Sunday, November 01, 2015

WHY DID PRESIDENT ANDREW TURD JACKSON ATTACK THE SECOND BANK OF THE UNITED STATES?

Found an interesting website on presidents of the USA.

Imprudent lending and corrupt management brought the Second Bank into deep disrepute during the speculative boom-and-bust cycle that culminated in the Panic of 1819. Calls arose for revocation of the charter. But the astute stewardship of new Bank president Nicholas Biddle did much to repair its reputation in the 1820s. By 1828, when Jackson was first elected, the Bank had ceased to be controversial. Indeed, most informed observers deemed it indispensable.

Startling his own supporters, Jackson attacked the Bank in his very first message to Congress in 1829.

...Though some original Jackson men were flabbergasted and outraged at his turn against the Bank, the veto held up in Congress.

...As soon as the nullification crisis was resolved, Jackson took his next step. The Bank's open involvement in the presidential campaign convinced him more than ever of its inherent corruption. To draw its fangs until its charter ran out in 1836, he determined to withdraw the federal government's own deposits from the Bank and place them in selected state-chartered banks.

This was a maneuver requiring some delicacy. Under the charter, the secretary of the treasury, not the President, had authority to remove the deposits. He had also to explain his reasons to Congress, where the House of Representatives had just voted by a two-to-one margin that the deposits should stay where they were. Jackson canvassed his cabinet on removal. Most of them opposed it, but he got the support and arguments he needed from Attorney General Roger Taney. Jackson drew up a paper explaining his decision, read it to the cabinet, and ordered Treasury Secretary William John Duane to execute the removal. To Jackson's astonishment, Duane refused. He also refused to resign, so Jackson fired him and put Taney in his place. Taney ordered the removal, which was largely complete by the time Congress convened in December 1833.

Even many congressional foes of the Bank could not countenance Jackson's proceedings against it. He had defied Congress's intent, rode roughshod over the treasury secretary's statutory control over the public purse, and removed the public funds from the lawfully authorized, responsible hands of the Bank of the United States to an untried, unregulated, and perhaps wholly irresponsible collection of state banks. To many, Jackson seemed to regard himself as above the law.

...Whigs held a majority in the Senate. They rejected Jackson's nominees for government directors of the Bank of the United States, rejected Taney as secretary of the treasury, and in March 1834, adopted a resolution of censure against Jackson himself for assuming "authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both."

...The Bank, defeated, retired from the fray after the 1834 session. When its charter expired it accepted a new one from Pennsylvania and continued to operate as a state institution. Meanwhile, the state banks, cut loose from central restraint and gorged with federal funds, went on a lending spree that helped fuel a speculative boom in western lands. Everything came crashing down in the Panic of 1837, which broke just as Jackson retired from office. The ensuing depression plagued Martin Van Buren's presidency and lingered on into the 1840s.

[source : Andrew Jackson: Domestic Affairs, The Miller Center, http://millercenter.org/president/biography/jackson-domestic-affairs]

In other words, as I have been saying all along, The Second Bank of the United States under Nicholas Biddle was "indispensable", and had produced a growing, stable economy. But Jackson knew better, outraged his supporters by attacking the bank, sacking several Treasury secretaries who would not remove federal funds from the bank, eventually appointing fellow slaveholder Roger B Taney, who withdrew the funds and placed them in banks run by his mates. This sudden increase in money in those banks was used to fuel a speculation bubble which burst in 1837 and wrecked the American economy.

One nation that stood to gain from this destruction of a growing, stable American economy was...Great Britain.

Jackson was a wrecking ball (and a turd).

He was under the influence of Martin van Buren.

For more details on Jackson's treason against the USA, and not just his destruction of the Second Bank of the United States, read : Andrew Jackson as A Treason Project



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