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Writer's pictureDavid Rooslet III

My Favorite Quotes on the Federal Reserve, Money and Banking



The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President

“The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the US, if they remained as one block, and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world.” Otto von Bismark, Chancellor of Germany 1876

“There today exists uncontrolled in the hands of a set of men a power to make dollars from nothing.” Thomas W. Lawson Frenzied Finance, 1905

“These 12 corporations together cover the whole country and monopolize and use for private gain every dollar of the public currency…” Mr. Crozier of Cincinnati, before the Senate Banking and Currency Committee – 1913

“The 12 regional reserve banks aren’t government institutions, but corporations nominally ‘owned’ by member commercial banks.” Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

“Those that create and issue the money and credit direct the policies of government and hold in their hands the destiny of the people.” Reginald McKenna, President of the Midlands Bank of England

“The money power denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.” Democrat Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan

“It must not be felt that these heads of the world’s chief central banks were themselves substantive powers in world finance. They were not. Rather, they were the technicians and agents of the dominant investment bankers of their own countries, who had raised them up and were perfectly capable of throwing them down. The substantive financial powers of the world were in the hands of these investments bankers (also called ‘international’ or ‘merchant’ bankers) who remained largely behind the scenes in their own unicorporated private banks. These formed a system of international cooperation and national dominance which was more private, more powerful, and more secret than that of their agents in the central banks…” Professor Carroll Quigley, Tradgey and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, 1966

“It [the depression] was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence…. The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as the rulers of us all.” Congressman Louis T. McFadden, (Assassinated) Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee

If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can 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 addi- tional 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 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”. Thomas Edison, The New York Times, December 6, 1921

“The dollar oil relationship has to be maintained to keep the dollar as a preeminant currency. Any attack on this relationship will be forcefully challenged as it already has been. Ron Paul – U.S. Congressman

This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs the Bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalised… The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency Bill. Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. (1859 ~ 1924) Congressman (father of the famous aviator)

Since 1980, the Fed has enjoyed the absolute power to do literally anything it wants…to buy not only US securities, but any asset whatever, to buy any assets, and to inflate credit as much as it pleases. There are no restraints on the Federal Reserve. The Fed is master of all it controls.” Murray N. Rothbard, American Economist

In the Colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called ‘Colonial Scrip.’ We issue it in proper proportion to make the goods and pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, by creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay, to anyone. You see, a legitimate government can both spend and lend money into circulation, while banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes, for they can neither give away nor spend but a tiny fraction of the money the people need. Thus, when your bankers here in England place money in circulation, there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be paid. The result is that you have always too little credit in circulation to give the workers full employment. You do not have too many workers, you have too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bears the endless burden of unpayable debt and usury. Benjamin Franklin Autobiography

“The [Federal Reserve Act] as it stands seems to me to open the way to a vast inflation of the currency… I do not like to think that any law can be passed that will make it possible to submerge the gold standard in a flood of irredeemable paper currency.” Henry Cabot Lodge Sr., 1913

“Capital must protect itself in every way…Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.” Taken from the Civil Servants’ Year Book, “The Organizer” January 1934.

…I am convinced that the agreement [Bretton Woods] will enthrone a world dictatorship of private finance more complete and terrible than and Hitlerite dream. It offers no solution of world problems, but quite blatantly sets up controls which will reduce the smaller nations to vassal states and make every government the mouthpiece and tool of International Finance. It will undermine and destroy the democratic institutions of this country – in fact as effectively as ever the Fascist forces could have done – pervert and paganise our Christian ideals; and will undoubtedly present a new menace, endangering world peace.World collaboration of private financial interests can only mean mass unemployment, slavery, misery,degredation and financial destruction. Therefore, as freedom loving Australians we should reject this infamous proposal. Labor Minister of Australia, Eddie Ward, during the inception of the World Bank and Bretton Woods, he gave this warning.

“If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency (instead of Congress), 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 will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied. The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs.” Thomas Jefferson, quoted in The Story of our Money by Olive Cushing Dwinell

“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. The issuing power should be taken from the banks, and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.” Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US President as quoted in the Testimony of Charles C. Mayer, Hearings Before the Committee on Banking and Currency, House of Representatives, Seventy-fourth Congress, First Session, on H.R. 5357, p. 799

All of the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arises, not from the defects of the Constitution or Confederation, not from the want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation. John Adams

“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 these United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the Nation’s debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Fed has cost this country enough money to pay the National debt several times over. These twelve private credit monopolies were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this country by the bankers who came here from Europe and repaid us our hospitality by undermining our American institutions. Those bankers took money out of this country to finance Japan in a war against Russia. They created a reign of terror in Russia with our money in order to help that war along. They instigated the separate peace between Germany and Russia and thus drove a wedge between the Allies in the World War.” Congressman Louis T. McFadden, (Assassinated) Chairman of House Banking Committee 1921 through 1931 — in a speech made before the House in 1934

“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 (Credit Manager of Federal Reserve Bank, Atlanta, Ga.)

In numerous years following the war, the Federal Government ran a heavy surplus. It could not (however) pay off its debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply. John Kenneth Galbraith

“When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by international bankers and international industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure. Every effort has been made by the Fed (Reserve) to conceal its powers but the truth is — THE FED HAS USURPED THE GOVERNMENT!” Congressman Louis McFadden, (Assassinated) Chairman of House Comm. on Banking and Currency from 1920 to 1931 (Shadows of Power, pg. 23

I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions, in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy….. 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. Abraham Lincoln

“100% of what is collected is absorbed soley by interest on the Federal Debt … all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services taxpayers expect from government.” Grace Commission Report, submitted to President Ronald Reagan on January 15, 1984

The Inability of the Colonists to get power to issue their money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the PRIME reason for the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Franklin

“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. 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 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 money and control credit.” Sir Josiah Stamp, Board of Directors of the Bank of England 1928-1941, quoted from “The Legalized Crime of Banking”

“The Federal Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities…” Lewis vs. United States 9th Circuit 1992

Money is the new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply bythe fact that it is impersonal, there is no human relation between master and slave. Leo Tolstoy

When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes… Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain. Napoleon Bonaparte, 1815

“The present Federal Reserve System is a flagrant case of the Government’s conferring a special privilege upon bankers. The Government hands to the banks its credit, at virtually no cost to the banks, to be loaned out by the bankers for their own private profit. Still worse, however, is the fact that it gives the bankers practically complete control of the amount of money that shall be in circulation. Not one dollar of these Federal Reserve notes gets into circulation and without someone paying interest of someone paying interest to some bank to keep it circulation. Our present money system is a debt of money system. Before a dollar can circulate, a debt must be created. Such a system assumes that you can borrow yourself out of debt.” Willis A. Overholser, LL.B – in History of Money in the United States.

“By this means government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.” John Maynard Keynes (the father of ‘Keynesian Economics’ which our nation now endures) in his book “THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE” (1920).

“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 (p15). The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.” John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it came, where it went – 1975, p29.

“The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board asministers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is Private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people’s money” Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., 1923

“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.” Major L. L. B. Angus

“The Central Banks (which charge interest to governments for the money they produce from out of nothing, with no labour or wealth involved) have secured these loans against your future taxes. Without even asking you, a substantial part of your future worth has been put up as collateral. What Central Banks do in a big way with countries, your local bank will replicate on organisations and individuals, using the same slight of hand to produce the funds they lend out of thin air.” Alternative Trading Network article

“The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.” William Patterson, founder of Bank of England, 1694.

“As soon as Mr. Roosevelt took office, the Federal Reserve began to buy government securities at the rate of ten million dollars a week for 10 weeks, and created one hundred million dollars in new [checkbook] currency, which alleviated the critical famine of money and credit, and the factories started hiring people again.” Eustace Mullins

“…the increase in the assets of the Federal Reserve banks from 143 million dollars in 1913 to 45 billion dollars in 1949 went directly to the private stockholders of the [federal reserve] banks.” Eustace Mullins

“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.” Otto von Bismarck, German Chancellor (1815-1898), after Lincoln assassination.

“Every Congressman, every Senator knows precisely what causes inflation…but can’t, [won’t] support the drastic reforms to stop it [repeal of the Federal Reserve Act] because it could cost him his job.” Robert A. Heinlein, Expanded Universe

“The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few. If the American people knew the corruption in our money system there would be revolution before morning!” Henry Ford, Sr. — American Developer of the Automobile (Emerging Struggle pg. 165)

“That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.” Marriner S. Eccles, Chairman and Governor of the Federal Reserve Board

“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 the money and its issuance.” James Madison, 4th US President

“We are completely dependant 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…. 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. Hamphill, Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank

While economic textbooks claim that people and corporations are competing for markets and resources, I claim that in reality they are competing for money ~ using markets and resources to do so. Greed and fear of scarcity are being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using. For example, we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody, and there is definitely enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. In fact, the job of central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. Money is created when banks lend it into existence When a bank provides you with a $100,000 mortgage, it creates only the principal, which you spend and which then circulates in the economy. The bank expects you to pay back $200,000 over the next 20 years, but it doesn’t create the second $100,000 ~ the interest. Instead, the bank sends you out into the tough world to battle against everybody else to bring back the second $100,000. Bernard Lietaer, economist, one of the designers of the Euro

I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that banks can and do create money…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. Reginald McKenna, past Chairman of the Board Midlands Bank of England

“The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of the people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.” John Sherman letter sent to New York bankers, Morton, and Gould, in support of the then proposed National Banking Act,June 25, 1863

“Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders… The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and… manipulates the credit of the United States.” Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ)

“While boasting of our noble deeds were careful to conceal 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. Horace Greeley

I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal government borrowing the use of its own money…I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with the Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue. Wright Patman, Democratic Congressman 1928-1976, Chairman Committee on Banking and Currency 1963-1975

Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate. James Garfield, Assassinated President of the United States

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 the consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. The priviledge of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme perogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest opportunity. Abraham Lincoln, Assassinated President of the United States

Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognised as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile. Once a nation parts with control of its credit, it matters not who makes the nation’s laws…Usury once in control will wreck any nation. William Lyon Mackenzie King, former Prime Minister of Canada who nationalized the Bank of Canada

Everyone knows sub-consciously banks do not lend money. When you draw on your savings account the bank does not tell you you can’t do this because it has lent the money to somebody else. Mark Mansfield, Economist and author

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. Irving Fisher, Economist & Author

“The Federal Reserve (Bank) is 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.” Congressman Louis T. McFadden (Assassinated)

“Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government Institution. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers.” Congressman Louis T. McFadden, (Assassinated) Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, June 20, 1932

“I am one of those who do not believe the national debt is a national blessing… it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country.” Andrew Jackson, letter, April 26, 1824

“The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages…will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without suspecting that the system is inimical to their best interests.” Rothschild Brothers of London communiqué to associates in New York June 25, 1863

“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!” Mayer Anselm Rothschild

‘I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled governments in the civilized world – no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by the vote of a majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. Woodrow Wilson 6 years after passing the Federal Reserve Act

“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.” Woodrow Wilson

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