Liberty Quotes - Daily Email History

These statements were made during hearings of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, September 30, 1941. Members of the Federal Reserve Board call themselves "Governors." Governor Marriner Eccles was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board at the time of these hearings:

Congressman Patman: "How did you get the money to buy those two billion dollars worth of Government securities in 1933?"
Governor Eccles: "Out of the right to issue credit money."
Patman: "And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our Government's credit?"
Eccles: "That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money."
Congressman Fletcher: "Chairman Eccles, when do you think there is a possibility of returning to a free and open market, instead of this pegged and artificially controlled financial market we now have?"
Governor Eccles: "Never, not in your lifetime or mine."

~ Marriner Stoddard Eccles  

"I am afraid that the ordinary citizen
will not like to be told that the banks
can and do create and destroy money.
And they who control the credit of a nation
direct the policy of governments, and
hold in the hollow of their hands
the destiny of the people."

~ Reginald McKenna  

"Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit."

~ Robert Hemphill  

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

~ Henry Ford  

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation."

~ John Adams  

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million can diagnose."

~ John Maynard Keynes  

"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  

"[The] Bank of the United States... is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution... An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?"

~ Thomas Jefferson  

"...first ascertain exactly the position of the various capitalists, then control them, influence them by restricting or enlarging, facilitating or hindering their credits, and finally they can entirely determine their fate."

~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin  

"The issue which has swept down the centuries
and which will have to be fought sooner or later
is the people versus the banks."

~ Lord Acton  

"(The Great Depression resulting from the Stock Market crash) was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence....The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so they might emerge as rulers of us all."

~ Louis McFadden  

"And the men who loan money to governments, so called, for the purpose
of enabling the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their people,
are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen.
And they as much deserve to be hunted and killed
(if they cannot otherwise be got rid of)
as any slave traders, robbers, or pirates that ever lived."

~ Lysander Spooner  

"The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did...they always will. They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper spheres."

~ Gouverneur Morris  

"A power has risen up in the government greater than the people
themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests,
combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of
the vast surplus in banks."

~ John C. Calhoun  

"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in
its profits, or so dependent on its favours that there will be no
opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body
of the 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."

~ John Sherman