Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were. Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road
When the great monetary collapse hit Ferenginar, I was hundreds of light years away serving as a ship’s cook on a long-haul freighter. I can’t tell you the heartbreak I suffered knowing that rampant inflation and currency devaluation were burning like wildfires through the lush financial foliage of my home. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s4e11: Homefront, Quark to O’Brien & Bashir
Morgan put together a loan worth over $100 million – almost $3 billion today – and bailed out the Federal government. This saved the American economy from complete collapse. The Men Who Built America VI: Owning It All, History 2013
Manufacturing, technology, infrastructure: it will change the face of America. For the first time in history industry is put behind the war effort. An approach to conflict that America will exploit in the First and Second World Wars. It is the beginning of a new integrated economy that will become the hallmark of the modern United States. America: The Story of the US: Civil War, History 2010
America’s boom is now bust. A human and economic crisis explodes across America. Social upheaval, poverty, drought. It’s time for America to fight back against the Great Depression. America: The Story of the US: Bust
These unhappy times call for the building of plans that … build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Franklin D Roosevelt, radio address 7th April 1932
I believe and I have always believed and I always will believe in private enterprise has the backbone of the economic well-being of the United States. People of America have no quarrel with business; they insist only that the power of concentrated wealth shall not be abused. Franklin D Roosevelt, 1933
I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Franklin D Roosevelt, speech 2nd July 1932
Obama brought back the same economic team. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States X: Bush & Obama: Age of Terror, Showtime 2012
A $700 billion bail-out on remarkable easy terms. ibid.
Adam Smith, the son of a customs officer, had an exhilarating vision of the future ... It would be his revolutionary book The Wealth of Nations which would mark Scotland’s farewell to sentimental self-destruction. Simon Schama, A History of Britain: Britannia Incorporated, BBC 2000
Heath was battling rocketing inflation at home and battling economic forces. Heath vs. Wilson: The 10 Year Duel, BBC 2011
I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system. George W Bush, 16th December 2008
Now we are dealing with issues that cannot be solved without the nation spending billions of dollars and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power. Martin Luther King
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
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it. They know that America is not a place of which it can be said, as it used to be, that a man may choose his own calling and pursue it just as far as his abilities enable him to pursue it; because to-day, if he enters certain fields, there are organizations which will use means against him that will prevent his building up a business which they do not want to have built up; organizations that will see to it that the ground is cut from under him and the markets shut against him. For if he begins to sell to certain retail dealers, to any retail dealers, the monopoly will refuse to sell to those dealers, and those dealers, afraid, will not buy the new man’s wares. Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom 1914 [often quoted out of context]
A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom. This is the greatest question of all, and to this statesmen must address themselves with an earnest determination to serve the long future and the true liberties of men. Woodrow Wilson
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
In one year the conditions were so reversed that the era of prosperity ended, and a depression set in, to such an extent that the streets of the colonies were filled with unemployment. Benjamin Franklin
What’s going on in America today? Why are we over our heads in debt? Why can’t the politicians bring debt under control? William T Still, The Money Masters
All of our money is based on government debt ... It lies in reforming our banking system. ibid.
There’s nothing federal about of the Federal Reserve. And there are no reserves ... The truth is the Federal Reserve is a private bank owned by private stockholders and run purely for their profit. ibid.
The Founding Fathers knew the evil of a privately owned national bank. ibid.
Who controls how much money we have? ibid.
We must take back the power to issue our own money. ibid.
In 1913 Congress gave an independent central bank, deceptively named the Federal Reserve, a monopoly over issuing America’s money ... Where did this idea come from? ibid.
Just who are these money-changers James Madison spoke of? ibid.
Rome plunged into the doom of the dark ages. ibid.
Fractional Loan Banking: that is loaning out many times more money than you have assets on deposits ... At least ten times more money than they actually have. ibid.
Interest was contrary to reason and justice ... A crime called usury. ibid.
The Tally system was adopted to avoid the monetary manipulation of the goldsmiths. ibid.
King Henry ordered that tally sticks had to be used to pay the king’s taxes. ibid.
The money-changers plunged Britain into a series of costly wars. ibid.
Nearly every nation now has a privately owned central bank. ibid.
The people pay for it in inflation. ibid.
The rise of the Rothschilds ... Nathan was clearly the most clever – he was sent to London at the age of twenty-one. ibid.
Nathan Rothschild later bragged that while he’d been in England he’d increased his original $20,000 stake by 2,500 times. ibid.
J P Morgan was thought to be the richest man in America. But after his death it was discovered he was only a lieutenant for the Rothschilds. ibid.
It was a totally fiat currency ... The colonies had been drained of gold and silver coin by British taxation. ibid.
The Bank of America ... It was allowed to practise fractional lending. ibid.
The Bank [of America] was given a monopoly over the American currency. ibid.
A new privately owned central bank through Congress called the First Bank of the United States ... The players were the same only the name of the bank was changed. ibid.
In 1790 less than three years after the constitution had been signed the money-changers struck again. The newly appointed First Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, proposed a bill to Congress calling for a new privately owned central bank. ibid.