A Fake Quotation

Sloppy thinking is still sloppy, even if the sloppy individual's heart is in the right place.

Example: a fake Wilson quote.

By way of introduction, please understand that I have become a more and more committed hard-money guy over the last four years.

I have come to believe that prices are only going to be rational, that economies are only going to work efficiently, if the money supply is disassociated from the decisions of central bankers, such as members of the board of the US Federal Reserve.  I also have come to believe that a link to gold might be one good way of disassociating money from policy, or rather of subordinating policy to money, as is right and proper.

So count me among the world's goldbugs if you like.

I find, nonetheless, that within this company there is a lot of sloppy thinking, and part of that is the profligate use of willful unchecked quotations.

For example, Woodrow Wilson, the president who signed the banking reform act that created the Federal Reserve, is supposed to have said years later, in regret:

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.


Not-so-shockingly, none of the sites that present this quotation give a decent source for it. Their sourcing is ... each other. It is a "famous quote," and that is enough. Famous in this context simply means it continues to circulate.

As one gold bug to others let me say: let's take this out of the armory, folks. This is false, and just makes us look silly. He said some of that, but the quote is a paste-together job designed (by someone) to make it seem as if this is all an expression of regret for the creation of the Federal Reserve, whereas the real pieces of that quote in their actual contexts, have a quite different significance.

The best short statement of the problem is this: Wilson actually thought it was a good thing that he had played a part in creating the Federal Reserve because until that was done the system of credit had been in the hand of "a small group of dominant men."

That was a problem he thought he had solved, not one he thought he had created!