An Interview with President Jefferson

I have been seeking to gather informed commentary on the current economic situation, particularly in the USA, from people who have been involved in managing major global economies in the past.

To this end, I have been lucky enough to secure an exclusive interview, in a local Starbucks, with Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father, the third President of the USA and a principal author of the Declaration of Independence. A staunch advocate of Republicanism, former President Jefferson rarely gives interviews nowadays, as he does not want to be seen to be criticising or commenting on current government policy and as he has been dead for nearly 185 years. This makes the opportunity to hear his views on the recent credit crisis and government policies on credit and debt management (President Jefferson was deeply in debt at the time of his death) all the more valuable.

PM: Good Morning, Mr President, do help yourself to coffee. During this interview, may I call you Thomas?                                                                         

TJ: No

PM: Thank you. Mr. President, what are your views on the current US deficit?

TJ: “We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”

PM: So, what would be your advice to US citizens at the moment?

TJ: “Never spend your money before you have it.”

PM: This is not the advice that we have been reading in the media in recent years, when cheap credit was being applauded

TJ: “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”

PM: And what is your view on the role of the banks in the recent crisis?

TJ: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”

PM: How so?

TJ: “ I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. 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 [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. “

PM: So the argument that cheap credit was falsely suggesting an increase in prosperity and that the new credit instruments enabling more and more loans to be funded was a cause of this?

TJ: “The principles of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, are but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

PM: And the long term consequences of running up these huge deficits?

TJ: “If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and our drink, in our necessities and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.”

PM: Not sure about the oatmeal and potatoes crack, but I see your point… so, to be clear the cause of all these economic problems in your view…?

TJ: “The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that and in its train wretchedness and oppression.”

PM: And the future of the banking system…?

TJ: “The system of banking is a blot left in all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction.

PM: And your advice to people feeling at the end of their tether in the current situation?

TJ: “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”

PM: Strong and forthright words, Mr. President

TJ: “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”

PM Absolutely…

TJ: On which subject... This coffee’s appalling, what do you pay for it nowadays?

PM: ……………You’d never believe me.

All TJ’s comments in speech marks are genuine quotes- and to close with, I like a quote from JFK when (I believe) reviewing an early gathering of his cabinet after being elected President…

“I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined here alone.”

Maybe his words are worth reviewing then? Just maybe….

And yes it’s all out of context, but then… it’s only a bit of fun… isn’t it?