not from the country your out of luck.

Enough with the non-sense sensational tangent, I crouched down spiderman style and opened the bag and out popped something quite unusual, dollar bills. What a stereo-typical day dream this was. But I started to think as this money came out of nowhere, sort of quasi lucky charms without the delicious marshmallows or the annoying Leprechaun. There had to be some meaning to this random thought.

Actually the day dream makes perfect sense. I have been snacking on information having to do with the value of money and the creation of it, in my spare time.

Back to my little day dream, I got a little giddy when I saw all this money falling out of the bag. Who wouldn't, right? Well hopefully in real life you would, but I thought wait a minute, what happened if a bag full of cow dung fell out of the sky in front of me? I can safetly assume I would be either a) horribly afraid that the world is ending b) very angry that I might have a trace of dung on my clothes or c) quite delighted. What?????

You might ask, why would anybody be happy to have a lot of dung? Well if you valued it and could trade it for services or commodities like the dollar, or any currency, you might. This is exactly the case in remote parts of Tibet. I'm sure if the bag full of dollars fell in front of a Tibetan youngster that had no contact with the West, he might look at the "money" and seem confused about the paper. It would probably hold no value to him because the whole tribe only accepts dung as the common form of trade. Think of those Discover card commercials, "Discover excepted everywhere." However, the young man or lady who found the paper in a bag might come up with resourceful ways to use it. I'm sure they don't have toilet paper in the dung currency area of Tibet :)

We live all our lives using dollars and a majority of our precious lives are spent working for this paper, but do you ever stop and think where on earth does this money come from? I've always wanted to know this fact, but our awesome school system didn't seem to teach this knowledge that is oh-so pertinent to our daily lives.

Today in America and other parts of the world, money is created by someone, but not the governments. The money is created by central banks that are privately owned and federally unregulated. A lassiez faire type of situation. In America this central bank is called the Federal Reserve. What a nice pun. Federal yet not federally controlled by congress. They produce money out of thin air and the people have no control over it, sounds like democracy to me.

Largely with the creation of the Federal Reserve our monetary system is based on debt. This is called a fiat system. The government and banks, who later trickle their money down to lay person, gives the federal reserve a dollar in return for 10 more dollars but have to pay interest, mind you. Think of it like this, the Federal Reserve is the poppa bank and the little banks and the government borrow money, but they still have to pay interest, it's the same as we do when we get loans from a bank. This is only different in the fact that it is with exponentially larger sums of money to pay off wars, government programs and mortgage backed debts of banks. When there is a war who funds the sides? The big banks because they know they can profit from both sides. The loser gets paid by the winner, because that is good war etiquette and the winner has to pay the HUGE interest. I wonder why we have meaningless wars. Maybe it was a coincidence that the Federal reserve was created right before the First World War and the second quickly followed. Vietnam war, Korean War, Gulf war, Afghanistan and Iraq. Get the picture? The politicians are bribed with MONEY and vote on the greed effect. It is totally true when Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson said whoever creates and controls the money control everything.

Ok so now you see a pile of money that is created out of thin air, or you work your tale off to earn your next check, what will you think? The Fed has the complete control of the money supply, interest rates and everything else money. That money you dearly hold value to, might have value today but maybe not tomorrow. All currencies have a life span. Will we value hair next? If we do I'm rich!!!