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>Can you direct us to where this quote is written anywhere? > >"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of >their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks, and >the corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people >of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent >their fathers conquered." > >T. Jefferson supposedly said this in 1786 > >We need this for a high school paper A.S.A.P. I have been asked about that quotation before, but I am sorry to tell you, I do not think it was by Thomas Jefferson. One of the things that gives it away is the use of the terms, inflation and deflation. Jefferson spoke in terms of "depreciating our money" and "The government of the United States have no idea of paying their debt in a depreciated medium." The concepts of inflation and deflation of the money supply was something that came about later. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the first use of the term "inflation" with reference to the money supply was in 1838, and the first similar use of the term "deflation" was in 1920. So it is highly unlikely that Thomas Jefferson, who died in 1826, used those terms. The following are two quotes that are genuine and which you might be able to use instead of the one about which you inquire. "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 hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." --Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816. Best wishes, Eyler Coates