The Bank of England: this put the banking community back in control of manipulating the quantity of English money. ibid.
Just seventy-five years later England’s war debts consumed 75% of its budget. ibid.
By the outbreak in the revolution in April 1775 the colonies started printing a new form of paper money to finance the war – it was called Continental Currency. ibid.
It doesn’t matter what backs your money; all that matters is who controls its quantity. ibid.
Congress finally agreed to give a group of bankers a monopoly on creating US money by loaning it to the government. ibid.
The National Debt is roughly the same as the national money supply. ibid.
An assassin tried to shoot President Jackson. ibid.
Jackson got us out of debt but twenty-five years later Abraham Lincoln would do even more: return to government-issued debt-free money. He called them greenbacks, the inspiration for the Emerald City of Oz. ibid.
1866-1876: two-thirds of America’s money had been called in by the bankers. ibid.
An 84% decline in just twenty years: 1866-1886. The people suffered terribly in a protracted severe depression. ibid.
Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1873 and the minting of silver dollars abruptly stopped. ibid.
Garfield understood the ability of the very wealthy to manipulate gold money ... President Garfield was assassinated. ibid.
William Jennings Bryan: the man who would become known as the Lion of the Free Silver Movement. ibid.
The Panic of 1893: it all started when European investors demanded payment only in gold. ibid.
People wanted silver money legalised again so they could escape the stranglehold the money-changers had on gold-backed money. ibid.
The presidential campaign of 1896 would see the explosive money issue dominate the election. ibid.
The [Swedish] debt-based bankers attacked the savings banks. ibid.
Iceland: the government privatised the savings banks, similar to the Swedish savings banks twenty years earlier. ibid.
When the crash came in 2008 the big Icelandic banks quickly failed. ibid.
93% of the people voted not to bail out the bankers. ibid.
Instead of creating bonds or debt the government could and should be creating dollars interest free. ibid.
Right now the banks have the power. ibid.
We can make this the new civil rights movement, the new human rights movement. ibid.
This system has got to go. ibid.
It can all have been avoided: the report blames Widespread Failures in Financial Regulation including the Federal Reserve’s failure to stem toxic mortgages; Dramatic Breakdowns in Corporate Governance including too many financial firms acting recklessly; an explosive mix of excessive borrowing and risk by households and Wall Street; Key Policy Makers Ill Prepared for the Crisis lacking full understanding of the financial system; Systemic Breaches in Accountability and Ethics at all levels. FCIC Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, cited Sky News January 2011
The hand that is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland. Financiers are without patriotism and without decency. Their sole object is gain. Napoleon Bonaparte
When you think about the significance of the Federal Reserve Act being passed under those conditions – the American people didn’t know ... the banking interests that were behind it ... Powerful banking interests. Ron Paul
The real deception is when we distort the value of money, when we print money out of thin air – we have no savings, yet there’s so-called capital ... How in the world can we expect to solve the problems of inflation – that is the increase in the supply of money – with more money? Senator Ron Paul, Joint Economic Committee
Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation ... If the banks create ample ... money we are prosperous; if not, we starve ... It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. Robert H Hemphill, 1934 Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve of Atlanta
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it. Bob Hope
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies ... If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency ... The banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. Thomas Jefferson, attributed and patchwork of three separate letters
The Treasury, lacking confidence in the country, delivered itself bound hand and foot to bold and bankrupt ... bankers pretending to have money, whom it could have crushed at any moment. Thomas Jefferson
Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs. Thomas Jefferson
It is not our own citizens only who are to receive the bounty of our government. More than eight millions of the stock of the bank are held by foreigners ... Is there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank that in its nature has so little to bind it to our country? Andrew Jackson
Controlling our currency, receiving our public moneys, and holding thousands of our citizens in dependence ... Would be more formidable and dangerous than a military power of the enemy. Andrew Jackson, 1832
The bold efforts of the present bank has made to control the government ... are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it. Andrew Jackson
The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than the aristocracy, more selfish than the bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. Abraham Lincoln
The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers.
The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity.
By the adoption of these principles, the long-felt want for a uniform medium will be satisfied. The taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest, discounts and exchanges.
The financing of all public enterprises, the maintenance of stable government and ordered progress, and the conduct of the Treasury will become matter of practical administrators.
The people can and will be furnished with a currency as safe as their own government. Money will cease to be the master and become the servant of humanity.
Democracy will rise, superior to the money power. Abraham Lincoln
The underlying idea in the greenback philosophy ... is that the issue of currency is a function of the government, a sovereign right which ought not to be delegated to corporations. Professor Davis Rich Dewey, MIT
I fear that foreign bankers with their ... tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it systematically to corrupt modern civilisation. They will not hesitate to plunge the whole [world] into wars and chaos in order that the Earth should become their inheritance. Otto von Bismark
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 United States if it remained as one block and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial dominion over the world. Otto von Bismark
The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom ... I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it systematically to corrupt the modern world. They will not hesitate to plunge the whole of Christendom into wars and chaos in order that the earth should become their inheritance. Otto von Bismark
Between around 1810 and 1836 the five sons of Meyer Amschel Rothschild rose from the obscurity of the Frankfurt ghetto to attain a position of unequalled power in international finance. Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money e2: Human Bondage, PBS 2010