currency debasement Quotes

If government manages to establish paper tickets or bank credit as money, as equivalent to gold grams or ounces, then the government, as dominant money-supplier, becomes free to create money costlessly and at will. As a result, this 'inflation' of the money supply destroys the value of the dollar or pound, drives up prices, cripples economic calculation, and hobbles and seriously damages the workings of the market economy.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.

The Power the Magistrat [head of government] has to alter the Money in its Denomination or Fineness, takes away the chief Quality for which Silver was made Money

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.

The spectacle of a great, solvent government paying a fictitious price for gold it did not want and did not need and doing it on purpose to debase the value of its own paper currency was one to astonish the world.

Bad money drives out good money.

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

In practice [monetary management] is merely a high-sounding euphemism for continuous currency debasement. It consists of constant lying in order to support constant swindling. Instead of automatic currencies based on gold, people are forced to take managed currencies based on guile. Instead of precious metals they hold paper promises whose value falls with every bureaucratic whim. And they are suavely assured that only hopelessly antiquated minds dream of returning to truth and honesty and solvency and gold.

Debasing your currency sometimes works in the short term, it has never worked in the long term and does not even usually work in the medium term. Lots of politicians like to do it because it is an easy way.

There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.

Remove then all the thoughts of debasing the Coin, and pluck up the Seeds of this Mischief. Let not the Mint gain by any means; for truly it is a most scandalous business to lessen other people’s metal that is sent thither to be coined.

If you increase the quantity of money, you bring about the lowering of the purchasing power of the monetary unit.

Most governments, not all of them, but most, certainly don't want their citizens using gold. They want them in the currency that they are creating. When they are debasing money, or printing money, they are spending it and they want it to have as much value as possible when they originally spend it. Of course once they spend it, it will lose value for them and everyone else that holds it. But they need demand for their currency. They need as many people as possible holding it and transacting it. The more people that use gold, the harder it makes it.

The U.S. dollar is in terminal decline. America is tragically bankrupt, unable to pay its lenders without printing the dollars to do so, and enmeshed in an economic depression. The clock is ticking until the dollar faces a crisis of confidence like every other bubble before it.

It was formerly a common expedient with kings and states to debase the coin, that they might the easier pay their debts in a depreciated currency;

It is possible to increase paper-money income to any amount by debasing the currency. But real income can only be increased by working harder or more efficiently, saving more, investing more, and producing more.

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

It might otherwise appear paradoxical that money can be replaced by worthless paper; but that the slightest alloying of its metallic content depreciates it.