June 4 marks 48 years since John F. Kennedy signed Decree # 11110 on June 4, 1963, and was assassinated on November 22, 1963. There is a conspiracy theory according to which he was killed precisely because of this decree, since this decree allegedly contradicted the interests of the US Federal Reserve System (FRS). According to this theory, the ordering party for the murder was the bankers and the Fed leadership. But is it really so?
This version first appeared in the book by American writer Jim Marrs "Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy" (Crossfire: The conspiracy that killed Kennedy). Then this theory was refuted, for example in Thomas Woodward's book "Money and the Federal Reserve System: Myth and Reality" (Money and the Federal Reserve: myth and reality), as well as on the website of the Political Research Associates.
According to Marrs, in accordance with this decree, the Treasury issued United States Notes in the amount of 4,292,893,815 dollars. Since the legal tender was Federal Reserve notes, the decree allegedly undermined the Fed's monopoly.
In order to be convinced that this is not the case, it is enough just to take a quick look at the text of the decree. You don't need to be a great expert in English to see that the words "United States Note" are not in the text of the decree at all, as well as no amount was indicated.
On the other hand, in 1963, United States Notes were indeed issued in circulation, but in fact these banknotes were issued in accordance with the Legal Tender Act, which was adopted back in 1862 during the Civil War and banknotes these were in circulation until 1971. I wrote about this in an article entitled "Who in the United States 'Printed Money' Before the Federal Reserve was created?" It is quite obvious that the same banknotes could not serve for over 100 years. Therefore, worn-out banknotes are withdrawn from circulation and replaced with new ones. Such a replacement of banknotes took place in 1963, when the old banknotes were replaced with new ones and these banknotes had nothing to do with Kennedy's decree.
For example, this is what a $ 5 bill looked like:
So, after the creation of the FRS in 1913 and until 1971, 2 types of banknotes - "United States Note" and "Federal Reserve Note" were in circulation in the United States as legal tender. Moreover, from 1878 to 1964, another type of banknotes was in circulation as a means of payment - the so-called "Silver Certificates". These banknotes differed from other banknotes in that at the top of the banknotes instead of "United States Note" or "Federal Reserve Note" is written "silver certificate", and at the bottom "silver payable to the bearer on demand" which translates as - "paid in silver on demand by the bearer" … Thus, the owner of these certificates could exchange these certificates for a certain amount of silver at any time.
Promotional video:
This is what the $ 5 silver certificate looked like:
Silver certificate
So, Kennedy's decree # 1110 refers specifically to silver certificates, and not to United States banknotes. So what is the meaning of this decree? And its meaning was that Kennedy delegated his right to issue these certificates to the Treasury Secretary and that's all. To be convinced of this, you need to familiarize yourself with President Truman's decree # 10289, since Kennedy's decree # 11110 is really just an amendment to Truman's decree. The meaning of this decree of Truman also consisted in the fact that Truman delegated some of his powers to the Minister of Finance.
In the first paragraph of his decree, Truman lists the presidential powers that he decided to delegate to the finance minister. At the very beginning of the paragraph, the following is written:
And then there are subparagraphs listing these functions. Each subparagraph begins with the words:
"The powers given to the President …" and then there is a specific law that gives the president this power. Now let's move on to the order of John F. Kennedy.
Section 1 (SECTION 1) of the decree says the following:
What are these amendments? Further in paragraph (b), the following is written:
Subparagraph (j) begins with the same words as all the subparagraphs in Truman's decree, namely “Powers conferred on the President …” and goes on roughly as follows:
Putting it all together, Kennedy's decree would look something like this:
The Minister of Finance is hereby appointed and authorized to perform the following described functions of the President without the approval, ratification, or other action of the President:
I wonder what is the point of killing the president just for the fact that he transferred part of his powers to the finance minister? Moreover, what is the point of killing him after he did it?
On the other hand, the question arises - who gave the president the right to issue these certificates?
It was not by chance that I selected the words of the "Law of May 12, 1933," to which Kennedy refers, since it was this law that gave this right. This law is called the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 and was pushed through Congress by President Roosevelt. Section 43 of this law begins like this:
And then there is a list of rights, including the right to issue silver certificates, but the sum of these certificates could not exceed 3 billion (page 52 of the law). Thus, the president could not even issue silver certificates worth almost 4.3 billion, not to mention the United States Notes, of which only 300 million were issued in accordance with the Legal Tender Act, with the help of this decree. Consequently, the FRS should have killed Roosevelt, not Kennedy. But that is not all. About a year later, Roosevelt pushed another law through Congress, called the Silver Purchase Act of 1934, which required the Treasury Department to buy large quantities of silver and issue silver certificates, and gave the Treasury Secretary the same powers as the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 gave to the president. So who was the Fed to kill?
In this regard, an even more interesting question arises - why did Kennedy need to issue a decree that delegates his powers to the Treasury Secretary, if these powers were already given to the Treasury Secretary in the Silver Purchase Act of 1934?
And here the most interesting begins, which conspiracy theorists do not like to mention. The fact is that on the same day that Kennedy signed his decree, he signed Public Law 88-36, which not only canceled the Silver Purchase Act of 1934, but also gave the Fed the right to issue Federal Reserve Notes in denominations 1 and 2 dollars, which the Fed had previously had no right to issue.
There is a clause in the Federal Reserve Act that declares the Federal Reserve Note legal tender. So, in this article there is paragraph 418, which lists the denominations of bills that the Fed has the right to print, and before the release of Public Law 88-36, signed by Kennedy, there were no bills in denominations of 1 and 2 dollars. They appeared thanks to this law. Quoting SEC3 from Public Law 88-36:
Transfer:
Thus, Kennedy not only did not limit the powers of the FRS, but on the contrary expanded them. Therefore, the Fed not only had no reason to kill Kennedy, but on the contrary, they had to erect a monument to him during his lifetime.
