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Jefferson, America's third president (1801-09), is widely regarded as the White House's most intellectually gifted occupant. He believed that "banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies", and that "the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity … is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
If Congress approves the Treasury Secretary's $700 billion bail-out of dysfunctional banks, it would be hard to invent a better example of what Jefferson foresaw: authorised "swindling". Tomorrow's Americans and those who come after them will pay and pay for the grotesque excesses and self-indulgence of today's flim-flam merchants.