Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those self-created money lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us.
Interpretation
Private wealth is vulnerable to manipulation by greedy lenders and the abundance of nominal money.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson expresses concern about the financial system and how private wealth can be severely impacted by opportunistic lenders. He critiques the overwhelming amount of nominal money, suggesting that it is driven by avarice and can lead to the downfall of individuals' fortunes.
In practice
During a financial seminar on personal wealth management, this quote can illustrate the risks posed by unscrupulous lenders.
The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them.
I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
We must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
The natural effect of low interest is to increase trade and industry; because undertakings of every kind can be prosecuted with greater advantage.
So Europe needs to be competitive and we also need to be competitive if we wish to remain an interesting economic partner for the United States. This has to be done on the basis of strength, of competitiveness.
It is regrettable that people think about our monetary system, and of our economic structure, only in times of depression.
Four things have almost invariably followed the imposition of controls to keep prices below the level they would reach under supply and demand in a free market: (1) increased use of the product or service whose price is controlled, (2) Reduced supply of the same product or service, (3) quality deterioration, (4) black markets.
If the financial system has a defect, it is that it reflects and magnifies what we human beings are like. Money amplifies our tendency to overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong. Booms and busts are products, at root, of our emotional volatility.
The real source of market promise is not the wealthy few in the developing world, or even the3 emerging middle-income consumers. It is the billions of aspiring poor who are joining the market economy for the first time.
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