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Citation, please? I think you're thinking of his opposition to the national bank, on constitutional grounds. I don't think Jefferson or his contemporaries eve
by dfranke 18y ago
Citation, please? I think you're thinking of his opposition to the national bank, on constitutional grounds. I don't think Jefferson or his contemporaries ever dreamed of the existence of something like Lehman or AIG. Banking in his day was a simple concept: borrow money at a low interest rate, lend it at a high one. If we still stuck to that model, we wouldn't be in this mess.
- nazgulnarsil 18y agobanking in his day was NOT a simple matter: "Our public credit is good, but the abundance of paper has produced a spirit of gambling in the funds, which has laid up our ships at the wharves as too slow instruments of profit, and has even disarmed the hand of the tailor of his needle and thimble. They say the evil will cure itself. I wish it may; but I have rarely seen a gamester cured, even by the disasters of his vocation." --Thomas Jefferson to Gouverneur Morris, 1791. ME 8:241 "I own it to be my opinion, that good will arise from the destruction of our credit. I see nothing else which can restrain our disposition to luxury, and to the change of those manners which alone can preserve republican government. As it is impossible to prevent credit, the best way would be to cure its ill effects by giving an instantaneous recovery to the creditor. This would be reducing purchases on credit to purchases for ready money. A man would then see a prison painted on everything he wished, but had not ready money to pay for." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1786. ME 5:259