QUOTES ON FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICY:

"The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled and the pubic debt should be reduced. The arrogance of public officialdom should be tempered and controlled. And the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest we become bankrupt." -- Cicero, 63 B.C.

"Inflation has now been institutionalized at a fairly constant 5% per year. This has been scientifically determined to be the optimum level for generating the most revenue without causing public alarm. A 5% devaluation applies, not only to the money earned this year, but to all that is left over from previous years. At the end of the first year, a dollar is worth 95 cents. At the end of the second year, the 95 cents is reduced again by 5%, leaving its worth at 90 cents, and so on. By the time a person has worked 20 years, the government will have confiscated 64% of every dollar he saved over those years. By the time he has worked 45 years, the hidden tax will be 90%. The government will take virtually everything a person saves over a lifetime." -- G. Edward Griffin, historian and author of "The Creature From Jekyll Island"

"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose ... If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer." -- John Maynard Keynes, economist and author of "The Economic Consequences Of The Peace" (1920)

"About all a Federal Reserve note can legally do is wipe out one debt and replace it with itself, another debt, a note that promises nothing. If anything's been paid, the payment occurs only in the minds of the parties ...." -- Tupper Saucy, author of "The Miracle On Main Street"

"... the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state)." -- Greenspan, Alan; "Gold and Economic Freedom", Rand, Ayn; Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal; Signet Books, 1967; pp96-101. See full text in FAME's FedWatch section www.fame.org.