Geo. Washington On Unfunded Paper Money

George Washington -- in a letter to Jabez Bowen, Rhode Island, Jan. 9, 1787

"Every lover of his country will therefore be solicitous to find out some speedy remedy for this alarming evil. There is no possible substitute for the loss of commerce. Our first grand object, therefore, is its restoration. I presume not to dictate or direct. It is a subject that will require the deepest deliberations and researches of the wisest and more experienced men in America to fully comprehend. It probably belongs to no one man existing to possess all the qualifications required to trace the course of American commerce through all intricate paths nor to those and only those that shall lead the United States to future glory and prosperity. I am sanguine in the belief of the possibility that we may one day become a great commercial and flourishing nation.

But if in the pursuit of the means we should unfortunately stumble again on unfunded paper money or any similar species of fraud, we shall assuredly give a fatal stab to our national credit in its infancy. Paper money will invariably operate in the body of politics as spirit liquors on the human body. They prey on the vitals and ultimately destroy them."

"Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice."

 

 

 
What Washington said, in paraphrase --

"If ever again our nation stumbles upon unfunded paper, it shall surely be like death to our body politic. This country will crash."

This nation is awash in fiat paper and plastic credit unfunded money, monetized debt in the form of Federal Reserve Notes ... the question before us is not if it will crash, but when? The Inner Sanctum of Government will be unable to control this cataclysmic catastrophe.


Love and Peace, Barefoot
20021008