The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve

Although some prominent libertarians and conservatives, notably former US Representative Ron Paul, have promoted Griffin’s book as a scathing revelation of international corruption, economists and historians have debunked Griffin’s claims as being misleading or outright false. In addition, many of the book’s main claims rely on antisemitic or racist conspiracy theories.

The Creature from Jekyll Island’s central argument and metaphor—that the Federal Reserve system is a malicious “creature” organized by a cabal of shadowy figures to rob and exploit Americans—is based on a misrepresentation of the events that led up to the passing of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The meeting of bankers and politicians on Jekyll Island did take place, and it was organized with strict secrecy. However, economist and historian Edward Flaherty points out that many plans for a centralized federal banking system were circulating in Washington in the early 1910s, and that the so-called “Aldrich Plan” laid out at Jekyll Island was rejected by Congress for placing too much power in the hands of private bankers. Instead, a different set of policymakers crafted a mixed structure in which the Fed would be “privately owned” by its member banks, but “publicly controlled” by a Board of Governors appointed by the government (Flaherty, Edward. “Myth #1: The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was crafted by Wall Street bankers and a few senators in a secret meeting.” Political Research Associates). The Federal Reserve System that exists, therefore, is not the system that was laid out at Jekyll Island. As financial historian and legal scholar Peter Conti-Brown explains, although the Aldrich Plan was among the plans that influenced the Federal Reserve Act, “the reality is that the ‘creature’ established in that meeting and sponsored by the Republicans in 1910 bore little relationship […] to the Federal Reserve System ultimately […] signed into law on December 23, 1913” (Conti-Brown, Peter. “The Twelve Federal Reserve Banks: Governance and Accountability in the 21st Century.” Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, 5 Mar. 2015).

Griffin’s claims about the history and operations of the Federal Bank throughout the book are similarly misleading or based on misrepresentations of fact. For instance, the FDIC has a complex mechanism for determining the percentage of deposits banks must pay to be insured by the FDIC (Crisis and Response: An FDIC History: 2008-2013. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), 30 Nov. 2017), contrary to Griffin’s claim that the bank’s pay-in “percentage is the same for all banks” (53). Griffin attempts to tie the formation of the Federal Reserve Bank of America to a centuries-long international conspiracy beginning with the Bank of England, but these claims are based on misrepresentations of historical facts. Historian Gerry Rough points out that not only do the records of the founding of the Bank of England show no evidence of the nefarious “monetary scientists” or “political scientists” Griffin claims were behind the Band of England’s founding, but that the very sources Griffin cites to support his theory directly contradict his description of events (Rough, Gerry. “More Evidence on the Bank of England, Part 1.” Archive.org, 1998). Rough, Flaherty, and Conti-Brown demonstrate that Griffin consistently misrepresents or outright lies about what his sources actually say. Readers of The Creature from Jekyll Island should therefore be skeptical even when Griffin offers sources for his claims. Refer directly to the cited sources to confirm the facts.

Furthermore, many of Griffin’s main arguments rely on or reiterate antisemitic and racist conspiracy theories. Griffin’s claim that the Federal Reserve is controlled by a cabal of private bankers with roots in Europe, for instance, is an elaboration on long-standing antisemitic conspiracy theories centered on the German Jewish banking family the Rothschilds. Katelyn Ferral of PolitiFact explains:

Conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family date to 1846 in Paris, [when] the family was targeted […] in an anonymously written pamphlet that falsely claimed that Nathan Rothschild, the family patriarch, Mayer Rothschild’s son, knew the Battle of Waterloo’s outcome in advance (Ferral, Katelyn. “The Rothschilds were behind the Federal Reserve, and they now control the global financial system,” PolitiFact.com, 1 Mar 2024).

This is a claim that Griffin not only repeats but on which he bases much of his narrative about the history of central banking. As Ferral notes, the “antisemitic conspiracy theory” that the Rothschilds engineered Waterloo and control the global banking system “has been repeatedly debunked over centuries” (Ferral). This debunked antisemitic conspiracy theory is connected to another conspiracy theory central to the book, the notion of the “New World Order,” a global shadow government. The Creature from Jekyll Island has played a major role in bringing these antisemitic theories back into circulation. The dangerous prejudices behind Griffin’s arguments are why even staunch critics of the Fed like Conti-Brown, who argues for its dissolution, are careful to clarify that claims like Griffin’s that the Federal Reserve is “owned” by private bankers are false. Other conspiracy theories that Griffin advances, such as the claim that the Emancipation Proclamation was “propaganda” meant to coerce US citizens to bankroll a war that was secretly meant to enrich bankers, rely on racist distortions of American history that attempt to minimize or excuse the historical enslavement of people of African descent.