Thomas Jefferson very famously said "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties that standing armies"
"The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our constitution. I am an enemy to all banks, discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. If the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."