Money plays a crucial role in our daily lives. Not only is it the currency which allows us to lead lives of relative health and comfort, but many would argue that it also serves as the driving force behind many of the world’s gravest ills. Despite its overwhelming dominance in dictating a quality of life for hundreds of millions of American citizens, few understand where their dollar comes from, how it’s dispersed and what factors come into play when determining its value. The exhaustive and enlightening feature-length documentary Century of Enslavement: The History of the Federal Reserve examines the answers to these fundamental questions, and exposes the questionable practices of a highly influential government institution which operates largely in shadow. In the early years of the last century, the nation’s banking system was rocked by widespread financial panic. As paranoid consumers withdrew their money in record numbers, these banks began to fail one after another. The Federal Reserve Act, originally signed into being by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, was designed to put an end to this crisis by promoting a more stable and fairly regulated economy. History repeated itself in the early years of the new century with the global financial crisis of 2008, the aftermath of which saw the nation’s biggest banks bailed out by the United States government. How could this have occurred? By investigating the checkered history of the Federal Reserve, its complicated and confusing structure, and the secrecy in which it functions, the film sheds light on how this system has been allowed to operate in direct violation of the very rights and regulations it was designed to protect. Many of the world’s top economists believe a repeat of this crisis is inevitable. In the face of this sobering and perilous prognosis, systems like Bitcoin and others offer hopeful alternatives to our traditional economic models. Century of Enslavement: The History of the Federal Reserve aspires to a future when these bold ideas can inform a new economic reality for the nation, and when the system that currently enslaves its citizens can one day work to empower them.
