"It is a cruel thought, that, when we feel ourselves standing on the firmest ground in every respect, the cursed arts of our secret enemies, combining with other causes, should effect, by depreciating our money, what the open arms of a powerful enemy could not." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, 1779. ME 4:298, Papers 2:298

"Historically, the United States has been a hard money country. Only [since 1913] has the United States operated on a fiat money system. During this period, paper money has depreciated over 87%. During the preceding 140 year period, the hard currency of the United States had actually maintained its value. Wholesale prices in 1913 ... were the same as in 1787." -- Kenneth Gerbino, former chairman of the American Economic Council "We make money the old fashioned way. We print it." -- Art Rolnick, former Chief Economist, Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank

"Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice." -- George Washington, in a letter to J. Bowen, Rhode Island, Jan. 9, 1787 "Of all contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money." -- Daniel Webster" "I see in the near future a crisis approaching. It unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country ... the Money Power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." -- Abraham Lincoln, just after the passage of the National Banking Act of 1863

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America rise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation." -- John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1787 "Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value - zero." -- Voltaire (1694-1778) "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." -- Thomas Jefferson in 1802 in a letter to then Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin

The value of paper money is precisely the value of a politician's promise, as high or low as you put that; the value of gold is protected by the inability of politicians to manufacture it. -- Sir William Rees-Mogg

The monetary managers are fond of telling us that they have substituted 'responsible money management' for the gold standard. But there is no historic record of responsible paper money management ... The record taken as a whole is one of hyperinflation, devaluation and monetary chaos. -- Henry Hazlitt

"The creation of money exclusively as debt is the critical, destabilizing flaw in the American Economy". -- author Theodore R. Thoren explains The Truth In Money Book. "The decrease in purchasing power incurred by holders of money due to inflation imparts gains to the issuers of money ... ." -- St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank in "Review", Nov. 1975 "You have to choose [as a voter] between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Without the confidence factor, many believe a paper money system is liable to collapse eventually." -- Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in "Gold" "Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce." -- President James A. Garfield "Those who create and issue money and credit direct the policies of government and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people." -- Rt. Hon. Reginald McKenna, former Chancellor of Exchequer, England

"If Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations." -- Andrew Jackson

QUOTES ON FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICY: "The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled and the pubic debt should be reduced. The arrogance of public officialdom should be tempered and controlled. And the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest we become bankrupt." -- Cicero, 63 B.C. "Inflation has now been institutionalized at a fairly constant 5% per year. This has been scientifically determined to be the optimum level for generating the most revenue without causing public alarm. A 5% devaluation applies, not only to the money earned this year, but to all that is left over from previous years. At the end of the first year, a dollar is worth 95 cents. At the end of the second year, the 95 cents is reduced again by 5%, leaving its worth at 90 cents, and so on. By the time a person has worked 20 years, the government will have confiscated 64% of every dollar he saved over those years. By the time he has worked 45 years, the hidden tax will be 90%. The government will take virtually everything a person saves over a lifetime." -- G. Edward Griffin, historian and author of "The Creature From Jekyll Island"

"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. 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 is able to diagnose ... If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer." -- John Maynard Keynes, economist and author of "The Economic Consequences Of The Peace" (1920)

"About all a Federal Reserve note can legally do is wipe out one debt and replace it with itself, another debt, a note that promises nothing. If anything's been paid, the payment occurs only in the minds of the parties ...." -- Tupper Saucy, author of "The Miracle On Main Street" "... the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state)." -- Greenspan, Alan; "Gold and Economic Freedom", Rand, Ayn; Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal; Signet Books, 1967; pp96-101. See full text in FAME's FedWatch section http://www.fame.org/.

QUOTES ON BANKING:

"I sincerely believe ... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." -- Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. "Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing." -- Ralph M. Hawtrey, former Secretary of Treasury, England "Money is the most important subject intellectual persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and its defects remedied very soon." -- Robert H. Hemphill, former credit manager, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

"Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money and control credit, and with a flick of a pen they will create enough to buy it back." -- Sir Josiah Stamp, former President, Bank of England "The Founding Fathers of this great land had no difficulty whatsoever understanding the agenda of bankers, and they frequently referred to them and their kind as, quote, "friends of paper money. They hated the Bank of England, in particular, and felt that even were we successful in winning our independence from England and King George, we could never truly be a nation of freemen, unless we had an honest money system. Through ignorance, but moreover, because of apathy, a small, but wealthy, clique of power brokers have robbed us of our Rights and Liberties, and we are being raped of our wealth. We are paying the price for the near-comatose levels of complacency by our parents, and only God knows what might become of our children, should we not work diligently to shake this country from its slumber! Many a nation has lost its freedom at the end of a gun barrel, but here in America, we just decided to hand it over voluntarily. Worse yet, we paid for the tyranny and usurpation out of our own pockets with "voluntary" tax contributions and the use of a debt-laden fiat currency!." -- Peter Kershaw, author of the 1994 booklet "Economic Solutions"

"The real truth of the matter is, and you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. History depicts Andrew Jackson as the last truly honorable and incorruptible American president." -- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, November 23, 1933 in a letter to Colonel Edward Mandell House "The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy." -- Pringle, Robert; and Deane, Marjorie: The Central Banks; Viking, 1994, page viii.

"When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover that check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money." -- Boston Federal Reserve Bank in a publication titled "Putting It Simply"

"Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are U.S. government institutions. They are not ... they are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the U.S. for the benefit of themselves and their foreign and domestic swindlers, and rich and predatory money lenders. The sack of the United States by the Fed is the greatest crime in history. Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers, but the truth is the Fed has usurped the government. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will." -- Congressman Charles McFadden, Chairman, House Banking and Currency Committee,

June 10, 1932 ".. we conclude that the [Federal] Reserve Banks are not federal ... but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations ... without day to day direction from the federal government.." -- 9th Circuit Court in Lewis vs. United States, June 24, 1982 "... You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, I will rout you out." -- President Andrew Jackson, upon evicting a delegation of international bankers from the Oval Office "Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws." -- Baron M.A. Rothschild (1744 - 1812)