Sage advice not heeded

"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 them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States 1801-1809

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." Thomas Jefferson, 1816

"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world -- no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men..." Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States 1913-1921

I find it hard to believe that we have been taken by surprise.