“It is a cruel thought that, when we feel ourselves standing on the firmest ground in all respects, the accursed arts of our secret enemies, combining with other causes, should do, in depreciating our money, what the open arms of a mighty man would do.” the enemy couldn’t.” –Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, 1779. ME 4:298, Papers 2:298
“Historically, the United States has been a country of strong money. Only [since 1913] The United States has operated on a fiat money system. During this period, paper money has depreciated more than 87%. Over the previous 140-year period, the hard currency of the United States had held its value. Wholesale prices in 1913…were the same as in 1787.” — Kenneth Gerbino, former Chairman of the American Economic Council
“We make money the old-fashioned way. We print it.” — Art Rolnick, former Chief Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
“Paper money has had on your state the effect it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to all kinds of fraud and injustice.” — George Washington, in a letter to J. Bowen, Rhode Island, January. 9, 1787
“Of all the tricks to deceive the working classes of humanity, none has been more effective than the one that deceives them with paper money.” –Daniel Webster”
“I see a crisis approaching in the near future. It makes me uneasy and tremble for the safety of my country…the country’s Money Power will strive to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people, even wealth it accumulates in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” — Abraham Lincoln, just after the passage of the National Banking Act of 1863
“All the perplexities, confusions, and anxieties in America arise, not from defects in its Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, but from utter ignorance of the nature of currency, credit, and circulation.” — John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1787
“Paper money finally returns to its intrinsic value: zero.” –Voltaire (1694-1778)
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up without home on the continent their parents conquered.” — Thomas Jefferson in 1802 in a letter to then-Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin
The value of paper money is precisely the value of a politician’s promise, however high or low it may be placed; the value of gold is protected by the inability of politicians to manufacture it. –Sir William Rees-Mogg
Money managers like to tell us that they have replaced the gold standard with “responsible money management.” But there is no historical record of responsible handling of paper money… The record taken as a whole is one of hyperinflation, devaluation, and monetary chaos. –Henry Hazlitt
“The creation of money solely as debt is the critical and destabilizing flaw in the American economy.” — author Theodore R. Thoren explains the book The Truth in Money.
“The decline in purchasing power incurred by money holders due to inflation imparts profit to money issuers…” — Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in “Review,” November 1975
“You have to choose [as a voter] between trusting in the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with all due respect to these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, vote for gold.” — George Bernard Shaw
“Without the trust factor, many believe that a paper money system can eventually collapse.” — Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in “Gold”
“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is the absolute owner of all industry and commerce.” — President James A. Garfield
“Those who create and issue money and credit direct the government’s policies and hold the destiny of the people in their hands.” — Hon. Reginald McKenna, former Chancellor of the Exchequer of England
“If Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given for their own use, not delegated to individuals or corporations.” –Andrew Jackson
QUOTES ON FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICY:
“The budget must be balanced, the treasury must be replenished, and the public debt must be reduced. The arrogance of public officials must be tempered and checked. And assistance to foreign lands must be reduced, lest we go bankrupt.” — Cicero, 63 BC
“Inflation has now been institutionalized at a fairly constant 5% per year. This has been scientifically determined to be the optimal level for generating the most income without causing public alarm. A 5% devaluation applies, not just to money earned this year, but to everything that is left over from previous years, at the end of the first year a dollar is worth 95 cents, at the end of the second year the 95 cents are reduced again by 5%, leaving their value at 90 cents, and so on. By the time a person has worked 20 years, the government will have seized 64% of every dollar saved during those years By the time they have worked 45 years, the hidden tax will be 90% virtually everything a person saves over a lifetime of their life”. — G. Edward Griffin, historian and author of “The Creature from Jekyll Island”
“Through a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, a significant part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no more subtle and surer means of overthrowing the existing base of society than to deprave the currency The process involves all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and it does so in a way that not one man in a million can diagnose… However, if a government refrains from regulating and allows As things run their course, essential goods soon reach a price level beyond the reach of all but the wealthy, the lack of value for money becomes apparent, and fraud on the public can no longer be concealed.” — John Maynard Keynes, economist and author of “The Economic
Consequences of Peace” (1920)
“Almost all a Federal Reserve note can legally do is erase a debt and replace it with itself, another debt, a note that promises nothing. If something has been paid, the payment occurs only in the minds of the parties. ..”. — Tupper Saucy, author of “The Miracle on Main Street”
“…the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state).” –Greenspan, Alan; “Gold and Economic Freedom”, Rand, Ayn; Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal; Bookmark Books, 1967; pp96-101. See the full text in the FedWatch section of FAME http://www.fame.org/.
BANK QUOTES:
“I sincerely believe… that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid for by posterity under the name of financing is nothing more than a large-scale scam of the future.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816.
“Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing.” — Ralph M. Hawtrey, former Secretary of the Treasury, England
“Money is the most important subject that intellectual people can investigate and ponder. It is so important that our current civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and its flaws resolved very soon.” — Robert H. Hemphill, former credit manager, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
“The bankers own the land. Take them away, but leave them the power to create money and control credit, and with a flick of the pen they will create enough to buy it back.” — Sir Josiah Stamp, former Chairman of the Bank of England
“The founding fathers of this great land had no difficulty understanding the bankers’ agenda, and often referred to them and their ilk as, I quote, ‘friends of paper money.’ They hated the Bank of England, in particular, and they felt that even if we managed to win our independence from England and King George, we could never truly be a nation of free men, unless we had an honest monetary system.Through ignorance, but also, due to apathy We have been robbed of our Rights and Freedoms by a small but wealthy cabal of power brokers, and we are being robbed of our wealth.We are paying the price for our parents’ near comatose levels of complacency, and God only knows what might be our children’s, if we didn’t work diligently to shake this country out of its slumber! Many nations have lost their freedom at the end of the barrel of a gun, but here in America, if We simply decided to give it up voluntarily. Worse still, we pay for tyranny and usurpation out of our own pockets with “voluntary” tax contributions and the use of a debt-laden fiat currency!” — Peter Kershaw, author of the 1994 pamphlet “Economic Solutions”
“The real truth of the matter is, and you and I know, that a financial element in the great centers has been owned by the US government since the days of Andrew Jackson. History describes Andrew Jackson as the last president truly honorable and incorruptible American.” — President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, November 23, 1933 in a letter to Colonel Edward Mandell House
“After all, the truly unique power of a central bank is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.” –Pringle, Robert; and Deane, Marjorie: Central Banks; Viking, 1994, page viii.
“When you or I write a check, there should be enough funds in our account to cover that check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check, it’s creating money.” — Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in a publication titled “Putting It Simply”
“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are institutions of the US government. They are not…they are private credit monopolies that take advantage of the people of the US for the benefit of themselves and others.” its foreign and domestic swindlers, and wealthy, predatory money lenders.”The Fed’s looting of the United States is the greatest crime in history. The Fed has done everything possible to hide its powers, but the truth is that the Fed has usurped the government. It controls everything here and controls all of our foreign relations. He makes and breaks governments as he pleases.” — Congressman Charles McFadden, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency,
June 10, 1932
“…we conclude that the [Federal] The Reserve Banks are not federal… but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations… with no day-to-day direction from the federal government…” — Ninth Circuit Court in Lewis v. United States, 24 June 1982
“…You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to defeat you, and by the grace of the Eternal God, I will defeat you.” — President Andrew Jackson, evicting a delegation of international bankers from the Oval Office
“Give me control over a nation’s currency and I don’t care who makes its laws.” — Baron MA Rothschild (1744 – 1812)
Submitted By: Regis Sauger (The submitter does not claim any input or credit for the above quotes which are deemed available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act.)