I have been besieged by numerous e-mails suggesting that, unlike my patriotic CNBC colleague, Rick Santelli, I am a shill for the oligarchic elite -- a subject which I addressed on The Insana Quotient, earlier today.

My defense of the Federal Reserve and its policies has become a hot topic of debate as the "Jekyll Island conspiracy theorists" have emerged, literally from nowhere, to challenge the constitutional legitimacy of the Fed.

The conspiracy, which Rick alluded to in my debate with him on CNBC last Friday, surrounds the gathering of bankers and politicians who, in the wake of the 1907 Wall Street Panic, silently slipped on to Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia, to design a central bank that mirrored central banks all over Europe.

The group, which included the most prominent bankers in the United States, was seeking to find a solution to the frequent panics and "depressions" that gripped Wall Street and Main Street alike, over the prior several decades, culminating in the near-ruinous Panic of 1907.

J.P. Morgan stemmed the tide by intervening, with a group of Wall Street bankers, to save the system and keep the Wall Street crisis from spreading to Main Street.

The U.S. has had two central banks in its history as a constitutional democracy. The original central bank, envisioned by Alexander Hamilton, created by Congress and signed into law by George Washington, was the First Bank of the United States.

Prior to the passing of the Constitution and the establishment of our current republican system of government, the Articles of Confederation bound states loosely together. They created their own currencies, levied their own taxes and created an unwieldy state of economic disharmony that a constitutional democracy, and creation of a central bank, were designed to address.

The conspiracy theorists also attack Hamilton's central bank as an institution he designed to help finance wars of adventure and to profit the moneyed interests. So, the conspiracy about central banking does not begin and end with the modern Federal Reserve.

In between the two central banks that existed in the United States, the U.S. was on and off the gold standard and suffered from the boom and bust cycles that perplexed individuals and wreaked havoc on the economy, every few years. The size of the nation's money and credit supply was dictated by the amount of gold held by the government, which rose and fell, based on new discoveries, the paying off of international debt in precious metals, etc., etc., etc.

In 1913, after the conclusion of the Jekyll Island meetings, and other conferences, the modern Federal Reserve was created as a quasi-private enterprise that was intended to be independent of the legislative and executive branches of government. Its mandate was, and is, to achieve "maximum sustainable growth while maintaining price stability."

The Fed has been run well and run poorly since then, at times failing in its mission and, at other times, succeeding. The conspiracy theorists maintain that the Fed is a banking cabal designed to inflict economic harm on the average American, to benefit the ruling elite.

My interactions with both former and current Fed officials tell quite a different tale. The members of the Federal Reserve Board have wildly different points of view, with the current members lacking a cohesive strategy with which to handle this economic crisis.

Indeed, this is among the most fractious groups within the Fed that I have seen in 26 years of being involved with my chosen profession. That they are capable of a conspiracy is a non-sequitir as they cannot even decide on the near-term direction of short-term interest rates, let alone achieve global economic domination at the expense of every ordinary man, woman and child in the United States.

After having studied the Federal Reserve System, from within and without, and having read countless volumes on the history of central banking, it seems safe to say that the conspiracy theorists are misinformed and, quite simply, wrong.

They are most inaccurate about the fantasy, or romanticized history, surrounding the "halcyon days" of the gold standard -- for instance, that there ever existed a system that ran smoothly and without risks and rewards.

My reading of economic history shows no uniform system of money management, no single concept that has guided the creation of money and credit in the modern global economy (which I would date from the 17th century, forward), nor any credible, institutional substitute for a strong, independent central bank.

The Fed, like any household, corporation, entity or government, is an imperfect institution, run by mere mortals. It has been both secretive, in days gone by, and transparent, in more recent years.

What bothers me most about those who claim I shill for an elitist group of oligarchs is that they imply I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, when, in reality, my family could scarcely afford stainless steel. I come from very modest means, do not wield influence among the nation's power elite and have only, what I believe to be, informed opinions about how best to remedy this nation's economic problems -- with particular respect to saving Main Street from the Wall Street-induced calamity we are suffering through.

If I have failed in making that clear, I am failing in my job as a communicator. I do not favor the rich over the poor, or those of modest means. I come from them. I want what is best for the people who brought me into the world and cared for me as I grew.

That I have a different opinion as to how to achieve those ends is one of study, not one of prejudice or predilection. Of that, you can be certain, despite what one of my colleagues, or his followers, might be thinking silently, or saying out loud.

P.S. ...

To Coco: Your assertion that I am a "commie bastard" again proves that ad hominem attacks are the province of those who have no valid arguments to bolster their cases. And, just as an aside, my parents were, in fact, married when I was conceived.