George Washington Quotes
Paper money has had the effect in your State that it ever will have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open a door to every species of fraud and injustice.
Washington, George. "From George Washington to Jabez Bowen, 9 January 1787." The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, vol. 4, University of Virginia Press, 1995, pp. 509-512.
Abraham Lincoln in his famous eulogy to Clay in Springfield, IL, used this quotation.
Most of the Founding Fathers would be scandalized by the banking and finance system we have in modern times. There is not a single bank in the nation that would meet Adams’ criteria for not being a “cheat.” See {615649} for a similar view and {630666} for another quote by Adams regarding banks. Interestingly, Adams was a very conservative politician and generally supported the establishment, but banks at that time were not thought of as part of the establishment. They had a somewhat unwholesome reputation at best.
Three years after he wrote this essay, the U. S. Economy suffered the Meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession where the major American banks had much too small capital bases to survive so the Federal Reserve and the taxpayer bailed the banks out. Much of the problem was if a consumer or a business borrows money from a bank, he/she must have a capital base at least equal to the amount borrowed. But under the modern American banking system, if a bank wants to borrow from the people, the bank doesn’t even have to have a capital base of as much as ten percent of what it borrows and often has considerably less.
He said this as he threw them out of his White House office.
George Washington was the first President of the United States (1789-97), the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He presided over the convention that drafted the current United States Constitution and during his lifetime was called the "father of his country".
