the federal reserve began when the Rothschild held the king of England at gunpoint in the 1500's. They spent a few weeks buying pounds which then appreciated in value. Then they began a rapid sell off, threatening the bottom value of the currency. With the King at his wit's end, finally a Rothschild appeared before the king offering him a loan to end the problem. This is how they cause internal panics, and this is what they are doing to the EU right now, playing around with the banks. In the end they profit when they offer a loan through a puppet bank or when they are able to exert political control.
Now all these riots you hear about, now in Russia and still in parts of the middle east, and in America soon, (OWS is just the beginning) are because of money problems. Then they had their banks offer predatory loans, changing the law, and super low interest rates, in a ten year plan to own all the housing in the U.S. (starting in 2001) not unlike their other plans which always succeeded. (and not unlike what they did in the 30's to consolidate their power over the dollar by making gold illegal, all while making 10 to 1 returns on all of the unpaid mortgages farmers were working on)
At this point, back in the 90's no one would have considered offering monetary loans to countries in other side of the world on the verge of collapse. But the fed is systematically creating a one world financial system, well beyond the scope of what Americans understand, which a history that goes back hundreds of years. Americans today don't understand it any better than they did in 1913...