Central Banks Quotes - Page 3

• The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government's greatest creative opportunity.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Opportunity, Government, Creating

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• Political risk is hard to manage because so much comes down to the personal choices of policymakers, whether prime ministers or heads of central banks.

  James Surowiecki

  Choices, Political, Risk

  "The Age of Political Risk". www.newyorker.com. May 24, 2010.

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• We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further. A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake. Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it. It was very difficult to get the gold price under control but we have now succeeded. The US Fed was very active in getting the gold price down. So was the U.K.

  Eddie George

  Taken, Rose, House

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• Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise.

  Alan Greenspan

  Gold, Derivatives, Commodity

  Alan Greenspan's Testimony Before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, www.federalreserve.gov. July 24, 1998.

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• Insanity has infected all the central banks of the world.

  David Stockman

  Insanity, World

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• Repeal the entire Banking Act of 1933, and Austrian School economists will cheer, especially if the current system were replaced by a 100%-reserve competitive banking with no central bank. That banking reform would give us a sound money system, meaning no more business cycle, bailouts, or inflation.

  Llewellyn Rockwell

  Money, Cheer, School

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• The lack of monetary discipline has become a hallmark of unfettered globalization. Central banks have failed to provide a stable underpinning to world financial markets and to an increasingly asset-dependent global economy.

  Stephen S. Roach

  Discipline, World, Financial

  Stephen S. Roach (2010). “Stephen Roach on the Next Asia: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Globalization”, p.28, John Wiley & Sons

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• Welcome to the age of paper money, where governments and central banks can manufacture as much money as they want without limit. Gold was the last limit. Its banishment as a standard unleashed the inflation monster and leviathan itself, which has swelled beyond comprehension.

  Llewellyn Rockwell

  Government, Age, Gold

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• A private central bank issuing the public currency is a greater menace to the liberties of the people than a standing army. We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Army, People, Liberty

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• The Central Bank has a lot to handle and it is best not to interfere with its competence.

  Vladimir Putin

  Competence, Handle, Interfere

  Source: thesaker.is

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• The first task of the Federal Reserve system would be to finance the World War. The European nations were already bankrupt, because they had maintained large standing armies for almost fifty years, a situation created by their own central banks, and therefore they could not finance a war. A central bank always imposes a tremendous burden on the nation for "rearmament" and "defense", in order to create inextinguishable debt, simultaneously creating a military dictatorship and enslaving the people to pay the "interest" on the debt which the bankers have artificially created.

  Eustace Mullins

  Military, War, Army

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• Monetary reform, if it is to be genuine and successful, must sever money and banking from politics. That's why a modern gold standard must have: no central bank; no fixed rations between gold and silver; no bail-outs; no suspension of gold payments or other bank frauds; no monetization of debt; and no inflation of the money supply, all of which have proved so disastrous in the past.

  Lawrence Reed

  Successful, Past, Gold

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• There is no reason products and services could not be swapped directly by consumers and producers through a system of direct exchange – essentially a massive barter economy. All it requires is some commonly used unit of account and adequate computing power to make sure all transactions could be settled immediately. People would pay each other electronically, without the payment being routed through anything that we would currently recognize as a bank. Central banks in their present form would no longer exist – nor would money.

  Mervyn King

  People, Adequate, Pay

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• The central bank needs to be able to make policy without short term political concerns.

  Ben Bernanke

  Political, Needs, Able

  "Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's Take On The Economy". "60 Minutes" with Scott Pelley, www.cbsnews.com. December 3, 2010.

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• The more guidance a central bank can provide the public about how policy is likely to evolve the greater the chance that market participants will make appropriate inferences.

  Ben Bernanke

  Chance, Guidance, Inference

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• The power to determine the quantity of money... is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power... Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes - excusable or not - can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic - this is the key political argument against an independent central bank.

  Milton Friedman

  Trust, Mistake, Independent

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• Meyer [sic] Amschel Rothschild, who founded the great international banking house of Rothschild which, through its affiliation with the European Central Banks, still dominates the financial policies of practically every country in the world, said: ‘Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.’

  Mayer Amschel Rothschild

  Country, Law, Issues

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• My monetary studies have led me to the conclusion that central banks could profitably be replaced by computers geared to provide a steady rate of growth in the quantity of money. Fortunately for me personally, and for a select group of fellow economists, that conclusion has had no practical impact… else there would have been no Central Bank of Sweden to have established the award [Nobel Prize] I am honoured to receive.

  Milton Friedman

  Impact, Awards, Sweden

  Milton Friedman's Speech at the Nobel Banquet, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1976.

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• The establishment of a central bank is 90% of communizing a nation.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Establishment, Nations

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• The idea that when people see prices falling they will stop buying those cheaper goods or cheaper food does not make much sense. And aiming for 2 percent inflation every year means that after a decade prices are more than 25 percent higher and the price level doubles every generation. That is not price stability, yet they call it price stability. I just do not understand central banks wanting a little inflation.

  Paul Volcker

  Fall, Mean, Years

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• I did not criticize the Central Bank's position.

  Vladimir Putin

  Criticize, Position

  Source: thesaker.is

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• If all currencies are moving up or down together, the question is: relative to what? Gold is the canary in the coal mine. It signals problems with respect to currency markets. Central banks should pay attention to it.

  Alan Greenspan

  Moving, Together, Gold

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• I have always thought and I still think that the Central Bank should act independently. Indeed, it does, you can take my word. I do not interfere in the decisions of the Central Bank and I do not give instructions to the Bank management or to its head.

  Vladimir Putin

  Thinking, Giving, Decision

  Source: thesaker.is

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• The goal of what Japan's central bank is doing is to create growth. If it actually creates growth, in the long run, it will lead to appreciation.

  Jamie Dimon

  Running, Appreciation, Japan

  Source: asia.nikkei.com

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• We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century credit tsunami. Central banks and governments are being required to take unprecedented measures. Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity are in a state of shocked disbelief.

  Alan Greenspan

  Government, Self, Credit

  "Greenspan Admits Free Market Ideology Flawed". "Morning Edition" with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. October 24, 2008.

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