This quote is brilliant:

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.

It’s usually attributed to Thomas Jefferson. It pops up on well-meaning Internet sites which favor liberty and sound money. Recent example here.

Unfortunately, Jefferson scholars say it’s a fake.

The first part of the quotation…has not been found anywhere in Thomas Jefferson’s writings…the words “inflation” and “deflation” are not documented until after Jefferson’s lifetime.

[The second and third parts are loose paraphrases of Jefferson…] The first known occurrence in print of the spurious first part with the two other quotations is in 1948…

Chalk it up to “Things that Jefferson should and probably would say, if he could see us now.” And always Google your quotes from dead people; especially if they’re too good to be true.

Addendum: Even though the Community Conservatives article linked above used a fake Jefferson quote, it had a number of other good things to say. For just one, it is the first place where I have seen the phrase “political/financial complex” to describe the elites who (mostly) rule us today.

I myself use (and I had the experience of coining) the phrase “Big Government / Big Banking complex.” Saying “political/financial complex” conveys the same idea – in fewer words. (But the same number of syllables. Odd.)

UPDATE and shifting topic, since this is sort of a Random Thoughts post: Here’s anti-Brexit harpie Christiane Amanpour trying to play ‘gotcha’ with Daniel Hannan of the pro-Brexit campaign, for nine minutes.

It’s a bit tragic. Hannan is clearly telling the truth and making good points. But Amanpour’s thinking is so cliched, so stuck, so “canalized” on her You Are All Racists narrative, that she can hardly let him talk, and ends up interviewing herself. She must have felt that she was scoring points on Hannan; others of us shake our heads at her foolishness and incompetence.