Milton Friedman on the Federal Reserve

87 passages for “the Federal Reserve”, 74 checked against the source. Page 9 of 9.

Full topic page: Monetary policy and the Federal Reserve

1. “Nixon was the most socialist of the presidents of the United States in the 20th century. ( … ) Well, his ideas were not socialist, quite the opposite, but if you look at what happened during his administration, first of all, the number of pages in the Federal Register, which is full of regulations about business, doubled during his regime.”

2. “From the political point of view, increased spending may initially be designed to be temporary but few things become more permanent than temporary spending. Hence, the economists are in fact calling for a still higher level of government spending yet, in my view, reducing the scope of government is our most important single objective.”

3. “One down, 49 to go. That is the present state of the grassroots movement that Ronald Reagan started in California five years ago when he sponsored Proposition 1—a constitutional amendment to limit spending by the state government to a specified, and slowly declining, fraction of the personal income of the residents of California.”

4. “In 1945–46, intellectual opinion was almost entirely collectivist. But practice was free market. Government was spending something like 20–25 percent of national income. But the ideas of people were all for more government. And so from 1945 to 1980, you had a period of galloping socialism.”

5. “Of course, we know very well that the situation is precisely the reverse. The lines date from the creation of a real Federal Energy Office run by a very visible, able and articulate William Simon. Which is the cause and which the effect? Did the lines produce the FEO or the FEO the lines?”

6. “The true cost of government to the public is not measured by explicit taxes but by government spending. … Essentially every current piece of wealth in the United States has a hidden tax imposed on it because of the future obligation to pay those extra taxes. In effect, what you have are two kinds of taxes: the open, explicit taxes and the hidden taxes. And what's called a deficit is a hidden tax.”

7. “Why do we have inflation? Because we, the citizens, have demanded it. We have sent a message to Washington. We said, we want you to spend more on roads. We want you to spend more on health. We want you to spend more on education. But don't tax us for it. … And so the difference is paid for by the hidden tax of inflation, which is the only tax that can be imposed on the American people without anybody having to vote for it.”