The last time federal spending was reduced from one year to the next was a half-century ago, during the Eisenhower administration.

Since then, it matters little which party is in office because both sides have increased spending. Each side also has a habit of meddling in foreign affairs, starting wars, borrowing without consideration, and both Democrats and Republicans support a limitless government and its intrusion in our lives.

Your vote may make you feel good about our form of government, but if history is any sort of guide, it will have little effect on the nation’s direction. The sad truth is that the entity that controls our nation’s fate really isn’t in the White House, Senate or House of Representatives.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild is credited with saying, “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the law.”

In the United States, our nation’s money is controlled by a handful of financiers operating an independent bank known as the U.S. Federal Reserve.

If you are under the false impression that this bank is government controlled, think again.

The legislation was drafted by a handful of private bankers. It was passed by an act of Congress on Dec. 23, 1913, and signed into law one hour later by President Woodrow Wilson.

Our president does appoint the Federal Reserve chairman, however, neither he nor any other government entity, ratifies decisions made by the Federal Reserve.

In other words, the power to destroy our nation’s currency and economy are in the hands of a very few. Unfortunately, these few are not chosen by the population they claim to assist.

And perhaps before we go further, we should examine the results of nearly a century of Federal Reserve actions. Using the Consumer Price Index, we find that an item costing a dollar in 1913 would cost about $23.52 today.

In other words, your buck has lost more than 95 percent of its value.

If we based our calculations on gold, the picture is even bleaker with that same dollar worth now a little more than penny.

What was once one of the soundest currencies on the planet, backed by gold and silver in 1913, is today backed by nothing other than our government’s authority to tax. Perhaps not so coincidentally, the Sixteenth Amendment (the income tax) was ratified just a few months before the Federal Reserve Act.

We’ve been silently robbed through currency debasing since the moment the Fed began. Each subsequent manipulation, under benign names like “quantitative easing,” steals more of your money.

Here is what Wilson said later about what he unknowingly helped bring into existence.

“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.”

And so as you step behind the ballot curtain and cast your vote for the next U.S. president, be prepared to be disappointed.

The only power to change the direction of this country is found with the central bank. As long as these bankers continue to provide the politician’s with enough funny money to pay for their welfare and warfare, real change is exactly what you know it to be: an empty campaign slogan.