Thanks for the responses. I was confident of your perspective before asking the question, but wanted feedback nonetheless because I don’t speak econom-ese. But I do speak common sense and the more I read, the more irritated I got.
Among other things, the author (John Steele Gordon) attached every bank failure in US history to Jefferson’s opposition (he included a banking timeline), which started some big ball rolling, like free enterprise has nothing to do with business success. He criticized private individual banks regulated on the state level and considered them doomed to fail because they were outside a federal umbrella. His general implication was that if Jefferson had listened to Alexander Hamilton in the first place, the US would never have had a bank failure. He dismissed Jefferson’s quotes that indicate his concern for the average farmer, saying in effect that he was a hypocrite because he himself was a rich elitist.
The main gist of the article seemed to be government control = stability, and let’s just ignore the fact that we operate under a capitalist system that has as its very foundation the potential for both success and failure.
The problem with that argument though is that it doesn’t explain why we have had bank failures and recessions *after* the central bank was created. If recessions were caused by the absence of a central bank the we shouldn’t have had any recessions after 1913.
“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.”
Hamilton, an immigrant from the British West Indies was a agent of European bankers an definitely what we would consider a Socialist. Mr Gordon appears to be the same.