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Presidents |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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Despite these
warnings, Woodrow Wilson signed the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. 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 |
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Years later, reflecting on the major banks' control
in Washington, President Franklin Roosevelt paid this indirect
praise to his distant predecessor President Andrew Jackson,
who had "killed" the 2nd Bank of the US (an earlier
type of the Federal Reserve System). After Jackson's administration
the bankers' influence was gradually restored and increased,
culminating in the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
Roosevelt knew this history.
The real truth of the matter
is,as you and I know, that a financial
element in the large centers has owned the government ever
since
the days of Andrew Jackson... -Franklin D. Roosevelt
(in a letter to Colonel House, dated November 21,
1933)
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Politicians |
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When
a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the
leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand
that gives is above the hand that takes... Money has no motherland;
financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole
object is gain." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, 1815
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"The
death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man
in the United States great enough to wear his boots and the bankers
went anew to grab the riches. I fear that foreign bankers with their
craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant
riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt civilization."
Otto von Bismark (1815-1898), German Chancellor, after the Lincoln
assassination |
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"Money
plays the largest part in determining the course of history."
Karl Marx writing in the Communist Manifesto (1848). |
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"That
this House considers that the continued issue of all the means of
exchange - be they coin, bank-notes or credit, largely passed on
by cheques - by private firms as an interest-bearing debt against
the public should cease forthwith; that the Sovereign power and
duty of issuing money in all forms should be returned to the Crown,
then to be put into circulation free of all debt and interest obligations..."
Captain Henry Kerby MP, in an Early Day Motion tabled in 1964. |
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"Banks
lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing.
" Ralph M Hawtry, former Secretary to the Treasury.
"... our whole monetary system is dishonest, as it is debt-based...
We did not vote for it. It grew upon us gradually but markedly since
1971 when the commodity-based system was abandoned." The Earl
of Caithness, in a speech to the House of Lords, 1997. |
Bankers |
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"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
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"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. |
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"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.
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"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. |
Others |
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"Money
is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply
by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation
between master and slave." Leo Tolstoy, Russian writer. |
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"It
is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking
and money system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution
before tomorrow morning." Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor
Company. |
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"The
modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process
is, perhaps, the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was
ever invented. Banks can in fact inflate, mint and un-mint the modern
ledger-entry currency." Major L L B Angus. |
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"The
study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which
complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal
it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind
is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only
decent." John Kenneth Galbraith (1908- ), former professor of
economics at Harvard, writing in 'Money: Whence it came, where it
went' (1975). |
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