Remember what we're looking at. Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency, that no fiat currency, including the dollar, can match.

Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.

I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.

Since I've become a central banker, I've learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.

We may be in a rapidly evolving international financial system with all the bells and whistles of the so-called new economy. But the old-economy rules of prudence are as formidable as ever. We violate them at our own peril.

History cannot be reduced to a set of statistics and probabilities.

I was a good amateur but only an average professional. I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled at New York University.