I believe in an America where the free enterprise system flourishes for all other systems to see and admire – where no businessman lacks either competition or credit – and where no monopoly, no racketeer, no government bureaucracy can put him out of business that he built up with his own initiative. John F Kennedy, speech Convention Centre Philadelphia October, 1960
There is the danger that you will misuse your Capitalism. I still contend that money can be the root of all evil. It can cause one to live a life of gross materialism. I am afraid that many among you are more concerned about making a living than making a life. Martin Luther King junior
And one day we must ask the question, Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. Martin Luther King junior
The powers of financial capitalism have a far-reaching aim: nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, cover & p324
Restoration of the gold standard was not something which could be done by a mere act of government. It was admitted even by the most ardent advocates of the gold standard that certain financial relationships would require adjustment before the gold standard could be restored. There were three chief relationships involved. There were (I) the problem of inflation, or the relationship between money and goods; (II) the problem of public debts, or the relationship between governmental income and expenditure; and (III) the problem of price parities, or the relationship between price levels of different countries. ibid. ch7
The structure of financial controls created by the tycoons of big banking and big business in the period 1880 to 1933 was of extraordinary complexity. One business thief being built on another. Both being allied with semi-independent associates. The whole rearing upwards into two pinnacles of economic and financial power. One centred in New York was headed by J P Morgan and company. And the other in Ohio was headed by the Rockefeller Family. When these two cooperated, as the generally did, they could influence the economic life of the country to a large degree and could almost control its political life, at least on the federal level. In the United States it was inevitable that the international banking interests would attempt to establish the same kind of private monopoly over the money system that they had achieved in England, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The same formula would be used: make it look like a government operation but keep the control in private hands. ibid.
Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system. Martin Luther King junior
We are trying to create a new climate in which private enterprise and developing countries work together for the greater profit of the free world. The world of international enterprise is more than governments ... It is a seamless web, which has been shaping the global environment at revolutionary speed. James Linen, president Time Corporation
The conspiratorial view of history, particularly of recent history, is the correct view. That there is a secret and powerful combination at work today, that it constitutes the unseen government of the United States, and it properly can be identified as the Capitalist Conspiracy. G Edward Griffin, The Capitalist Conspiracy
No conspiracy can stand the light of exposure; no conspiracy can rule the masses without the tool of an extensive government bureaucracy; and certainly no capitalist conspiracy can long survive without control over the nation’s money. ibid.
There is and has been for some time a conspiracy among some of the richest people in the world. A conspiracy that virtually owns the money systems ... In the United States this monetary fraud is perpetuated through the Federal Reserve system ... The capitalist conspiracy in this country surfaces to public view in the form of the semi-secret Council on Foreign Relations ... On the surface the capitalist conspiracy appears to oppose communism ... There is much evidence indicating that the capitalist and communist conspiracies both are directed by a single master conspiracy which may have continuity with the Order of the Illuminati ... As for our response, we must begin to dismantle the conspiracy’s machine of big government ... We must reduce the Federal Reserve system to a service function of clearing cheques between banks only ... We must expose the conspiracy to public view. ibid.
The Round Table Group in the United States promptly created an external organisation known as the CFR: the Council on Foreign Relations. It is through this organisational ring and then outward through tax-exempt foundations, universities and government agencies that the international capitalist conspiracy has dominated the domestic and foreign policies of the United States for over fifty years. ibid.
He [Carmichael] repeated the line from the song he liked so well, ‘Something is happening here, but you don’t know quite what it is, do you, Mr Jones?’ What he [Carmichael] was getting at was that the Jews were simply one strata of society who are themselves being oppressed by people who are much richer and much more powerful. In the agencies of this power he cited banks, the chief among which were Morgan Guarantee Trust and Chase Manhattan. And the Foundations connected with these monoliths. It was not long after this that Stokely Carmichael mysteriously was ousted from both SNICK and the Black Panthers. Apparently, he had learned too much. ibid.
We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism. Huey Newton
The American government is shelling out three-quarters of a trillion dollars to try to haul the country out of trouble. Masters of Money I, BBC 2012
It all goes back to the extraordinary ideas of this man – the British economist John Maynard Keynes. Quite simply, he changed the world. ibid.
Keynes has never been more relevant or controversial than he is today. ibid.
Keynes was quite clear: there are times when we need to step in to make capitalism work for us. ibid.
There was one domain where science had barely begun – economics. ibid.
As Keynes had predicted, the price of getting economic relations wrong was calamity. ibid.
Economies are made up of people not numbers. ibid.
Eventually the bubble will burst. ibid.
Keynes’s realisation that an economy could stay sunk indefinitely was a radical break with conventional thinking. ibid.
He didn’t just want to understand economies, he wanted to make them work better. ibid.
Governments should spend money they haven’t got. ibid.
By the 1940s Keynes was riding high. ibid.
You can’t leave economies to drive themselves. ibid.
Friedrich Hayek was a champion of the market. He inspired many of the people who built the world we live in today. For more than a generation Western leaders came to embrace one central economic idea: the free market. Masters of Money II: Hayek, BBC 2012
Of all the big pro-market thinkers, Hayek was by far the most radical. ibid.
Hayek’s advice to governments was to step back and do nothing. ibid.
The market does most good when it’s most free. It’s our desire to control it that most often turns it against us. ibid.
Hayek had been studying the American boom. ibid.
Strong’s intervention really paved the way for the financial system we have today. Thanks to all that credit he created, the Stock Market rose higher and higher. ibid.
Hayek believed Strong’s policy was sowing the seeds of an eventual bust. ibid.
Hayek said it was all down to interest rates being too low in the free years. ibid.
The grand dispute between Keynes and Hayek in the 1930s seems so relevant to us today, it’s become an internet sensation. ibid.
It was one of the most important intellectual battles of the twentieth century. ibid.
The Road to Serfdom was published in Britain in 1944 with little fanfare. ibid.
Britain was moving Hayek’s way. ibid.
That tension between Hayek’s ideal and a controlling instinct of even free market politicians never really went away. ibid.
The financial institutions that triggered the recent crash were free to do anything it seems except fail. ibid.
Central banks are the cause of many of capitalism’s problems, not the solution. ibid.
We were never going to master the complexities of human nature. ibid.
Hayek helped change the course of world history. ibid.