Portal:Business/Selected quote/44
"There are rumors that the Austrian army is obliged to retire a little; that the Spanish squadron is gone to South America; that the English have excited a rebellion there; and some others equally unauthenticated. I do not mention them in my letter to Mr.Jay, because they are unauthenticated. The bankruptcies in London have re-commenced with new force. There is no saying where this fire will end, perhaps in the conflagration of all their paper. If not now, it must erelong. With only twenty millions of coin, and three or four hundred millions of circulating paper, public and private, nothing is necessary but a general panic, produced either by failures, invasion, or any other cause, and the whole visionary fabric vanishes into air, and shows that paper is poverty, that it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself. One hundred years ago, they had twenty odd millions of coin. Since that they brought in from Holland by borrowing forty millions more, yet they have but twenty millions left, and they talk of being rich, and having the balance of trade in favor."
- —Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel Carrington, 27 May 1788