Revealing quotes concerning our economy

(posted on 25/05/09)

As a follow-up to the “we’re all doomed” post & comments, I thought it would be appropriate to quote a few famous bankers and politicians on financial and banking policy. If you haven’t, please read that post first and the comments.

It seems we have all been dupes for well over a century believing we could leave in the hands of a few self-serving people almost total financial power over our industries, services and lives.

No wonder the world is in such a mess !

First the comments of a few American presidents:

Let’s start with good old Jeff. It seems that he saw it all coming:

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their  currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of  all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. – Thomas Jefferson in the debate over the Re-charter of the Bank Bill (1809)

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. – Thomas Jefferson

… The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating. -Thomas Jefferson

Madison gets to the point:

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. -James Madison

How about 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. -Andrew Jackson

Abe Lincoln’s point of view:

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. -Abraham  Lincoln

Roosevelt ?

Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to…provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands. – Theodore Roosevelt

Hmm, seems like they were all pretty much against the current system. So what happened ?

Despite the warnings of many of his predecessors, Woodrow Wilson signed the 1913 Federal Reserve Act changing the American financial structure radically. A few years later he wrote:

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

Now for the other side; let’s hear what some of the bankers have said about all this. Maybe we are misunderstanding their aims and intentions ?

The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing. -William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England in 1694, then a privately owned bank.

Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws. -Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), founder of the House of Rothschild.

The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours 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 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. -The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863.

I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the 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 hand the destiny of the people. – Reginald McKenna, as Chairman of the Midland Bank, addressing stockholders in 1924.

The banks do create money. They have been doing it for a long time, but they didn’t realise it, and they did not admit it. Very few did. You will find it in all sorts of documents, financial textbooks, etc. But in the intervening years, and we must be perfectly frank about these things, there has been a development of thought, until today I doubt very much whether you would get many prominent bankers to attempt to deny that banks create it. -H W White, Chairman of the Associated Banks of New Zealand, to the New Zealand Monetary Commission, 1955.

And that was in 1955… They have come a long way since then in streamlining and globalising their operations all the way up to the current disaster.

All the currently proposed solutions to this economic mess portrayed by our media only offer alterations to the system in place, or even worse, centralisation of all banking into “regulatory bodies” run by the very groups that created this iniquitious system to start with. A clear case of “wolves guarding the henhouse” don’t you think ?

The big question is: can anyone do anything about it, anywhere ?

Feel free to post any ideas in the “comments” section (link at the top of the post) Any more good quotes would be welcome too