| Larry
Parks, Executive Director, FAME |
"With the monetary system we have now, the careful saving of a lifetime can
be wiped out in an eyeblink."
|
| George
Bernard Shaw |
“You
have to choose [as a voter] between trusting to the natural stability of
gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the
members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I
advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.” |
| Voltaire
(1694-1778) |
“Paper
money eventually returns to its intrinsic value ---- zero.” |
Daniel
Webster,
speech in the Senate, 1833 |
“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.” |
Thomas
Jefferson to
John Taylor, 1816 |
“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.” |
| Daniel
Webster |
"Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none
has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money." |
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, New York
The Story of Banks, p.5. |
"Because
of 'fractional' reserve system, banks, as a whole, can expand our money
supply several times, by making loans and investments."++ |
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 of New York,
I Bet You Thought, p.19 |
"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,
Modern Money Mechanics, p.3 |
"The
actual process of money creation takes place in commercial banks. As noted
earlier, demand liabilities of commercial banks are money."++ |
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."++ |
| James
A. Garfield |
"Whoever
controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all
industry and commerce."++ |
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."++ |
Irving
Fisher,
100% Money |
"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."++ |
John
Maynard Keynes,
The Economic Consequences of the Peace,
1920, page 240 |
"If,
however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take
their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out
of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes
apparent, and the fraud upon the
public can be concealed no longer." |
John
Maynard Keynes,
The Economic Consequences of the Peace,
1920, page 235ff |
"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." |
Ralph
M. Hawtrey,
former Secretary of Treasury,
England |
"Banks
lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of
nothing."++ |
Robert
H. Hemphill,
former credit manager,
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta |
"Money
is the most important subject intellectual persons can investigate and
reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may
collapse unless it is widely understood and its defects remedied very
soon."++ |
Sir
Josiah Stamp, former President,
Bank of England |
"Bankers
own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create
money and control credit, and with a flick of a pen they will create
enough to buy it back."++ |
Rt.
Hon. Reginald McKenna, former
Chancellor of Exchequer, 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."++ |
John
Adams, letter to
Thomas Jefferson |
"All
the perplexities, confusion and distresses in America arise not from
defects in the constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or
virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit,
and circulation."++ |
| Wm.
Jennings Bryan |
"Money
power denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw
light upon its crimes."++ |
George
Washington, in letter to
J. Bowen, Rhode Island,
Jan. 9, 1787 |
"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."++ |
George
Bancroft,
A Plea for the Constitution (1886) |
"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."++ |
Article
One, Section Ten,
United States Constitution |
"No
state shall emit bills of credit, make any thing but gold and silver coin
a tender in payment of debts, coin money---."++ |
John
C. Calhoun,
Speech 5/27/1836 |
"A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves,
consisting of many and various powerful interest, combined in one mass; and
held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks." |
Andrew
Jackson: To delegation of
bankers discussing the
Bank Renewal Bill, 1832 |
"You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the
eternal God, I will rout you out." |
Treasury
Secretary Woodin,
3/7/33 |
"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. [As opposed to issuing currency against gold.]
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." [Emphasis added.] (Source: 'Closed
for the Holiday: The Bank Holiday of 1933', p20 - Federal Reserve Bank of
Boston) |
| 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 |
| John
Kenneth Galbraith |
“The process by which banks create money is so
simple that the mind is repelled.”
Money: Whence it came, where it
went - 1975, p29 |
Senator
Carter Glass,
Author of the Banking Act of 1933 |
"Is there any reason why the American
people should be taxed to guarantee the debts of banks, any more than they
should be taxed to guarantee the debts of other institutions, including
merchants, the industries, and the mills of the country?" |
|
Chief Justice Salmon Chase, formerly Secretary of Treasury in President
Lincoln’s administration, in dissent of Knox vs. Lee (The Legal Tender
Cases, 1871)
|
“The legal
tender quality [of money] is only valuable for the purposes of dishonesty.”
|
|
Dr. Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors,
11/20/2003 |
"As long as we issue fiat
currency, I see no alternative to a legal tender law." |
|
John Adams |
"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from
defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or
virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin,
credit and circulation." |
|
Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992) Austrian
Economist, Author and 1974 Nobel Prize-Winner for Economics |
“With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all
governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to
defraud and plunder the people.” |
|
Dr. Edwin Vieira, FAME Foundation Scholar |
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some
of the time, and that's good enough." |