Our civilization is founded on greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously transmuted into something nobler. The lower-middle-class people in there, behind their lace curtains, with their children and their scraps of furniture and their aspidistras – they lived by the money-code, sure enough, and yet they contrived to keep their decency. The money-code as they interpreted it was not merely cynical and hoggish. They had their standards, their inviolable points of honour. They ‘kept themselves respectable’ – kept the aspidistra flying. Besides, they were alive. They were bound up in the bundle of life. They begot children, which is what the saints and the soul-savers never by any chance do. George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
When you say fiscal responsibility, it seems to me that you really mean rich people keeping their money. Alice Adams
Money is a poor man’s credit card. Marshall McLuhan
Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people that they don’t like. Will Rogers
There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money that nation requires for its expansion and growth. Our money system is nothing better than a confidence trick. Dr Frederick Soddy, author Wealth, Virtual Wealth & Debt
Only commercial banks and trust companies can lend money that they manufacture by lending it. Professor Irving Fisher, 100% Money, 1935
90% of marriages end on money problems. Dave Ramsey
Money was never meant to be a commodity. Patrick Creadon, IOUSA – One Nation. Under Debt. In Stress.
The Deficit can never be paid back; the cuts simply keep us enslaved; the monetary system has to collapse. ibid.
The purpose of the government is to depreciate the money. Celente & Schiff & Paul & Faber & Rogers & Woods, MeltUp: The Beginning of a US Currency Crisis, Ron Paul
Our currency is not recovering ... Our currency is currently experiencing a Melt-Up ... Wall Street paying out record bonuses ... 39.4 million Americans on food stamps ... The government will pay out more in benefits … ibid.
43% of Americans now have less than 10K saved for retirement. ibid.
Retirement will become a thing of the past ... Social security won’t be there ... Retirees will soon be forced to re-enter the workforce. ibid.
1.2 million temporary workers ... The average federal worker now earns twice as much as the private worker. ibid.
Besides the Department of Energy, our country also needs to abolish the Department of Education. ibid.
Inflation is currently that last thought on American minds. ibid.
The Federal Reserve created the real estate bubble. ibid.
They build nothing other than profits. They’re junkies. They’re addicts ... They can’t get enough ... Billionaire bonuses for what? ... Bigger than the GDPs of many nations ... Here’s more money, junky. ibid.
Eventually we will have much higher inflation. ibid. Faber
Gold is the most stable asset the world has ever seen. ibid.
Morgan Stanley wasn’t physically storing their gold at all. ibid.
Real American tax receipts will decline this decade. ibid.
Wholesale food prices have risen six months in a row. ibid.
Right now there are food riots going on in India. ibid.
The last real audit of the US gold reserves took place in 1954. ibid.
The US dollar would have to be devalued 98% for our gold reserves to be worth enough to pay off our national debt. ibid.
Now they’re gone, they’re not to be thought of again. This is your opportunity. Margin Call 2011 starring Paul Bettany & Demi Moore & Kevin Spacey & Jeremy Irons & Zachary Quinto & Penn Badgley & Simon Baker & Stanley Tucci & Mary McDonnell & Ashley Williams et al, director J C Chandor, team pep talk
Over the last thirty-six to forty months the firm has begun packaging new MBS products that combine several different tranches of grading classification in one tradable security. ibid. Sullivan
It’s just money. It’s made up. ibid. Irons
I do not like to think that any law can be passed that will make it possible to submerge the gold standard in a flood of irredeemable paper currency. Henry Cabot Lodge senior 1913
Today has been an extremely difficult and turbulent day. Massive speculative flows have continued to disrupt the functioning of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Norman Lamont, former Chancellor of the Exchequer
What Mr Rothschild had discovered was the basic principle of power, influence, and control over people as applied to economics. That principle is, When you assume the appearance of power, people soon give it to you.
Mr Rothschild had discovered that currency or deposit loan accounts had the required appearance of power that could be used to induce people (inductance, with people corresponding to a magnetic field) into surrendering their real wealth in exchange for a promise of greater wealth (instead of real compensation). They would put up real collateral in exchange for a loan of promissory notes. Mr Rothschild found that he could issue more notes than he had backing for, so long as he had someone’s stock of gold as a persuader to show his customers.
Mr Rothschild loaned his promissory notes to individuals and to governments. These would create overconfidence. Then he would make money scarce, tighten control of the system, and collect the collateral through the obligation of contracts. The cycle was then repeated. These pressures could be used to ignite a war. Then he would control the availability of currency to determine who would win the war. That government which agreed to give him control of its economic system got his support.
Collection of debts was guaranteed by economic aid to the enemy of the debtor. The profit derived from this economic methodology made Mr Rothschild all the more able to expand his wealth. He found that the public greed would allow currency to be printed by government order beyond the limits (inflation) of backing in precious metal or the production of goods and services.
In this structure, credit, presented as a pure element called ‘currency’, has the appearance of capital, but is in effect negative capital. Hence, it has the appearance of service, but is in fact, indebtedness or debt. It is therefore an economic inductance instead of an economic capacitance, and if balanced in no other way, will be balanced by the negation of population (war, genocide). The total goods and services represent real capital called the gross national product, and currency may be printed up to this level and still represent economic capacitance; but currency printed beyond this level is subtractive, represents the introduction of economic inductance, and constitutes notes of indebtedness.
War is therefore the balancing of the system by killing the true creditors (the public which we have taught to exchange true value for inflated currency) and falling back on whatever is left of the resources of nature and regeneration of those resources.
Mr Rothschild had discovered that currency gave him the power to rearrange the economic structure to his own advantage, to shift economic inductance to those economic positions which would encourage the greatest economic instability and oscillation. Bill Cooper, Top Secret: Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, Operations Research Technical Manual TM-SW7905.1
The men in Washington should be at the forefront of technology, the forefront of human study, the forefront of crime, all factors that shape human behaviour ... And we have the resources today. To house everyone. Build hospitals all over the world. Build schools all over the world. The finest equipment in labs for teaching and doing medical research. So, you see, we have all that. But we’re in a monetary system. And in a monetary system there is profit. Jacque Fresco, founder & director of the Venus Project
War, poverty, corruption, hunger, misery, human suffering will not change in a monetary system. Jacque Fresco
Make money. Make more money. Make other people produce so as to make more money. L Ron Hubbard, Principles of Money Management, March 1972
All over the eastern Mediterranean and Persia the habit spread of accepting metal for payment. James Burke, Connections s1e2: Death in the Morning, BBC 1978