Monetary System Quotes – Reflections on Money and Economy

"Through the artifices of banking and monetary policy one can achieve only a temporary illusion of improvement, which must ultimately lead to an even more severe catastrophe. For the longer this artificial boom is sustained by the creation of additional credit, the greater the damage inflicted on general prosperity by the use of such measures."

Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, 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 civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

Woodrow Wilson

"Mathematics is often invoked for things that could just as well be presented in plain, understandable language—and sometimes even for things that are deliberately not stated too clearly, because otherwise it would quickly become apparent what nonsense lies behind them."

Paul Krugman

"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."

Friedrich August von Hayek

"Germany is a supertanker—but sitting in the bridge is not the Federal Chancellor. Sitting there are the people here on this podium."

Ernst-Moritz Lipp

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around these banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Thomas Jefferson

"Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are US government institutions. They are not... they are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the US for the benefit of themselves and their foreign and domestic swindlers, and rich and predatory money lenders. The sack of the United States by the Fed is the greatest crime in history. Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers, but the truth is the Fed has usurped the government. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will."

Louis Thomas McFadden

"It’s organized crime. All you do is you call the Republicans the Genoveses and you call the Democrats the Gambinos. The people at the top, they treat it like a crap game. It’s their crap game, like they’re making lots of money. Occasionally, somebody at the table shoots each other, but the moment anything threatens their crap game, they all unite to protect it. ... They’re both controlled by the same financial, economic and corporate interests."

Michael Ruppert

"It was sheer foolishness to create this system. For centuries people will write about it as a kind of monument of collective stupidity."

William Hague

""...Every decline in the value of money is caused and organized by the state. Paper money and the central bank monopoly are the great super-tricks used to camouflage the violent nature of the state and the predatory basic pattern of ALL politics. Very few citizens are truly aware of the unimaginable extent to which they have been exploited for generations by the combination of progressive income tax and inflation, robbing them of the fruits of their labor.""

Roland Baader

"The other side may have more money, more possessions, and all the weapons in the world. But their power is based neither on their money, nor on their possessions, nor on their weapons, but solely on one factor, and that is the ignorance of the majority of people."

Ernst Wolff

"The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved."

Henry B. Adams

"The System is just like the Church. That’s probably why I feel so comfortable with it. It’s got a pope, the chairman; and a college of cardinals, the governors and bank presidents; and a curia, the senior staff. The equivalent of the laity is the commercial banks. If you’re a naughty parishioner in the Catholic Church, you come to confession. In this system, if you’re naughty, you come to the discount window for a loan. We even have different orders of religious thought like Jesuits and Franciscans and Dominicans only we call them pragmatists and monetarists and neo-Keynesians."

Richard Syron

"We have the entire political elite against us. [...] The development will be a bad one. [...] I see nothing good, absolutely nothing good; I see no approach anywhere. The problems have been treated with the same methods from which the problems arose in the first place. [...]
We will get more and more socialism, new kinds of socialism, new kinds of fascism. Definitely more totalitarianism, less freedom, and overall a radicalization. We will also experience uprisings, we will have unrest, and explosive growths of crime."

Roland Baader

"I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create and destroy money. And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people."

Reginald McKenna

"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 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."

Robert H. Hemphill

"Our power has been created through the manipulation of the national monetary system.. The Federal Reserve system fitted our plan nicely since it is owned by us, but the name implies that it is a government institution. From the very outset, our purpose was to confiscate all the gold and silver, replacing them with worthless non- redeemable papen notes...
We Jews have put issue upon issue to the American people. Then we promote both sides of the issue as confusion reigns. With their eyes fixed on the issues, they fail to see who is behind every scene. We Jews toy with the American public as a cat toys with a mouse..."

Harold Wallace Rosenthal

"The war that is being prepared will be a battle between international capital and the ruling dynasties. Capital wishes to have no one over it, knows no God or Lord, and wishes to have all states ruled as a great banking business. Their profit shall become the sole guide of the rulers ... Business ... one and only."

Kardinal John Murphy Farley