Quotes on a Central Bank

Quotes on a Central Bank

If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, and give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; And the sixteen being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they do now, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; But be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains around the necks of our fellow sufferers; And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on 'til the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering...and the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

Thomas Jefferson

The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People 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 their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.

Thomas Jefferson

"The end of democracy and the defeat of the American revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of the lending institutions and moneyed incorporations."

Thomas Jefferson

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Thomas Jefferson

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."

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 the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

Thomas Jefferson

"To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill [chartering the first Bank of the United States] have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution. They are not among the powers specially enumerated."

Thomas Jefferson

James Madison speaking on the first attempt to establish a central bank in America:

"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."

"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late revolution. The free men of America did not wait until usurped power has strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle."

Andrew Jackson speaking on the second attempt to establish a central bank in America:

"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."

"I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic, inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a monied aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country."

President Jackson told the bankers "You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal god, I will rout you out!"

Abraham Lincoln speaking on the third attempt to establish a central bank in America:

"The money powers prey on the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes.

I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me, and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe. As a most undesirable consequence of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow. The money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed."

"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 the master and become the servant of humanity."

"Government, possessing the power to create and issue credit and currency as money, and enjoying the right to withdraw both currency and credit by taxation and otherwise, need not and should not borrow capital at interest as the means of financing governmental work and public enterprise."

"The privelege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity."

"No duty is more imperative on the government than the duty it owes the people to furnish them with a sound and uniform currency, and of regulating the circulation of the medium of exchange so that labor will be protected from a vicious currency, and commerce will be facilitated by cheap and safe exchanges."

President Woodrow Wilson, after having broken campaign promises and betrayed his country by signing into law the Federal Reserve Act:

"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."

Congressman Louis T. McFadden (Congressional Record, June 15, 1934):

"Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its power. But the truth is, the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the government of the United States.

It controls everything here; and it controls our foreign relations. It makes or breaks governments at will. No man, and no body of men, is more entrenched in power than the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Banks.

These evil-doers have robbed the country of more than enough money to pay the national debt. What the National Government has permitted the Federal Reserve Board to steal from the people should now be returned to the people. The people have a valid claim against the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. If that claim is enforced, Americans will not need to stand in bread lines. Homes will be saved. Families will be kept.

What is needed here is a return to the Constitution of the United States. The old struggle that was fought out here in Jackson's day must be fought over again.

The Federal Reserve Act should be repealed; and the Federal Reserve Banks -- having violated their charters -- should be liquidated immediately. Faithless government officers who have violated their oaths of office should be impeached and brought to trial.

Unless this is done by us, I predict the American people -- outraged, robbed, pillaged, insulted, and betrayed as they are in their own land -- will rise in their wrath and send a President here who WILL sweep the money changers from the temple."

"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

It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

Henry Ford

"The regional Federal Reserve banks are not government agencies. ...but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations."

Lewis vs. United States, 680 F. 2d 1239 9th Circuit 1982

"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."

Congressman Louis T. McFadden

“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 Delano Roosevelt

"This [Federal Reserve Act] establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President [Wilson} signs this bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized....the worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill."

Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. , 1913

"The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board administers 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

"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."

Sir Josiah Stamp, former President, Bank of England

"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce."

James A. Garfield, President of the United States