The Federal Reserve Quotes

A brick could be used to help America make money. Trust me, this is smarter than letting a central bank like the Federal Reserve make all the money. ~ Jarod Kintz

Gold has intrinsic value. The problem with the dollar is it has no intrinsic value. And if the Federal Reserve is going to spend trillions of them to buy up all these bad mortgages and all other kinds of bad debt, the dollar is going to lose all of its value. Gold will store its value, and you'll always be able to buy more food with your gold. ~ Peter Schiff

There are a number of institutions globally where the Federal Reserve typically leads the U.S. effort to work with financial regulators from other countries, and we try to, to the extent possible, establish international standards for how - the amount of capital a bank should hold, for example, or how much. ~ Ben Bernanke

That is the one thing in my public career that I regret
my work to secure the enactment of the Federal Reserve Law. ~ William Jennings Bryan

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. ~ Louis Thomas McFadden

Nothing good can come from the Federal Reserve. It is the biggest taxer of them all. Diluting the value of the dollar by increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister tax on the poor and middle class. ~ Ron Paul

I think it would be interesting to know about the Federal Reserve. I think we should audit the Federal Reserve. It's taxpayers money that is being used there ~ Harry Reid

The reason most people don't express their individuality and actually deny it, is not fear of what prime ministers think of us or the head of the federal reserve, It's what their families and their friends down at the bar are going to think of them. ~ David Icke

First reason is, it's not authorized in the Constitution, it's an illegal institution. The second reason, it's an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we'd be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value. ~ Ron Paul

My preference is for the Federal Reserve to be the systemic risk regulator, because the responsibility for identifying and limiting potential problems is a natural complement to its role in monetary policy. ~ Henry Paulson

So: if the chronic inflation undergone by Americans, and in almost every other country, is caused by the continuing creation of new money, and if in each country its governmental "Central Bank" (in the United States, the Federal Reserve) is the sole monopoly source and creator of all money, who then is responsible for the blight of inflation? Who except the very institution that is solely empowered to create money, that is, the Fed (and the Bank of England, and the Bank of Italy, and other central banks) itself? ~ Murray Rothbard

It's absolutely critical that we audit the Fed so the American people can see what's going on over there. Do it from top to bottom so that we can have transparency in this entity called the Federal Reserve. Hopefully, the American people will see that we need to go back to the gold standard, which I've introduced, and get rid of the Fed. ~ Paul Broun

Perhaps more to the point for TBTF (Too Big To Fail bank), if a SIFI (Systemically Important Financial Institution) does fail I have little doubt that private investors will in fact bear the losses-even if this leads to an outcome that is messier and more costly to society than we would ideally like. Dodd-Frank is very clear in saying that the Federal Reserve and other regulators cannot use their emergency authorities to bail out an individual failing institution ~ Jeremy C. Stein

Though it has no intrinsic value – you cannot eat or drink a dollar bill – trust in the dollar and in the wisdom of the Federal Reserve is so firm that it is shared even by Islamic fundamentalists, Mexican drug lords and North Korean tyrants. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

According to the latest wealth data of the Federal Reserve Board in the Flow of Funds, the total net worth of households is around $56.8 trillion.27 The wealth of the top 1 percent is therefore around $20.6 trillion. With roughly 113 million households, the average wealth of the richest 1 percent is roughly $18.2 million per household. ~ Jeffrey D. Sachs

The Federal Reserve has the capacity to operate in domestic money markets to maintain interest rates at a level consistent with our economic goals ~ Ben Bernanke

Musicians burn through more cash than the Federal Reserve. ~ Shawn Amos

I like Mitt Romney as a person. I think he's a dignified person. But I have no common ground on economics. He doesn't worry about the Federal Reserve. He doesn't worry about foreign policy. He doesn't talk about civil liberties, so I would have a hard time to expect him to ever invite me to campaign with him. ~ Ron Paul

The Federal Reserve System is nothing more than legalized counterfeit. ~ Ron Paul

Von Pein's family was a little known, but highly influential entity within American banking circles. Banking Royalty, some called it. His grandfather had been one of the chief orchestrators of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which effectively took ownership of the bank from the American people. ~ James Morcan

Fletcher Von Pein was one of the twelve founders of the Omega Agency. He was also a powerful banker and a majority shareholder in the US Federal Reserve which, despite its misleading name, had zero government ownership and was actually a private corporation owned by the global elite. ~ James Morcan

Funnily enough, the Federal Reserve produced comics about monetary policy, and there is a good comic book guide to microeconomics and macroeconomics out there. But it is not really appropriate for younger readers; it is really aimed at economics students. ~ Tim Harford

We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it. ~ Louis Thomas McFadden

I cannot morally blame all Americans for allowing, for instance, the birth of the Federal Reserve System and the money destruction that has followed. They are simply ignorant about it and don't know what happened or what is happening. They think that prices go up rather than that dollars go down. ~ Robert Prechter

Importantly, in the 1930s, in the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve, despite its mandate, was quite passive and, as a result, financial crisis became very severe, lasted essentially from 1929 to 1933. ~ Ben Bernanke

As you know, in the latter part of 2008 and early 2009, the Federal Reserve took extraordinary steps to provide liquidity and support credit market functioning, including the establishment of a number of emergency lending facilities and the creation or extension of currency swap agreements with 14 central banks around the world. ~ Ben Bernanke

It's true that the Federal Reserve faces a lot of political pressure and is unpopular in many circles. ~ Ben Bernanke

The Federal Reserve has the responsibility to protect the credit rights of consumers. ~ Bernie Sanders

There's no hidden secrets going on in the Federal Reserve ~ Herman Cain

The Federal Reserve ... is in the position of the chaperone who has ordered the punch bowl removed just when the party was really warming up. ~ William McChesney Martin

Last year, Congress passed a law that directs the Federal Reserve to set limits on debit card swipe fees that are reasonable and proportional to the cost of processing those transactions. Like most Americans, I had no idea that swipe fees charged to American businesses are the highest in the world. ~ Peter Welch

I think the role of the Federal Reserve is enormously exaggerated. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Our focus is on ensuring America has the strongest economy in the world for the next 100 years and to do that, we need to get to the role of the Federal Reserve and we need to get it right. ~ Kevin Brady

Market forces will one day crush the Federal Reserve. One day, the market forces will reverse. ~ Marc Faber

Spending time at the Federal Reserve was a good learning opportunity for me. It helped me to understand economic philosophies and polices that I had not previously known about. ~ Herman Cain

We own the Federal Reserve. There is this misconception that the Federal Reserve is some private entity. But if I might give an analogy here, we - U.S. taxpayers - own all the stock in the Federal Reserve. ~ Gary Johnson

The real estate interests and banks are in a kind of symbiosis. They're the largest-growing part of the economy. This is the sector that backs the political campaigns of senators, presidents and congressmen, and they use this leverage to make sure that their people dominate the Federal Reserve, Treasury and the federal housing agencies. ~ Michael Hudson

Social security cannot stop due to the large scale human dependence on the program for basic needs. Congress has the mandate to continue this program and the Federal Reserve has the ability to print money to bail it out. So, do not live in fear expecting the worst because this entitlement program is not going away anytime soon. ~ Lee Johnson

I don't think it's possible for the Fed to end its easy-money policies in a trouble-free manner. Recent episodes in which Fed officials hinted at a shift toward higher interest rates have unleashed significant volatility in markets, so there is no reason to suspect that the actual process of boosting rates would be any different. I think that real pressure is going to occur not by the initiation by the Federal Reserve, but by the markets themselves. ~ Alan Greenspan

The Federal Reserve has a responsibility to ensure the safety and soundness of financial institutions and to contain systemic risks in financial markets. ~ Bernie Sanders

If the Federal Reserve pursues a policy which Congress or the President believes not to be in the public interest, there is nothing Congress can do to reverse the policy. Nor is there anything the people can do. Such bastions of unaccountable power are undemocratic. The Federal Reserve System must be reformed, so that it is answerable to the elected representatives of the people. ~ Wright Patman

The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress are irrelevant ... America's domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, and America's foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund [IMF] ... when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress. ~ Robert Reich

A U.S. dollar is an IOU from the Federal Reserve Bank. It's a promissory note that doesn't actually promise anything. It's not backed by gold or silver. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

History has recorded nothing so dramatic in design, nor so skillfully manipulated, as this attempt to create the National Reserve Association, or the Federal Reserve. ~ Charles Lindbergh

Of all the weapons in the Federal Reserve arsenal, words were the the most unpredictable in their consequences. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

The Federal Reserve bank buys government bonds without one penny ... ~ John C. Danforth

No major institution in the US has so poor a record of performance over so long a period as the Federal Reserve, yet so high a public reputation. ~ Milton Friedman

Few governmental institutions are more misunderstood and feared out of ignorance than the Federal Reserve Board. ~ David Baldacci

The Federal Reserve is 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. ~ Louis Thomas McFadden

The Federal Reserve has never suffered any losses in the course of its normal lending to banks and, now, to primary dealers. ~ Ben Bernanke

Because financially capable consumers ultimately contribute to a stable economic and financial system as well as improve their own financial situations, it's clear that the Federal Reserve has a significant stake in financial education. ~ Ben Bernanke

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 ~ Barry M. Goldwater

If the fiscal cliff occurs, I don't think the Federal Reserve has the tools to offset that event. ~ Ben Bernanke

All the Federal Reserve can do is make loans against collateral. ~ Ben Bernanke

The Federal Reserve can only buy Treasuries and agencies, and moreover quantitative easing typically involves buying longer-term Treasuries and agencies in terms of bills, for example. ~ Ben Bernanke

In the United States we have, in effect, two governments ... We have the duly constituted Government ... Then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System, operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the Constitution. ~ Wright Patman

Unlike the days of the gold standard, it is impossible for the Federal Reserve to go bankrupt; it holds the legal monopoly of counterfeiting (of creating money out of thin air) in the entire country. ~ Murray Rothbard

To minimize market uncertainty and achieve the maximum effect of its policies, the Federal Reserve is committed to providing the public as much information as possible about the uses of its balance sheet, plans regarding future uses of its balance sheet, and the criteria on which the relevant decisions are based. ~ Ben Bernanke

It's not yummy gum if there's no bubble. Just ask the Federal Reserve. ~ Jarod Kintz

Under the federal reserve act, panics are scientifically created. The present panic is the first scientifically created one, worked out as we figured, a mathematical equation. ~ Charles Lindbergh

When the economic well-being of their nation demanded a strong and creative response, my colleagues at the Federal Reserve ... mustered the moral courage to do what was necessary. ~ Ben Bernanke

A snarky but accurate description of monetary policy over the past five years is that the Federal Reserve successfully replaced the technology bubble with a housing bubble ~ Paul Krugman

The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt. ~ Ben Bernanke

There's been a coup, have you heard? It's the CIA coup. The CIA runs everything, they run the military. They're the ones who are over there lobbing missiles and bombs on countries ... And of course the CIA is every bit as secretive as the Federal Reserve ... And yet think of the harm they have done since they were established [after] World War II. They are a government unto themselves. They're in businesses, in drug businesses, they take out dictators ... We need to take out the CIA. ~ Ron Paul

By remaining behind the scenes, they (the Rothschilds) were able to avoid the brunt of public anger which was directed, instead, at the political figures which they largely controlled. This is a technique which has been practiced by financial manipulators ever since, and it is fully utilized by those who operate the Federal Reserve System today. ~ G. Edward Griffin

Ever since the Federal reserve was born, (in 1913) we have been living under a lie. ~ Michael Maloney

The Congress has had an uneasy relationship with banks and bankers since Alexander Hamilton. It took the United States until 1913 to set up a central bank. The Federal Reserve earned its hard-won independence over years of effort. ~ Robert Zoellick

The Federal Reserve System had been established to prevent what actually happened. It was set up to avoid a situation in which you would have to close down banks, in which you would have a banking crisis. And yet, under the Federal Reserve system, you had the worst banking crisis in the history of the United States ~ Alan Ebenstein

The Federal Reserve Act as it stands seems to me to open the way to a vast inflation of the currency. I do not like to think that any law can be passed that will make it possible to submerge the gold standard in a flood of irredeemable paper currency. ~ Henry Cabot Lodge

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. ~ Charles A. Lindbergh

The president has very little effect on the economy. If you want to put blame or credit, the main person who influences the business cycle is the head of the Federal Reserve Bank. ~ Robert Fogel

The Federal Reserve is no more federal than Federal Express, ~ Michael Ruppert

I don't think the Federal Reserve has any role in how high rates are right now. I don't understand why everyone is paying attention to this tapering. The Fed is using one kind of bond to buy another kind of bond. What's the big deal, and why is anyone taking the Fed seriously? ~ Eugene Fama

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. ~ Louis Thomas McFadden

When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by international bankers and international industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure. Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is - The Fed has usurped the government!! ~ Louis Thomas McFadden

There have been times when the Federal Reserve has restricted the money supply and raised interest rates to gain an end, which had much better been left to another Government agency or the Congress to attain. The country could have had lower interest rates without sacrificing anything else. ~ Wright Patman

I believe that the many administration officials, lawmakers, and regulatory policymakers - and their staffs - who poured a year and a half of prodigious work into the legislation had been guided, knowingly or not, by a simultaneously high-minded and pragmatic sentiment that Woodrow Wilson voiced before he launched the effort that would establish the Federal Reserve System. "We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be," Wilson said in his first inaugural address. Wilson's words continued to make good sense a century later. ~ Ben S. Bernanke

The Open Market Committee, as presently established, is plainly not in the public interest. This committee must be operated by purely public servants, representatives of the people as a whole and not any single interest group. The Open Market Committee should be abolished, and its powers transferred to the Federal Reserve Board - the present public members of the committee, with reasonably short terms of office. ~ Wright Patman

The myth is that if housing prices go up, Americans will be richer. What banks - and behind them, the Federal Reserve - really want is for new buyers to be able to borrow enough money to buy the houses from mortgage defaulters, and thus save the banks from suffering from more mortgage defaults. ~ Michael Hudson

The Federal Reserve needs to provide small businesses in America with the same low-interest loans it gave to foreign banks. ~ Bernie Sanders

Beyond the speculative and often fraudulent froth that characterizes much of neoliberal financial manipulation, there lies a deeper process that entails the springing of 'the debt trap' as a primary means of accumulation by dispossession. Crisis creation, management, and manipulation on the world stage has evolved into the fine art of deliberative redistribution of wealth from poor countries to the rich. I documented the impact of Volcker's interest rate increase on Mexico earlier. While proclaiming its role as a noble leader organizing 'bail-outs' to keep global capital accumulation on track, the US paved the way to pillage the Mexican economy. This was what the US Treasury–Wall Street–IMF complex became expert at doing everywhere. Greenspan at the Federal Reserve deployed the same Volcker tactic several times in the 1990s. Debt crises in individual countries, uncommon during the 1960s, became very frequent during the 1980s and 1990s. Hardly any developing country remained untouched, and in some cases, as in Latin America, such crises became endemic. These debt crises were orchestrated, managed, and controlled both to rationalize the system and to redistribute assets. Since 1980, it has been calculated, 'over fifty Marshall Plans (over $4.6 trillion) have been sent by the peoples at the Periphery to their creditors in the Center'. 'What a peculiar world', sighs Stiglitz, 'in which the poor countries are in effect subsidizing the richest. ~ David Harvey

In the United States, the most recent survey by the Federal Reserve, which covers the same years, indicates that the top decile own 72 percent of America's wealth, while the bottom half claim just 2 percent. ~ Thomas Piketty

The Federal Reserve, the Treasury, all the regulator agencies - if there's a problem of the financial mechanism in society, the only one to fix it is government. They've got a legitimate role. ~ Dick Cheney

If the federal government is an addict, then the Federal Reserve System is its enabler. ~ Thomas E. Woods Jr.

The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession. ~ Ben Bernanke

Today, banks are allowed to loan out at least ten times the amount they actually are holding, so while you wonder how they get rich charging you 11% interest, it's not 11% a year they make on that amount but actually 110%. The bank lends other people's money to those that need loans, and when the bank runs out of money, they call the Federal Reserve for more. ~ Joseph P. Kauffman

The Obama administration's plan is to have the Federal Reserve regulate banks that might pose a 'systemic risk' if they were to fail. ~ Thomas Frank

The Depression, which started in 1929 was rather mild from 1929 to 1930. And, indeed, in my opinion would have been over in 1931 at the latest had it not been that the Federal Reserve followed a policy which led to bank failures, widespread bank failures, and led to a reduction in the quantity of money. ~ Milton Friedman

The Federal Reserve and Congress have systematically taught the American people to trust the government and that caution in spending is harmful to the economy. ~ Ron Paul

What happened was that for every $100 of money, by which I mean the cash that people keep in their pockets, and the deposits they have in the bank, for every $100 of money that there was in 1929, by 1933 there was only $67. The Federal Reserve allowed the quantity of money to decline by a third. While, at all times, it had the possibilities and the power of preventing that from happening. ~ Milton Friedman

More intriguingly, in poll after poll, when Americans are asked what public institutions they most respect, three bodies are always at the top of their list: the Supreme Court, the armed forces, and the Federal Reserve System. All three have one thing in common: they are insulated from the public pressures and operate undemocratically. It would seem that Americans admire these institutions, preciselly because they lead rather than follow. ~ Fareed Zakaria

I go where the revolution is, and the revolution is Ron Paul. Ron Paul is a champion of the Constitution. He's about getting rid of the Federal Reserve and shrinking federal government. ~ Christine Ebersole

After the 1929 crash, the Federal Reserve mistakenly focused its policies on preserving the gold value of the dollar rather than on stabilizing the domestic economy. ~ Ben Bernanke

Fostering transparency and accountability at the Federal Reserve was one of my principal objectives when I became Chairman in February 2006. ~ Ben Bernanke

I know this, the Federal Reserve is private and the I.R.S. is screwing us. ~ Alex Jones

Citigroup, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase should not be permitted to charge consumers 25- to 30-percent interest on their credit cards, especially while these banks received over $4 trillion in loans from the Federal Reserve. ~ Bernie Sanders

It may seem strange, but Congress has never developed a set of goals for guiding Federal Reserve policy. In founding the System, Congress spoke about the country's need for "an elastic currency." Since then, Congress has passed the Full Employment Act, declaring its general intention to promote "maximum employment, production, and purchasing power." But it has never directly counseled the Federal Reserve. ~ Wright Patman

The Obama administration's attempted short-term fixes, even with unprecedented monetary easing by the Federal Reserve, produced average GDP growth of just 2.2% over the past three years, and the consensus outlook appears no better for the year ahead. ~ Glenn Hubbard

The Federal Reserve is the overlord of the money supply. If these two are not steering in the same direction, they can either neutralize each other or have the economy lurching in all directions. This is not a rational system for setting economic policy. It has given us trouble in the past, as the text will establish, and will inevitably in the future. ~ Wright Patman

The increase in the assets of the Federal Reserve Banks from 143 Million dollars in 1913 to 45 Billion dollars in 1949 went directly to the private stockholders of the [Federal Reserve] banks. ~ Eustace Mullins