The collapse of the American dream explained in animation.
It’s a video or rather a film released in January of 2010.
I remember watching it at around 14 years old and going: “Oh well.
That’s good to know.”
Lately I watched it again and … I am afraid we are gonna have to talk about it because
there is a lot of wrong stuff in this.
We are gonna go through the entire thing and say where it’s right, where it’s wrong
and where is spreads antisemitic conspiracies from the 1850s.
Yea it has those.
– Anyways.
You’ve probably seen it.
It has roughly 9 Million views and a 94% approval rating.
It seems people are taking this seriously so let’s have a look at it.
The story follows a man named Pile who just moved into a new property.
To buy it he took out a loan at the bank.
Unfortunately he can’t pay back his mortgage and the bank forecloses his property…
This is supposed to resonate with the viewers.
In 2008, during the mortgage crisis many people lost everything they had.
Those people are supposed to identify with Pile.
He wonders how this happened just as his friend named Hardman teleports next to him with a
time machine, or I guess he time travels next to him?
Anyways Hardman tries to convince Pile, and by extension the audience of his… uhm…
I am not gonna say conspiracy theory buuuut misinformed explanation of how things work.
Okay yea it’s a conspiracy theory Anyways Hardman shows that the bank that Borrowed
Pile money did it to make profit of interest.
To make more profit they offered more and more loans to people with worse and worse
credit.
To be able to make even more money they get money from the FED.
The banks even divert to credit cards to give people the ability to loan even more money
even more easily.
So far there is nothing factually wrong here and it’s just a surface level explanation
of the financial sector and the way the mortgage crisis began.
Do not worry we’ll get into the conspiracies in a bit.
Anyways afterwards Pile asks Hardman where the FED get’s the money it gave to the banks.
Hardman explains that they don’t give it to the banks they LOAN it to the banks and
that more importantly, the FED just calls the Mint to print money.
And on top of that the FED also loans money to the government which then has to raise
the taxes on the people to pay off the interest which means that the people are paying that
bank!
And this is where we meet the first lie of the video.
Hardman says that it’s unconstitutional for the FED to control the printing of the
money since it’s a private company.
He says that it’s outrageous that a private company like that could call up the Mint to
print money and then loan it to the government and demand that they pay interest on the money
they just printed.
And he is right!
It would be outrageous if a private organisation made money that way.
It WOULD be.
If that was true.
But… it isn’t.
The FED isn’t a private bank, it’s owned by the federal government of the united states.
The chairman along with the 12 members of the board of directors are appointed directly
by the president.
On top of that all of the profit the FED makes goes directly to the department of treasury
so the profit made off the interest the government has to pay goes to….the government.
Meaning that when Hardman says that the government uses taxes to pay interest to some private
mastermind bank owner he is lying.
Let’s continue with the video.
After Pile says that he doesn’t see why it’s a big deal, much like you should now
that you know that Hardman just made up a conspiracy and tried to convince us to believe
it.
Hardman just calls him ignorant.
They travel to the 10th century and witness the invention of money.
Of course money is 6000 years older than that but looking at how they invent paper money
and the printing press in the same scene I am gonna ignore the historical inaccuracies.
Hardman explains that money is just something used to make trade easier since everyone agrees
that gold is valuable.
Then they witness a banker inventing paper money.
He stores peoples gold in his vault and gives them a piece of paper which says how much
he owes them.
He quickly get’s the idea to print more IOUs than he has gold which leads him getting
fucking lynched….
Yea that was my reaction as well.
They return to the current time and Hardman explains that man had found a way to turn
worthless paper into gold and that this was the birth of a monster.
The monster is represented with a red shield.
We will get into why in a bit.
Then Hardman explains that Banks only have to keep a fraction of the money someone deposited.
This is called fractional reserve banking and it’s used in every bank nowadays.
This means if you deposit 1000$ the bank can lend 900$ of those to someone else.
You may feel that this is not a good thing and that banks shouldn’t be able to just
give your money to someone else and I’d agree.
But this is basically required for a free market economy.
The reason is that modern economes require a lot of circulation of money.
For example your 1000$ in the bank are dead weight to the economy since nobody spends
them.
And if someone wants to open a business and needs 500$ the bank needs to take those 500
from somewhere.
That being your savings.
The reason I explain this isn’t because I like it or because I think it should be
this way but because the video get’s it completely wrong.
Hardman explains that [13:36-14:00] so we can see he is definitely
concerned.
Of course Pile is shown not wanting to believe the conspiracy theory just like you probably
don’t believe that a banking praxis which is 200 years old is to blame for every economic
problem.
Then the ghost of Thomas Jefferson appears and says an unrelated quote.
Yea the video is a little random.
Then they take the ghosts horse to ride to the past.
They appear at waterloo which prompts this conversation: [0:03-0:12] Those monsters there
funding both sides of the war are supposed to be the Rothschild family.
As Hardman says they are rich bankers from Germany.
They see a currier riding past them.
And this is where we hear this: [0:21-1:27] This is…uhh… a lie.
To be more exact it’s an antisemitic conspiracy theory made up by a French anti-Semitic newspaper
in the 1850s.
The red shield family did not but out the nation, they didn’t trick people into selling
stock, they didn’t fund any side of the war, they merely lended money to governments
as rich bankers tend to do and the English public doesn’t pay money into the hands
of the Rothschild bank.
This is a lie designed to make it seem like there is some giant conspiracy of those rich
Jews to manipulate the most powerful nation on earth without anyone noticing.
A classical “The elites are controlling us”-conspiracy theory.
They then go to America.
Hardman says that 1:32-1:41, further confirming that he blames the this Jewish family for
the death of the American dream.
He says that they tried to take the American dream but the founding fathers supposedly
knew how evil the banks where and tried to stop them.
As proof we get this part of a speech by Thomas Jefferson 1:59-2:23, now he is talking about
public
debt which has nothing to do with banks so the maker of the video adds these guys to
make a comment in order to manipulate what the quote is about.
This way he get’s away with taking a real quote completely out of context for manipulation.
You saw how Jefferson talked about DEBT while the bankers advocated for a central bank which
is a completely different topic.
This whole scene is made to be manipulative and make it seem like the founding fathers
also knew about the giant banker’s conspiracy theory of which Hardman tries to convince
you.
The video then shows Andrew Jackson fighting the banks and winning.
Supposedly showing how he also knew about the conspiracy.
What really happened was that he didn’t like the government run central bank so he
privatised it.
Giving it from the people who paid for it with their taxes to a bunch of private businessmen.
Apparently that’s a win for the people.
Then the video lies about what his last words where, for some reason.
Then Hardman says this: 3:52 – 4:00.
This is a loop back to what the video was about before.
The central claim is that when the dollars where backed with gold that was good for the
economy, somehow.
Then he claims that the evil bankers had a meeting which was [4:17-4:26] which is a lie.
While it was a secret meeting the government was well aware of it.
The government had created a separate task force to create a central bank after the panic
of 1907 destabilized the economy.
The goal was to create an economy which would be more resilient and wouldn’t collapse
as easily.
Of course that didn’t work since the free market kinda just crashes every 15 years no
matter what you do, but hey they tried.
And this meeting is represented as some sort of conspiracy of the rich to create a secret
central bank.
They are led by the Jewish bankers again.
There is no basis in reality for this.
Yes most of the people shown to attend the meeting in the video actually did that in
reality.
The only difference is that they added the Rothschild family for some reason and took
out the government representatives.
I suppose if they showed that the government was present at this meeting then it’d be
a lot harder to convince people that this is some Jewish led conspiracy.
He then calls the act treasonous and pretends that it was handed to the president in some
secret fashion without the knowledge of the senate but that’s made up since the senate
approved it beforehand.
That’s how law making in the US works.
Again this lie is designed to make it seem like there is some conspiracy of people secretly
working together to create a bank for an elite to profit.
And this is where we hear the last piece of truth of the video: [6:13-6:26]
And yes they do that.
Of course it’s actually the government that does that and not the Rothschild family but
whatever.
And the reason that they continue to print money is worth a video on it’s own.
Basically very short: If your economy grows you need to insert more money into it to keep
it running otherwise money would no longer be a useful unit of exchange.
And the reason they don’t just give that money to banks an the government is because
that would cause inflation.
If you wonder what happens if you give a government the ability to print it’s own money look
at the economic crisis in Weimar Germany in the 1920s.
In short: A lot of inflation.
And to avoid that inflation the money gets loaned instead of gifted.
So this part isn’t a lie but a dangerous misconception.
Hardman explains something very basic to the way banks around the world work and pretends
that it’s some evil plot by a Jewish family to control the masses.
Then Hardman claims that the taxes paid by US citizens go to the FED instead of the government
and calls it --6:47 which we already disproved.
Remember all profit by the fed goes directly to the government of the united states.
Then they travel back in time and buy some stuff.
This is to showcase inflation but that’s not worth debunking.
He then says “The higher the inflation the more of your money they take” which isn’t
true.
A 10% tax rate is 10% no matter how much money you have.
Whether your stuff is worth 10$ or 1000$ doesn’t matter.
You still pay 10% of that value as tax.
So that’s an argument which doesn’t make sense.
Then we see this: [9:10- 9:22] so apparently JFK knew about the conspiracy!
He wanted to save us from those evil Jewish bankers!
Hardman explains that [9:36-10:18] OH MY GOD THE BANKERS KILLED
JFK.
Why doesn’t everyone know about this!
Because it’s not true.
For a start Kennedy wasn’t talking about Banks or some conspiracy in that clip.
He was talking about THE SOVIET UNION because of course he was.
And the executive order wasn’t some attempt and defeating a conspiracy.
It was a tool for the Treasury to be able to print it’s own money.
Which as I mentioned before is incredibly dangerous for the economy.
And I hope I don’t have to explain that the banks aren’t to blame for Kennedy’s
assassination.
Then he says some more conspiracy nonsense about the secret powers behind the FED which
results in a battle based on the 2006 movie named “300”.
He pretends that he and the few who “know the truth” are fighting a noble battle.
And then the video ends with Hardman killing the US minister of finance and yelling “This
is America.”.
Then we hear some metal music and the video ends.
They have a website www.theamericandreamfilm.com but this video is long enough as it is.
So in conclusion.
This is a very bad video that’s designed to explain why the American dream isn’t
around anymore and happens to piggy back on a few anti-Semitic conspiracies to further
it’s agenda.
Of course the truth is that the American dream can’t be achieved because the system we
live in doesn’t allow it.
It would be easy to dismiss the entire thing if you look at how much of it is misrepresented
or made up information but … to be honest… it does have a point.
Some of the problems it mentions are real.
Banks are too powerful and don’t have enough oversight.
The economy is based on endless growth.
Private bankers have more money than they will ever need and if they loose it all they
will be bailed out by the government.
Banks only make money by betting money on people and hoping that they will return it,
with interest.
The economy relies on debt.
People can’t afford things like cars and washing machines without loans anymore.
And no matter how hard you work, you won’t become rich.
And to it’s credit, the video notices all of that.
They see the problems.
They see that rich people are exploiting the poor to become more rich but instead of having
a look at and critiquing the system that caused those conditions it blames everything on a
Jewish bankers family and a government agency it doesn’t fully understand.
If you liked or believed what the video had to say let me tell you: You are right to feel
like the world is broken, like the economy is only build around making rich people richer
and like the entire financial sector is acting immorally.
You are right to seek for someone to blame for this.
But you won’t find a single person that’s responsible.
You will have to look deeper, not at the people acting in the most profitable way they can
but at the system that makes those actions the most profitable.
A philosopher once compared people to actors on a stage.
If you put any person into the position of a banker, they would do the same things any
banker would do.
Simply because it’s the most profitable and the stage they we on rewards making as
much profit as possible.
Don’t blame the actor, blame the stage.
Don’t blame those who exploit the system, blame the system.