"The Bank is trying to kill me -- but I will kill it." And Old Hickory did just that, unlike someone kooling it up in the White House now.
President Jackson took on the financial octopus of his era, and despite the bank's aura of invincibility, he did kill it, after getting re-elected over the bank's peacock, Henry Clay, by a rampant 18-point margin and running off two money-stooge Treasury secretaries.
He stood against it and its invisible fortune, its circle of bought men, and the London banks behind it; dared it "take your best shot," then after the bank did its damnedest, took steady aim -- bang!
Made of adamantine stuff, that towering bastard.
Hey, he gave 'em fair warning. During his first year in office, king Andy set the bank's president -- the soft-handed fork-tongued slickster Nicholas Biddle, shown left -- straight: "I never trusted banks -- not after I read about the South Sea bubble."
Words to live by.
Comments (6)
The original inhabitants of this continent are already gone, so this hero could focus all his energy on the economy.
Posted by Save the Oocytes | March 30, 2009 8:20 PM
Posted on March 30, 2009 20:20
"Web of Debt", by Ellen Brown, is about the history of various efforts like Jackson's to defeat the British banking interests and create a truly national bank instead, whose job would simply be to circulate currency, not loan money to the public at interest.
The creation of a "Federal Reserve Bank", which is not federal at all, but merely a collection of private banks, ended these efforts and left the British banks in control.
Reading this book, I couldn't escape the feeling that I was being infected by some kind of libertarian virus, and I stopped half way through. What say you, OP?
Posted by senecal | March 31, 2009 9:38 AM
Posted on March 31, 2009 09:38
notice if you will
banks generating credit waves
stock exchanges blowing equity bubbles
all one and the same to andy
he had it right
cause he kept it simple
"metal money goooood
paper money baaaaad "
the bank monster
is a paper beast
but made huge enough
it kills with
its avalanches
andy's answer
the populist answer
keep em small keep em seperate
don't let em grow tenticles
the us bank biddle's bank
was nationwide
and holding all federal deposits
too big to fail ???
hell biddle pulled a credit strike like fdr accused the waly boys of doing in '38
andy without fdr's tools
simply rode out the freeze
hey
worse came soon enough with the knock on panics of 37
which allowed
the anti jackson anti pleb
whigs into power
by posing as the plebs saviour
a trick that still works ..for a while
err like 30 years in the latest installment
of course the orthrian system
allows a mutt and jeff act
where both party choices as squarely anti pleb
instead of a money party
people's party cycle
you get the ratchet
but i date that refinement
to the gilded age or progressive age
bryan being the last people's candidate
wilsonian first term
fdr first term
progressive era ???
lovely case of the ratchet moving left
for a brief spell
hush hush section:
conjecture
the ratchet can move both ways
after 40 years of moving
the vital center ..right
now i think its moving the center left
in one of its brief fast corrective moves
wilsonian first term
fdr first term
lbj after mattrees martyr
psssst
our father mustn't read this heresy
so no references or refutations please
Posted by op | March 31, 2009 3:44 PM
Posted on March 31, 2009 15:44
Anathema!
Posted by MJS | March 31, 2009 4:22 PM
Posted on March 31, 2009 16:22
"Reading this book, I couldn't escape the feeling that I was being infected by some kind of libertarian virus"
sen
u probably were
the make a thousand small banks out of 10 big ones
and expecting results of a liberating sort
is like
horse feather hunting
Posted by op | March 31, 2009 5:25 PM
Posted on March 31, 2009 17:25
StO -- Hey, nobody's *perfect*!
Posted by MJS | March 31, 2009 5:27 PM
Posted on March 31, 2009 17:27