Shit Dead People Didn’t Say Vol. 1

All to common with the conspiracy and anti-Federal Reserve crowd comes a landslide of bullshit quotes, mostly from the founding fathers. Here I will list some things dead people didn’t say.

“Give me control over a nation’s money and I care not who makes her laws.”  

–Baron Mayer Amschel Rothschild

The earliest quoting of this passage was from a book written in 1900, more than 80 years after his death and there’s simply no contemporary evidence of this quote. This quote is an altered version of the quote “Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.” -Andrew Fletcher

Until I can get some evidence that this was said by him from documents or sources in his time, I’m going to give this the debunked label.

“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt”

Never said it. This quote is in none of his article, it’s cited in nothing in the founding documents or newspapers in the time. If you can find any evidence what so ever that this is a true quote, let me know and I will pass it off to some historians who have been challenging people to find any evidence of this quote. As far as any historian is aware of; it’s a bogus quote invented by anti-Fed conspiracy theorists.

“I believe that 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 and corporations that will grow up around [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.”

 -Thomas Jefferson

 This quote is so fake because the words “inflation” (1864) and “deflation” (1920) were not coined until after Jefferson died. On top of that; there’s no contemporary documents or sources that quote him saying this.

“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

This one is a bit tricky because it’s a hack job. Conspiracy theroists have been atempting to save face by sauing it’s in the book “The New Freedom” but Woodrow Wilson, but it’s not. There are 2 seperate quotes which comprise above quote. “A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.” and  “We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and 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 the duress of small groups of dominant men.”

He was not regretful of instituting the Fed nor does he think he ruined his country by founding the Fed. That book; “The New Freedom” was published in 1919 but was a compilation of speeches he gave while running for office before the Federal reserve was enacted. 

I think it’s important to look at the fed critically, and there’s lots of good resources to have a rational discussion of the Fed and it’s policies, but using these quotes and relying of conspiratorial information is never a good way to go and only makes you look like a liar and a nut.