"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

"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 also 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/.

Regis Sauger is a Licensed Mortgage Broker in Florida. He has written numerous aritlces on consumer credit. He has over 25,000 readers of his articles.
http://www.yurcredit.com