Source: GW's Blog

Here are a few quotes which may explain at least part of what's going on financially:

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce... And 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.”
- President James Garfield (he was assassinated within 4 months).

"If the people only understood the rank injustice of our Money and Banking system, there would be a revolution before morning."
- Andrew Jackson

“[Banks] do not really pay out loans from the money they receive as deposits. If they did this, no additional money would be created. What they do when they make loans is to accept promissory notes in exchange for credits to the borrowers' transaction accounts."
- 1960s Chicago Federal Reserve Bank booklet entitled “Modern Money Mechanics”

"You do not have too many workers, you have too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bears the endless burden of unrepayable debt and usury...[the Colonial Scrip was issued] with our money [with no interest owed to anyone.]”
- Benjamin Franklin, explaining to the British parliament why the American colonies were prosperous while Britain experienced rampant unemployment and poverty.

"[It was] the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament which has caused in the colonies hatred of the English and . . . the Revolutionary War."
- Benjamin Franklin

"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt."
- John Adams

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes."
- Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, 1952

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies...The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the Government, to whom it properly belongs."
- Thomas Jefferson

"A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks."
- John C. Calhoun, Vice President of the United States

"There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by…corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses."
- James Madison

“Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are US government institutions They are not… they are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the US. 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

“The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is eager to enter into close relationship with the Bank for International Settlements….The conclusion is impossible to escape that the State and Treasury Departments are willing to pool the banking system of Europe and America, setting up a world financial power independent of and above the Government of the United States… The United States under present conditions will be transformed from the most active of manufacturing nations into a consuming and importing nation with a balance of trade against it.”
- Congressman McFadden, quoted in the New York Times (June 1930)

"The real truth of the matter is that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson."
- Franklin D Roosevelt

“This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.”
-Robert Hemphill, Credit manager of Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta.

These statements were made during hearings of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, September 30, 1941.

Members of the Federal Reserve Board call themselves “Governors”. Governor Eccles was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board at the time of these hearings.

Congressman Patman: “How did you get the money to buy those two billion dollars worth of Government securities in 1933?”

Governor Eccles: “Out of the right to issue credit money.”

Patman: “And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our Government’s credit?”

Eccles: “That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.”

Congressman Fletcher: “Chairman Eccles, when do you think there is a possibility of returning to a free and open market, instead of this pegged and artificially controlled financial market we now have?”

Governor Eccles: “Never, not in your lifetime or mine.”

"The privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. ...And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man....
- Franklin Roosevelt

"I care not what puppet (sits on) the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British empire, and I (when he ran the Bank of England) control the British money supply."
- Nathan Rothschild