Extract 2
Woods Palmer sipped his coffee and sat back in his chair. "What do banks do with money? We keep it in vaults where it can't be stolen, except occasionally. We invest it in bonds and stocks and mortgages and business and personal loans. We handle it. We channel it. We tell it what to do. We mold it and teach it. We create it."
"Money? What do we do, print it?"
"Almost literally," he said.
"Is that legal?"
"Perfectly," Palmer assured her. "As a Federal Reserve Bank, we create a brand-new dollar out of thin air for every four dollars we take in."
"Is that good?"
He slapped his hand palm down on the arm of his chair. "Stop asking philosophical questions. It probably is the worst thing that could happen to the United States of America and our great-grandchildren will pay for it dearly. But right now it's the money that makes our particular mare go."
"In other words, we're responsible for printing money that isn't based on silver?"
In other words, we're creating inflation," Palmer told her. "But inflation is what the American people want."
"You don't really believe that."
"It's not a question of belief. It's a fact. People want to buy all kinds of gimcracks, twenty-one-inch color television sets, two-door refrigerators, overpowered automobiles. They refuse to wait until they have saved up money^ Like little children, when they want something they want it now. All right, behind every automobile and television set stands a man willing to sell.
him the money and get paid for the favor by charging his customer carrying charges. But they need their money now, too. Where do they get it? Most of them don't have enough money to cover the tremendous amount of time . buying that goes on. So, behind them stand banks, providing the money, and more until the supply of money begins to run a little short. You wonder where it's all coming from. But you know where it's coming from. It's rolling off the printing presses."
He stopped, suddenly aware of the fact that his voice had grown in intensity until a man two tables away glanced at him. In the odd silence that followed, Palmer stubbed out his cigarette and wondered why he had got so excited.
"You were beginning to sound like a philosopher there for a second," Virginia Clary said then.
"I do have a philosophy about money," Palmer admitted. "It's an archaic one that would probably wreck the country inside of a week if we ever put it into effect. It's a banker's view of money with centuries of banking behind it."
She leaned forward toward him, watching very closely now. "Tell me this explosive philosophy."
Palmer laughed briefly, without much joy. "Don't spend what you don't have," he said then. "So simple. So impossible." He laid his hands palms up on the small table between them. "When you see a lovely gimcrack, resist the urge to own it at once. Save for it. Then buy it. Chances are, by then the urge to own it will have passed, anyway."
Her rather full eyebrows drew together in an expression of pain. "Oh," she said, "what a terribly limited way to live. I wouldn't like it at all."
Palmer shrugged. "If by limited you mean disciplined, yes."
"Disciplined? Does that sound any better?" She shook her head. "It's a bleak, stark, cold way of life. No adventure, no excitement."
"No problems, no crises."
"You see?" she pounced. "It isn't a way of life at all. It's preview of death."
"Nonsense."
"What is life all about?" she asked. "Problems and crises. Seeing something lovely and wanting it now and taking it and paying for it later."
"Whose life are we talking about?" Palmer wanted to know.
She frowned again. "Yes," she said, "that's right, isn't it? Not everybody wants to live that way. I forgot."
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Palmer watched the upturned palms of his hands, then turned them over on the cool table top. His palms
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