Fed nears $85 billion rescue of ailing AIG

Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks... will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs..

The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating. -Thomas Jefferson


History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance. -James Madison


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. -Andrew Jackson


The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. -Abraham Lincoln


Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to...provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands. - Theodore Roosevelt


Despite these warnings, Woodrow Wilson signed the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. A few years later he wrote: I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. -Woodrow Wilson


Years later, reflecting on the major banks' control in Washington, President Franklin Roosevelt paid this indirect praise to his distant predecessor President Andrew Jackson, who had "killed" the 2nd Bank of the US (an earlier type of the Federal Reserve System). After Jackson's administration the bankers' influence was gradually restored and increased, culminating in the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Roosevelt knew this history.
The real truth of the matter is,as you and I know, that a financial
element in the large centers has owned the government ever since
the days of Andrew Jackson... -Franklin D. Roosevelt
(in a letter to Colonel House, dated November 21, 1933)


"You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out. If the American people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning. If the central bank continues to control our currency, receiving our public monies, & holding thousands of our citizens in dependence, it would be more formidable & dangerous than the naval & military power of the enemy. " - Andrew Jackson


"The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen. There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this nation is run by the International bankers." - Congressman Louis T. McFadden


"We began planning the Revolutionary War in order to issue our own money again" - Benjamin Franklin

“Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.” - James Garfield, 20th President Of U.S. Assassinated 1881


“Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its powers, but the truth is that the Federal Reserve System has usurped the government. It controls everything in congress and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will.” - Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency


"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power of money should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." - Thomas Jefferson


"Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are the United States government's institutions. They are not government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign swindlers." - Congressional Record 12595-12603 June 10, 1932


"The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause: the banking system... a system which if it could do good in any form is yet so certain of leading to abuse as to be utterly incompatible with the public safety and prosperity." - Thomas Jefferson


"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States." - United States Senator Barry Goldwater


“The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That board administers a finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. That system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money. This (Federal Reserve) Act establishes the most gigantic trust on Earth. When the president signs this bill, the invisible governments by the monetary power will be legalized. The people may not know it immediately but the day of reckoning is only a few years removed, the worst legislatives crime of the ages perpetrated by this banking bill.” - Charles A. Lindbergh, Representative, MN


"The Federal Reserve is answerable to no one.” - Ronald Reagan


“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the People vs. The Banks.” - Lord Acton, Lord Chief Justice of England, 1875