Some prophetic words from Thomas Jefferson on banks and corporations run amok

Today's New York Times leads with an article titled "Approval Is Near for Bill to Help U.S. Homeowners". This piece of legislation includes "a refinancing program aimed at rescuing hundreds of thousands of homeowners in danger of foreclosure and the most sweeping government overhaul of mortgage financing since the New Deal."

We'll see.

Of course, this seems like a mere afterthought, since our federal government's initial reflex response to the mortgage crisis was to bail out Bear Stearns.

So it is interesting to reflect on some words that Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to James Monroe on January 1, 1815:

If the American People ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and 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 occupied. The issuing power of money should be taken from the bankers and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs. I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.

We are completely saddled and bridled, and the bank is so firmly mounted on us that we must go where they ill guide.

The dominion which the banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens ... must be broken, or it will break us.