“We sometimes forget that central banking as we know it today is, in fact, largely an invention of the past hundred years or so, even though a few central banks can trace their ancestry back to the early nineteenth century or before.
It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. If the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with `free banking.’
The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.”
Paul Volcker, foreword to The Central Banks, 1995
“Against folly we have no defense. Neither protests nor force can touch it; it is unmoved by reason; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved — indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can be just pushed aside as trivial exceptions. So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
