"The Monied interest will oppose the plan of Government, if paper emissions be not prohibited." — Gouverneur Morris, Philadelphia, 1787

Occupy Wall Street participants all over the U.S. figured out what Gouverneur Morris and the other Founders already knew at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

We figured out that some kind of power imbalance was at work in our economy and national politics. We opened up the eyes of the public to the unfair divide between the 1% and the 99%. We spoke about this taboo topic so much that the mainstream media eventually had to acknowledge it and talk about it, too.

Today, the disparity between the masses of real producers of goods and services in this economy and the owners of the banks and corporations is front and center. As hard as they may try, the mainstream media mass distraction sports entertainment complex cannot keep all our minds off these important facts that affect all of us.

We have learned some very powerful lessons since 2011. But what are the real sources of today's power imbalance? Where did it come from and how can we reverse it by writing new laws that actually serve all of us equally, not few of us disproportionately? There are more lessons for us to learn about now.

December 23 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the first permanent central bank installed here on these shores. The central bank was modeled on older ones in Germany and the United Kingdom. The bill was written in private, introduced into Congress, “debated” when the place was empty, and voted on after the majority had already gone home for Christmas. When better to stage an economic coup on the nation than at a moment when everybody is distracted and already on vacation?

The new power imbalance, enshrined in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, gave the right to banks to create our money supply – our only money supply – by putting us all in debt, starting with our government. The bill put our lives, livelihoods and ultimately our property into the hands of private self-interested bank shareholders by giving them the power to decide how much money was in circulation at any one time and place, and who in the country would receive it.

It ensured that in order for there to be any money at all, those who borrowed would pay interest from the day the money was created until the day they repaid the "loan" in full. Translation: the least well-paid and the most needy among us pay interest on money that we have borrowed into existence — although, constitutionally, it was the people's right to coin it interest-free in the first place.

Under the new regime known as the Federal Reserve, interest paid by the public went straight into the pockets of the those who owned the banks' largest voting blocks of shares: the shareholders. And what did these owners of the banks do with all that money? First, they financed and profited off WWI. Later, following WWII, they lent it to our grandparents (white grandparents, that is) to buy houses in the suburbs. As the source of new loans, banks created the business model of suburban sprawl once U.S. corporations were already so richthat they didn’t need to borrow anymore.

Fast forward several decades to Alan Greenspan, who presided over the Fed as it used low interest rates to inflate the price of those houses and create the illusion that we, as a nation, were still becoming rich while our economy meanwhile lost good paying jobs to other countries where the same banks were loaning new money. The banks handed out too many mortgages to build too many houses even as basic services like healthcare and affordable education were shunned by politicians as things we couldn’t afford.

This game has gone on numerous times in history. Railroads were perhaps the first big bubble the banks created, coast to coast, in the 1880s. Then they built too many factories for too many goods we never really needed, resulting in boom and bust economies and a consumer debt-driven economy our grandparents came to love.

All along, the banks red-lined African American neighborhoods so that families living there did not get on real estate property ladders. As a result, today we have terrible wealth disparity between white and black households, the latter of whom pay higher interest rates on loans and suffer from higher and longer unemployment, with the social consequences that come with it.

Some of us remember the 1980s stock market and real estate bubbles, and the 1990s tech bubble. We all remember the sub-prime bubble and Global Financial Crisis that brought down the whole house of cards. The banks knew a lot of tricks then and they know a lot of tricks now. But we're catching up on them. Fast.

Now, the power imbalance which began under Gouverneur Morris and his cronies in 1787, which was written into acts like the first and second bank charters, the National Banking Act of 1863 and finally the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, must be undone after 100 years of gravy train for the owners.

On December 23, we have a reason to focus our attention on where our money really comes from – and the absurdity that a handful of privately-owned banking corporations are allowed to profit off the least of us as they control the money supply for our entire economy. On December 23, and in the centennial year of the Fed that follows, we can also focus our attention on the injustices that have arisen from that control, and find solutions that return power to the 99%.

Occupy laid fingers on the outward symptoms of the problem: the power imbalance between the owners of corporations and the rest of us. On December 23, we can take our grievances public by looking carefully and deeply at the root cause of this imbalance. And by demanding to see fundamental change.