The Creature from Jekyll Island
Griffin’s book is the most widely-circulated popular history of the Federal Reserve. Substantial portions of the institutional history are accurate and reflect the actual record of the 1910 Jekyll Island meeting and the 1913 legislative process. The book’s broader characterizations — particularly its claims about private control, banker conspiracy, and the nature of Federal Reserve Notes — depart from the documentary record and have been disputed by mainstream monetary historians.
The book is examined here primarily because it is the proximate source of several arguments in alternate-tax theory regarding the legal status of FRNs and the constitutionality of the modern monetary framework. Those arguments are addressed individually under Findings.