Madoff is Kid Stuff compared to Government Plunder

• "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
  (Henry Ford, founder Ford Motor Co.)


• "Whereas we are being taxed on multiple levels, multiple times, from our single source of income, and from one single source, the government. Such a shame really, during the founding of this country they would not put up with such a tax as a tea tax, yet look at what the American people put up with today." (Rothchild Brothers of London, 1863).

Here is Ayn Rand writing about inflation and the proper role of government more than 30 years ago. And we still haven't learned our lesson as we watch our government grow and grow and grow to a behemoth life sucking monster.

• Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government; by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.
  
• ...in regard to social issues, "inflation" does not mean growth, enlargement or expansion, it means and "undue"-or improper or fraudulent-expansion. The expansion of a country's currency (which, incidentally, cannot be perpetrated by private citizens, only by the government) consists in palming off, as values, a stream of paper backed by nothing but promises (or hot air) and getting actual values, the citizens' goods or services, in return-until the country's wealth is drained. A similar activity, in private performance, is the passing of checks on a non-existent bank account. But, in private performance, this is regarded as a crime-and most people understand why such an activity cannot last for long.

• Today, people are beginning to understand that the government's account is overdrawn, that a piece of paper is not the equivalent of a gold coin, or an automobile, or a loaf of bread-and that if you attempt to falsify monetary values, you do not achieve abundance, you merely debase the currency and go bankrupt. ("Moral Inflation," in The Ayn Rand Letter, III, 12, 1 ) (Also see AynRand.org)