Thomas Jefferson on Banks

From Thomas Jefferson, paraphrased:

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

President Jefferson's modern-day equivalent would have to be Mr. Ron Paul.

Note: the Jefferson quotation cited above has no credible source. It is apparently a paraphrasing of two separate Jefferson statements:

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale...Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.

From Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, Monticello, 28 May 1816. [Ford 11:533] and Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, Monticello, 24 June 1813. [Ford 11:303]

Ford = Ford, Paul Leicester, ed. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892-99. 10 vols.