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QUOTES - FROM PROMINENT PEOPLE - ABOUT MONEY
VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value ---- zero."
PRESIDENT JAMES A. GARFIELD
"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is
absolute master of all industry and commerce."
HORACE GREELY
"While boasting of our noble deeds, we are careful to
control the ugly fact that by an iniquitous money system, we
have nationalized a system of oppression which, though more
refined, is not less cruel than the old system of chattel
slavery."
SIR. REGINALD MCKENNA (former President of the Midland
Bank of England)
"Those who create and issue money and credit direct the
policies of government and hold in the hollow of their hands
the destiny of the people."
SIR JOSIAH STAMP (President of the Bank of England in
the 1920's, the second richest man in Britain)
"Banking was conceived in iniquity, and was born in sin.
The Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave
them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the
pen, they will create enough deposits, to buy it back again.
However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes
like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for
this would be a happier and better world to live in. But if
you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers, and pay the cost of
your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits."
ROTHSCHILDS BROS. OF LONDON
"Those few who can understand the system (check book
money and credit) will either be so interested in its profits,
or so dependent on it favors, that there will be little
opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great
body of people mentally incapable of comprehending the
tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system,
will bear it burdens without complaint, and perhaps without
even suspecting that the system is inimical to their
interests."
ANSELM ROTHSCHILD
"Give me the power to issue a nation's money; then I do
not care who makes the law."
PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON
"A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of
credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of
the Nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few
men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the
most completely controlled and dominated governments in the
world--no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a
government of conviction, and vote of the majority, but a
government by the opinion and duress, of small groups of
dominant men." Just before President Woodrow Wilson died,
he is reported to have stated to friends that he had been
"deceived" and that "I have betrayed my
Country". referring to the Federal Reserve Act, passed
during his Presidency.
PELATIAH WEBSTER
"Paper money polluted the equity of our laws, turned them
into engines of oppression, corrupted the justice of our
public administration, destroyed the fortunes of thousands who
had confidence in it, enervated the trade, husbandry, and
manufactures of our country, and went far to destroy the
morality of our people."
WILLIAM PATTERSON
"The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it
creates out of nothing."
POPE PIUS XI
"In the first place, then, it is patent that in our days,
not wealth alone is accumulated, but immense power and
despotic economic domination are concentrated in the hands of
the few, who for the most part are not the owners but only the
trustees and directors of invested funds, which they
administer at their own good pleasure. This domination is
most powerfully exercised by those who, because they hold and
control money, also govern credit and determine its allotment,
for that reason supplying so to speak, the life blood of the
entire economic body, and grasping in their hands, as it were,
the very soul of production, so that no one can breathe
against their will."
IRVING FISHER
"Thus, our national circulating medium is now at the
mercy of loan transactions of banks, which lend, not money,
but promises to supply money they do not possess."
MAJOR L. L. B. ANGUS
"The modern banking system manufactures money out of
nothing. The process is, perhaps, the most, astounding piece
of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banks can in fact
inflate, mint, and un-mint the modern ledger-entry
currency".
RALPH M. HAWTREY (Former Secretary of the British
Treasury)
"Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of
payment, out of nothing."
ROBERT H. HEMPHILL (Credit Manager of Federal Reserve
Bank, Atlanta, Georgia)
"This is a staggering thought. We are completely
dependent, on the Commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow
every dollar, we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the
Banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not,
we starve. We are, absolutely, without a permanent money
system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the
tragic absurdity, of our hopeless position, is almost
incredible, but there it is. It is the most, important
subject, intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon.
It is so important that our present civilization may collapse,
unless it becomes widely understood, and the defects remedied
very soon."
CONGRESSMAN LOUIS T. McFADDEN and former Chairman of
the Committee on Banking and Currency.
" ... we have in this Country one of the most corrupt
institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal
Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks.... This evil
institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the
United States.... Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks
are United States Government institutions. They are private
credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United
States for the Benefit of themselves and their foreign
customers. ..." "The Federal Reserve (Banks) are one
of the most corrupt institutions, the world has ever seen.
There is not a man, within the sound of my voice, who does not
know that this Nation is run by the International
Bankers". "Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one
of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I
refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve
Banks, hereinafter called the Fed. The Fed has cheated the
Government of the United States and the people of the United
States out of enough money to pay the Nation's debt.... The
wealth of these United States and the working capital have
been taken away from them and has either been locked in the
vaults of certain banks and the great corporations or exported
to foreign countries for the benefit of foreign customers of
these banks and corporations. So far as the people of the
United States are concerned, the cupboard is bare."
JAMES MADISON
"The prime function of government is the protection of
the different and unequal faculties of men for acquiring
property." "History records that the money changers
have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent
means possible to maintain their control over governments by
controlling money and its issuance." "The extension
of the prohibition to bills of credit must give pleasure to
every citizen, in proportion to his love of justice and his
knowledge of the true springs of public prosperity. The loss
which America has sustained since the peace from the pestilent
effects of paper money on the necessary confidence between man
and man, on the necessary confidence in the public councils,
on the industry and morals of the people and on the character
of republican government, constitutes an enormous debt against
the States chargeable with this unadvised measure, which must
long remain unsatisfied; or rather an accumulation of guilt,
which can be expiated no otherwise than by a voluntary
sacrifice on the altar of justice of the power which has been
the instrument of it. In addition to these persuasive
considerations, it may be observed that the same reasons which
show the necessity of denying to the States the power of
regulating coin, prove with equal force that they ought not to
be at liberty to substitute a paper medium in the place of the
coin."
Number 44 of the Federalist Papers. "Paper money
may be deemed an aggression on the rights of the other
states."
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
"To emit an un-funded paper as the sign of value ought
not to continue a formal part of the Constitution, nor even
hereafter to be employed; being, in its nature, pregnant with
abuses, and liable to be made the engine of imposition and
fraud; holding out temptations equally pernicious to the
integrity of government and to the morals of the people."
ANDREW JACKSON
"If congress has the right under the Constitution to
issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to
be delegated to individuals or corporations.
"The bold efforts that the present bank has made to
control the government and the distress it has wantonly
caused, are but premonitions of the fate which awaits the
American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of
this institution or the establishment of another like it...If
the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and
banking system there would be a revolution before
morning."
FROM A SECRET AGENT - 1862
"Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power and
all chattel slavery abolished. This I and my European friends
are in favor of, for slavery is but the owning of labor and
carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European
plan, led on by England, is that capital shall control labor
by controlling wages. The great debt that the capitalists will
see to it is made out of the war, must be used as a means to
control the volume of money. To accomplish this the bonds must
be used as a banking basis. We are now waiting for the
Secretary of the Treasury to make this recommendation to
Congress. It will not do to allow the greenback, as it is
called, to circulate as money any length of time, as we can
not control that. But we can control the bonds and through
them the bank issues."
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
"There should be no war upon property or the owners of
property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is
desirable; is a positive good in the world. That some should
be rich shows that others may become rich, hence, is just
encouragement to industry and enterprise." "I have
two great enemies: the Southern Army in front of me, and the
financial institutions to my rear. Of the two, the one in my
rear is my greatest foe..."
"The Government should create, issue, and circulate all
the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power
of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the
adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved
immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and
become the servant of humanity.
"Yes; we may all congratulate ourselves that this cruel
war is nearing its close. It has cost a vast amount of
treasure and blood. The best blood of the flower of American
youth has been freely offered upon our country's altar that
the Nation might live. It has been, indeed a trying hour for
the Republic; but I see in the future a crisis approaching
that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my
country. As a result of the war, corporations have been
enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow,
and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until
wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is
destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety
of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the
war." "I see in the near future a crisis approach
which unnerves me and cause me to tremble for the safety of my
country. Corporations (of banking) have been enthroned, an era
of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power
of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working
upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is
aggregated in a few hands and the Republic destroyed."
SALMON P. CHASE, (Lincoln's Secretary to the Treasury)
who was the pilot of the 1863 banking act in the US never
forgave himself, subsequently saying: "My agency, in
promoting the passage of the National Bank Act, was the
greatest mistake in my life. It has built up a monopoly which
affects every interest in the country. It should be repealed,
but before that can be accomplished, the people should be
arrayed on one side, and the banks on the other, in a contest
such as we have never seen before in this country."
OTTO VON BISMARCK, German Chancellor (1815-1898)
"The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom.
There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his
boots and the bankers went anew to grab the riches. I fear
that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks
will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use
it to systematically corrupt modern civilization."
LONDON TIMES -1865
"If this mischievous financial policy [of creating a
debt-free currency], which has its origin in the American
Republic, shall become permanent, then that government will
furnish its own money without cost! It will pay off its debts
and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to
carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without
precedent in the history of the world. The brains and the
wealth of all countries will go to America. That government
must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the
globe!"
JOHN C. CALHOUN
"A power has risen up in the government greater than the
people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful
interests combined in one mass, and held together by the
cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks."
LEON N. TOLSTOY
"Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from
the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal -- that there
is no human relation between master and slave."
Frederic Bastiat, The Law
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men
living together in society, they create for themselves in the
course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral
code that glorifies it."
WN. COBBETT
" I set to work to read the Act of Parliament by which
the Bank of England was created in 1694. The inventors knew
well what they were about. Their design was to mortgage by
degrees the whole of the country, all the lands, all the
houses, and all other property, and even all labor, to those
who would lend their money to the State-the scheme, the
crafty, the cunning, the deep scheme has produced what the
world never saw before-starvation in the midst of
plenty."
DARRYL R. FRANCIS, former President of the Federal
Reserve Bank of St. Louis
"Since the direct method of printing money to finance
government expenditures is prohibited in the United states,
the monetization of government deficits has occurred
indirectly... government debt is ultimately being financed by
the creation of new money... I doubt that monetization of
debt has a conscious act... I can find no benefits accruing
to the whole of society from debt monetization, but the risks
are very serious and can be expressed in one word,
inflation" "In the case of debt monetization the
immediate and even the short run impact is neither an increase
in interest rates, and yet real resources are still being
transferred from private to government use."
Page 24 "Federal Reserve System" Board of Gov.'s
"...in the practical workings of the banking system the
bulk of deposits originates in the granting of loans..., and
his ability to make loans and investments arises largely from
the receipt of his depositorsā money." "As we
realize that banks create their own deposit debts...we begin
to see why these institutions are often referred to as
monetizers of debt..."
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Modern Money Mechanics
"The actual process of money creation takes place in
commercial banks. As noted earlier, demand liabilities of
commercial banks are money.", p.3. "Confidence in
these forms of money also seems to be tied in some way to the
fact that assets exist on the books of the government and the
banks equal to the amount of money outstanding, even though
most of the assets themselves are no more than pieces of
paper--.", P.3.
"Commercial banks create checkbook money whenever they
grant a loan, simply by adding new deposit dollars in accounts
on their books in exchange for a borrower's IOU.", p. 19.
"The 12 regional reserve banks aren't government
institutions, but corporations nominally 'owned' by member
commercial banks.", p. 27.
St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, Review, Nov. 1975, p.22
"The decrease in purchasing power incurred by holders of
money due to inflation imparts gains to the issuers of
money--."
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Gold, p. 10
"Without the confidence factor, many believe a paper
money system is liable to collapse eventually."
Federal Reserve Bank, New York
"Because of 'fractional' reserve system, banks, as a
whole, can expand our money supply several times, by making
loans and investments." "Commercial banks create
checkbook money whenever they grant a loan, simply by adding
new deposit dollars in accounts on their books in exchange for
a borrower's IOU."
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
"The actual process of money creation takes place in
commercial banks. As noted earlier, demand liabilities of
commercial banks are money."
ROBERT HEMPHILL (former Credit Manager of the Federal
Reserve Bank in Atlanta)
"If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a
bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or
currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are
completely dependent on the commercial banks. Someone has to
borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash, or credit.
If the banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous;
if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money
system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the
tragic absurdity of our hopeless situation is almost
incredible-but there it is."
WALTER WRISTON (former chairman of the Citicorp Bank)
"If we had a truth-in-Government act comparable to the
truth-in-advertising law, every note issued by the Treasury
would be obliged to include a sentence stating: "This
note will be redeemed with the proceeds from an identical note
which will be sold to the public when this one comes
due." When this activity is carried out in the United
States, as it is weekly, it is described as a Treasury bill
auction. But when basically the same process is conducted
abroad in a foreign language, our news media usually speak of
a country's "rolling over its debts." The perception
remains that some form of disaster is inevitable. It is not.
To see why, it is only necessary to understand the basic facts
of government borrowing. The first is that there are few
recorded instances in history of government-any
government-actually getting out of debt. Certainly in an era
of $100-billion deficits, no one lending money to our
Government by buying a Treasury bill expects that it will be
paid at maturity in any way except by our Government's selling
a new bill of like amount."
MERRILL JENKINS SR.
"The right of distribution over private property is the
essence of freedom."
"Force- modern Money, then, has the power to create debt
since it can command other goods, but is valueless itself.
Money has purchasing power, but no value -- without purchasing
power.. Fed. "Notes" must be accepted as a tender
for debt, but are not "money" -- so therefore --do
not have money's unique ability called purchasing power, what
thing has purchasing power? what thing can force the public to
offer its property and rights. Offer means to present for
action or consideration; propose; suggest; it is a voluntary
act. What thing can 'forceā anyone into a voluntary act of
offering. The words force and voluntary are exactly opposed
and it is by the acceptance of this impossible concept of
'voluntary force' being 'purchasing power' that makes the
public believe that something must be 'money' and have this
unique power."
RUSSELL L. MUNK (former Assistant General Counsel,
Department of the Treasury)
"Federal Reserve Notes are not dollars."
PRESIDENT JOHN ADAMS
"All the perplexities, confusions and distresses in
America arise not from defects in the constitution or
confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, as much as
from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and
circulation."
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
"No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or
confederation; grant letters of masque and reprisal; coin
money; emit letters of credit; make any thing but gold and
silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of
attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation
of contracts, or grant any title of nobility." (Article
I, Section 10)
U.S. Supreme Court, Craig v. Missouri, 4 Peters 410.
"Emitting bills of credit, or the creation of money by
private corporations, is what is expressly forbidden by
Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution."
George Bancroft
"Madison, agreeing with the journal of the convention,
records that the grant of power to emit bills of credit was
refused by a majority of more than four to one. The evidence
is perfect; no power to emit paper money was granted to the
legislature of the United States."
JOHN FISKE
"It was finally decided, by the vote of nine states
against New Jersey and Maryland, that the power to issue
inconvertible paper should not be granted to the federal
government. An express prohibition, such as had been adopted
for the separate states, was thought unnecessary. It was
supposed that it was enough to withhold the power, since the
federal government would not venture to exercise it unless
expressly permitted in the Constitution. "Thus,"
says Madison, in his narrative of the proceedings, "the
pretext for a paper currency, and particularly for making the
bills a tender, either for public or private debts, was cut
off." Nothing could be more clearly expressed than this.
As Mr. Justice Field observes, in his able dissenting opinion
in the recent case of Juilliard vs. Greenman, "if there
be anything in the history of the Constitution which can be
established with moral certainty, it is that the framers of
that instrument intended to prohibit the issue of legal-tender
notes both by the general government and by the states, and
thus prevent interference with the contracts of private
parties." Such has been the opinion of our ablest
constitutional jurists, Marshall, Webster, Story, Curtis, and
Nelson. There can be little doubt that, according to all sound
principles of interpretation, the Legal Tender Act of 1862 was
passed in flagrant violation of the Constitution."
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, MAY 11, 1972
"Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are United
States government institutions, they are not government
institutions, they are private credit monopolies."
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, JUNE 10, 1932, p. 12595
"The Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Reserve Banks
are private Corporations."
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, (chief architect of our current
fiat-paper money system)
"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can
confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the
wealth of their citizens" "If governments should
refrain from regulation... the worthlessness of the money
becomes apparent and the fraud upon the public can be
concealed no longer" "Lenin is said to have declared
that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to
debauch the currency... Lenin was certainly right. There is no
subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of
society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all
the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction,
and does it in a manner which not one man in a million can
diagnose."
CHARLES LINDBERG
"Ever since the Civil War, Congress has allowed the
bankers to control financial legislation. The membership of
the Finance Committee in the Senate (now the Banking and
Currency Committee) and the Committee on Banking and Currency
in the House have been made up chiefly of bankers, their
agents, and their attorneys. In this way the committees
have been able to control legislation in the interests of the
few."
"This Act (Federal Reserve Act) establishes the most
gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this bill,
the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be
legalized... The worst legislative crime of the age is
perpetrated by this banking and currency bill. The caucus of
the party bosses have again operated and prevented the people
from getting the benefits of their own government."
BENJAMIN DISRAELI (former British Prime Minister)
"The world is Governed by very different personages from
what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."
WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
"Money power denounces, as public enemies, all who
question its methods or throw light upon its crimes."
JOHN F. KENNEDY
"The great free nations of the world must take control of
our monetary problems if these problems are not to take
control of us."
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation
of the currency; second is war. Both bring a temporary (and
false) prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are
the refuge of political and economic opportunities."
THE RT. HON. REGINALD MCKENNA (one-time British
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Chairman of the Midland Bank)
"I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be
told that the banks can, and do, create and destroy money. The
amount of finance in existence varies only with the action of
the banks in increasing or decreasing deposits and bank
purchases. We know how this is effected. Every loan, overdraft
or bank purchase creates a deposit, and every repayment of a
loan, overdraft or bank sale destroys a deposit."
"And they who control the credit of the nation direct the
policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands
the destiny of the people."
JOHN B. RARICK
"Mr. Speaker, the current efforts by our Government to
hold down price increases have served to focus the attention
of thoughtful students on a little discussed facet of our
money system, this system, because of a long procedure of mis-education
and studied silence, is not now understood as it was prior to
the adoption of the Federal Reserve system more than half a
century ago. It is based upon debt; has serious implications
for the future of our country, and invites what may be the
greatest war in history. Every debt Dollar demands an
interest tribute from our economy for every year that Dollar
remains in circulation. These interest costs force up the
price of every commodity and service and contribute greatly to
inflation. ..." "Under the Constitution, the
Congress has responsibility of issuing the nations money and
regulating its value Art. 1, Sec 8, Cl. 5, in a recent
brilliant analysis of our money system by T. David Horton,
Chairman of the Executive Council of the Defenders of the
American Constitution, able Lawyer and keen student of basic
American history, he suggests a proven remedy for our current
predicament that will enable the Congress to resume its
Constitutional responsibilities to regulate our nation's money
by liberating our economy from the swindle of the debt-money
manipulators by the issuance of national currency in debt fee
form. We have a certain amount of non-interest bearing
money in circulation, all of our fractional currency, pennies,
nickels, dimes, quarters, and half dollars. They are
manufactured in our mints, and are paid into circulation,
circulate freely, and provide the government with a valuable
source of revenue. From 1966 through 1970 the amount of
seignorage paid into the treasury by the mints amounted to in
excess of 4 billion dollars the profit ratio on this type of
currency is 6 to 1, or currency 6 times the cost of
production. The cost ration for Federal Reserve Notes is 600
to 1; However, during these same four years, 1986 through
1970, 50 billion dollars in Federal Reserve Notes were
manufactured by the bureau of printing and engraving and
turned over to the banks; not one cent in seignorage was paid
over to the treasury. Our Debt money system compels the
government to spend more than it takes in, because this is the
only way we can keep the economy going"
GEORGE WASHINGTON
"Every lover of his country will therefore be solicitous
to find out some speedy remedy for this alarming evil. There
is no possible substitute for the loss of commerce. Our first
grand object, therefore, is its restoration. I presume not to
dictate or direct. It is a subject that will require the
deepest deliberations and researches of the wisest and more
experienced men in America to fully comprehend. It probably
belongs to no one man existing to possess all the
qualifications required to trace the course of American
commerce through all intricate paths and to those and only
those that shall lead the United States to future glory and
prosperity I am sanguine in the belief of the possibility that
we may one day become a great commercial and flourishing
nation. But if in the pursuit of the means we should
unfortunately stumble again on un-funded paper money or any
similar species of fraud, we shall assuredly give a fatal stab
to our national credit in its infancy. Paper money will
invariably operate in the body of politics as spirit liquors
on the human body. They prey on the vitals and ultimately
destroy them."
"Paper money has had the effect in your state that it
will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open
the door to every species of fraud and injustice."
(letter to J. Bowen, Rhode Island, Jan. 9, 1787)
JERRY JORDAN (Cleveland Fed Reserve Bank President)
"The failed attempts at influencing real economic
activity during the late 1960's and 1970's are a clear warning
of the damaging power of the central bank."
DENNIS KARNOFSKY (Chief economic adviser St. Louis
Federal Reserve Bank)
"...what is a dollar its just something artificial we
throw out there...what you're doing is you're fooling
people."
LAWRENCE PARKS (Executive Director, FAME)
"Bypassing voters, taxpayers and the public at large,
Congress has delegated to the Fed a power that the Congress
itself does not have."
LUDWIG VON MISES
"Government is the only agency which can take a useful
commodity like paper, slap some ink on it and make it totally
worthless."
DANIEL WEBSTER
"No other rights are safe where property is not
safe:" "Of all the contrivances devised for cheating
the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective
than that which deludes him with paper money. "We are
in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere
paper, representing not gold nor silver, no sir, representing
nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations,
cheated creditors and a ruined people."
MERRILL M. E. JENKINS SR. M.R.
"The right of distribution over private property is the
essence of freedom."
THE BIBLE
"If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by
thee, thou shalt not be to him an usurer, neither shalt thou
lay upon him usury." Exodus 22:25
"Take no usury of him, or increase...thou shalt not
give him thy money upon usury." Leviticus 25:36-37
"Unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: That
the Lord they God bless thee." Deuteronomy 23:20
"The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant
to the lender." Proverbs 22.7
"The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee
very high, and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to
thee, and thou shalt not lend to him; he shall be the head,
and thou shalt be the tail." Deut. 28:44-45
PELATIAH WEBSTER
"Paper money polluted the equity of our laws, turned them
into engines of oppression, corrupted the justice of our
public administration, destroyed the fortunes of thousands who
had confidence in it, enervated the trade, husbandry, and
manufactures of our country, and went far to destroy the
morality of our people."
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
"The refusal of King George to operate an honest colonial
money system which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of
the manipulators was probably the prime cause of the
Revolution." "The Colonies would gladly have borne
the little tax on tea and other matters, had it not been that
England took away from the Colonies their money, which created
unemployment and dis-satisfaction."
THOMAS JEFFERSON
"The system of banking we have both equally and ever
reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our
constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their
destruction. I sincerely believe, with you, that banking
establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and
that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity,
under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a
large scale." "The eyes of our citizens are not
sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They
ascribe them to everything but their true cause, the banking
system; a system which if it could do good in any form is yet
so certain of leading to abuse as to be utterly incompatible
with the public safety and prosperity. I sincerely believe
that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing
armies... and that the principle of spending money to be paid
by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling
futurity on a large scale."
"... we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual
debt. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in
our meat and in our drink, in our necessities and comforts, in
our labors and in our amusements, for our callings and our
creeds our people must come to labor16 hours in the 24,
give the earnings of 15 of these to the government for their
debts and daily expenses; and the 16th being insufficient to
afford us bread. We have no time to think, no means of
calling the mis-managers to account; but be glad to obtain
subsistence by hiring ourselves, to rivet their chains on the
necks of our fellow sufferers. Our land holders,
too, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates
called theirs, but held really in trust for the
treasury, this is the tendency of all human governments. A
departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second;
that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society
is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no
sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. And the
fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation
follows that, and in it's train, wretchedness and
oppression." "I believe that banking institutions
are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set
the government at defiance. This issuing power should be taken
from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly
belongs. If the American people ever allow private banks to
control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by
deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around
them will deprive the people of all property until their
children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers
conquered. I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy
of the moneyed corporations which already dare to challenge
our Government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the
laws of our country." "I sincerely believe that
banking establishments are more dangerous than standing
armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by
posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity
on a large scale."
GEORGE BANCROFT
"Madison, agreeing with the journal of the convention,
records that the grant of power to emit bills of credit was
refused by a majority of more than four to one. The evidence
is perfect; no power to emit paper money was granted to the
legislature of the United States."
THOMAS A. EDISON
"People who will not turn a shovel of dirt on the
project, nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more
money, from the United States, than will the people, who
supply all the material and do all the work. This is the
terrible thing about interest (usury). But here is the
point: If the nation can issue a dollar bond, it can also
issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good,
makes the bill good, also. The difference, between the bond
and the bill, is that the bond lets the money-broker collect
twice the amount of the bond, and an additional 20%. Whereas
the currency, the honest sort, provided by the Constitution,
pays nobody, but those, who contribute in some useful way. It
is absurd, to say that our country can issue bonds, and cannot
issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the
usurer and the other helps the people. If the currency issued
by the people were no good, then the bonds would be no good,
either. It is a terrible situation, when the Government, to
insure the national wealth, must go in debt and submit to
ruinous interest charges, at the hands of men, who control the
fictitious value of gold. Interest is the invention of
Satan."
F.A. HAYEK
"The history of government management of money has,
except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant
fraud and deception."
DR. PAUL HEIN
"Freedom and fiat are incompatible; slavery and scrip are
bedfellows." "Inflation (caused by paper money) is
an evil which exerts its baleful influence throughout society.
Gold and silver were gifts of God, and, short of the labor
required to obtain them, were ours free. They didn't have to
be returned to the source, much less with interest! Inflation,
on the other hand, is borrowed into existence from a
privileged clique who, by the very nature of the process,
enslave those who use it."
Treasury Secretary Woodin, 3/7/1933
"Where would we be if we had I.O.U.'s scrip and
certificates floating all around the country?" Instead he
decided to "issue currency against the sound assets of
the banks. The Federal Reserve Act lets us print all we'll
need. And it won't frighten the people. It won't look like
stage money. It'll be money that looks like real money."
The Bank Holiday of 1933, p20.
John Kenneth Galbraith
"The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is
one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade
truth, not to reveal it." Money: Whence it came, where it
went - 1975, p15. "The process by which banks create money
is so simple that the mind is repelled."
Money: Whence it came, where it went - 1975, p29.
BOB PRECHTER
"I cannot morally blame all Americans for allowing, for
instance, the birth of the Federal Reserve System (a private
cartel with full control over the issuance of national debt)
and the money destruction that has followed. They are simply
ignorant about it and don't know what happened or what is
happening. They think that prices go up rather than that
dollars go down. Unsound money imposes an environment of
immorality, which in turn makes people behave in different
ways for reasons they know not. Sometimes you can blame
immorality for the imposition of bad structures (bad people do
it with full knowledge of what they are doing), but sometimes
it is simply stupidity. People revere democracy, but democracy
ends in plunder by the majority. Are people immoral for
supporting democracy? I think rather that they lack a deep
understanding of its essence. At a very deep level, I would
say that the reason such structures are created is due to both
a lack of knowledge and a false morality, which in turn is due
to a lack of knowledge."
REP. HOWARD BUFFETT
"The gold standard acted as a silent watchdog to prevent
'unlimited public spending.' Our finances will never be
brought in order until Congress is compelled to do so. Making
our money redeemable in gold will create this
compulsion." " When you recall that one of the
first moves by Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler was to outlaw
individual ownership of gold, you begin to sense that there
may be some connection between money, redeemable in gold, and
the the rare prize known as human liberty. Also, when you find
that Lenin declared and demonstrated that a sure way to
overturn the existing social order and bring about communism
was by printing press paper money, then again you are
impressed with the possibility of a relationship between a
gold-backed money and human freedom."
ALAN GREENSPAN
"The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible
for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means
to an unlimited expansion of credit. In the absence of the
gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from
confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of
value... [Gold] stands as a protector of property
rights. This is the shabby secret of the welfare
statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a
scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth. If
one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the
statists' antagonism toward the gold standard."
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