Monetary Authority Quotes

I care not who forms the government of a country, so long as I control the purse strings.

Who controls the issuance of money controls the government!

The truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks government at will.

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

When you give government the power to control the money supply, it grows like a tumor until it extinguishes society itself.

The chief duty of the National Government in connection with the currency of the country is to coin money and declare its value.

It would convert the Treasury of the United States into a manufactory of paper money. It makes the House of Representatives and the Senate, or the caucus of the party which happens to be in the majority, the absolute dictator of the financial and business affairs of this country. This scheme surpasses all the centralism and all the Caesarism that were ever charged upon the Republican party in the wildest days of the war or in the events growing out of the war.

I was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. As you know, there are twelve banks and they have their citizens board, and I got elected to the Fed Chairmanship for the Federal Reserve Kansas City Bank back in the mid-'90s. It might have been 1995-'96.

The hand that holds the money cracks the whip.

The Fed's policy choices can always be debated, but the quality and commitment of the Federal Reserve as a public institution is second to none, and I am proud to lead it.

The power which money gives is that of brute force; it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet.

The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board administers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is Private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money.

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.

This power becomes particularly irresistible when exercised by those who, because they hold and control money, are able also to govern credit and determine its allotment, for that reason supplying, so to speak, the lifeblood to the entire economic body, and grasping, as it were, in their hands the very soul of production, so that no one dare breathe against their will.

At the most basic level, a central bank must be clear and open about its actions and operations, particularly when they involve the deployment of public funds.

The principle that a central bank, charged with controlling inflation, should be independent from the government is unassailable. It may also be true that it's easier for the central bank to guard its independence from political pressure when it mainly holds government securities.

Congress have an unlimited power to raise money ... restricted only by the duty to appropriate it to the purpose of common defense and of general, not local; national, not State benefit.

The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.

When the government runs out of lenders, it can do something that households are forbidden to do: print money.

The Congress should not be creating money out of thin air, which is what Lincoln did when he created greenbacks. But it is a congressional responsibility to maintain gold and silver as a legal tender.

And as a matter of fact, governments don't act, governments only react. The bankers make the decisions, and then governments decide how are we going to adjust to this. Government can't do anything unless the bank gives them the money to do it.

The power of the purse is the only real power of government.

I don't have any influence over the Fed [Federal Reserve System], none at all. It's carefully isolated from any influence by the President or Congress.

What is important for a central banker is that you have to convey that you know what you are doing.

The Federal Reserve Act requires the Federal Reserve to report annually on its operations and to publish its balance sheet weekly.