Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Top 10 Americans for monetary reform: #2: Thomas Jefferson

The financial crisis in America today could be over almost instantaneously through monetary reform. Monetary reform is a fundamental shift in how America creates money. The shift is from a Robber Baron-era design of banks creating credit to lend to us at interest and ever-increasing debt, to our community (government) creating it for the direct payment of public goods and services. The benefits of monetary reform are conservatively $1 TRILLION every year, the end of the national debt, and full employment.

Please review the links above to fully understand this idea.
The power of monetary reform is evident in history. Napoleonic France quickly became the world’s leading economy and Paris its most beautiful city after ten years of violent revolution that killed or drove-off their economic leadership. Nazi Germany overcame tragic-comic hyperinflation to become the model economy during the Great Depression. These nations were in worse economic conditions than America today (economic power needs to be invested in the public good, not for empire).
This top 10 list of Americans who understood monetary reform deserve your attention. Given our economic condition, you literally have nothing more valuable for your attention.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, a foundation of American ideals. He was a scholar of the Enlightenment, including religious tolerance and freedom. Jefferson’s written work is extensive. He communicates strong understanding of banks creating credit that cause inflation to devalue everyone’s currency, the gambling of created credit such as we see today in credit default swaps and exotic derivative trading, and states, Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.” My personal analysis is that Mr. Jefferson did not fully understand the power of creating money directly for the public good. However, he was quite eloquent to the dangers of the banking system creating and gambling with credit, the monetary and financial system we still have today.
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Note: ME, FE = Memorial Edition, Ford Edition from the University of Virginia archives.
“All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from a want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.” – John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson (1787-08-25), The Works of John Adams (I've included the only quote I have from Adams here, since it was directed to TJ)
“This institution (privately-owned central banks) is one of the most deadly hostility against the principles of our Constitution…suppose a series of untoward events should occur…an institution like this…in a critical moment might upset (overthrow) the government.” – Thomas Jefferson,December 1803 letter to Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin.
"Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs. It is the only fund on which they can rely for loans; it is the only resource which can never fail them, and it is an abundant one for every necessary purpose. Treasury bills, bottomed on taxes, bearing or not bearing interest, as may be found necessary, thrown into circulation will take the place of so much gold and silver, which last, when crowded, will find an efflux into other countries, and thus keep the quantum of medium at its salutary level. Let banks continue if they please, but let them discount for cash alone or for treasury notes." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:361
"The art and mystery of banks... is established on the principle that 'private debts are a public blessing.' That the evidences of those private debts, called bank notes, become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from the repayment of these debts beyond a give proportion (generally estimated at one-third). And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead of paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we see in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is levied again on us through the medium of commerce. And they are so ready still to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to let themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them the same premium of six or eight per cent interest, and on the same legal exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the debt, when it shall be called for." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:420
"Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:61
The treasury, lacking confidence in the country, delivered itself bound hand and foot to bold and bankrupt adventurers and bankers pretender to be money-holders, whom it could have crushed at any moment. Even the last half-bold, half-timid threat of the treasury, showed at once that these jugglers were at the feet of government. For it never was, and is not, any confidence in their frothy bubbles, but the lack of all other medium (money), which induced…people to take their paper…We are now without any common measure of value of property, and private fortunes are up or down at the will of the worst of our citizens. Yet there is no hope of relief from the legislators who have immediate control over this subject. As little seems to be known of the principles of political economy as if nothing had ever been written or practiced on the subject, or as was known in old times, when the (bankers) had their rulers under the hammer. It is an evil, therefore, which we must make up our minds to meet and to endure as those of hurricanes, earthquakes and other casualties: let us turn over therefore another leaf.” – Thomas Jefferson, October 16, 1815 letter to Gallatin. Letters and Addresses, edit. William Parker, (New York: 1905).
"The system of banking [I] have... ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:18
"I sincerely believe... 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." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
"Certainly no nation ever before abandoned to the avarice and jugglings of private individuals to regulate according to their own interests, the quantum of circulating medium for the nation -- to inflate, by deluges of paper, the nominal prices of property, and then to buy up that property at 1s. in the pound, having first withdrawn the floating medium which might endanger a competition in purchase. Yet this is what has been done, and will be done, unless stayed by the protecting hand of the legislature. The evil has been produced by the error of their sanction of this ruinous machinery of banks; and justice, wisdom, duty, all require that they should interpose and arrest it before the schemes of plunder and spoilation desolate the country." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Rives, 1819. ME 15:232
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