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Tuesday, April 26, 2016

YET MORE BULLSHIT FROM INFOWHORES THIS TIME ON ANDREW JACKSON

Besides asking ridiculous questions on the death of Prince, such as did chemtrails kill Prince, or was he murdered by record label CEOs, Infowhores also out did themselves on Andrew Jackson last week.

Take this:


which contains this:
In fact, the Panic of 1837 was created by the institution Jackson eliminated—the Second Bank of the United States. In the 1830s, within the period of twelve months, the federal government’s central bank expanded the money supply from forty to seventy million dollars.

The source of this claim is this:
But not to dwell upon events the recollection of which time may have begun to efface from many minds, let us but cast a glance at the manner in which the United States Bank regulated the currency in 1830, when, in the short period of a twelve-month it extended its accommodations from forty to seventy millions of dollars. This enormous expansion, entirely uncalled for by any peculiar circumstance in the business condition of the country, was followed by the invariable consequences of an inflation of the currency.

[source : William Leggett, Democratick Editorials: Essays in Jacksonian Political Economy, Part II, Separation of Bank and State, Bank of United States, http://www.econlib.org/library/Leggett/lgtDECover.html

So according to Nimmo of Infowhores, the Panic of 1837 was caused by a large credit expansion in 1830?

But what Nimmo etc fail to state is that when Jackson removed federal deposits from the Second Bank of the United States, what happened to them? Did he shove those deposits under his mattress? Did they just disappear? Or were they placed in other smaller banks?

No. He placed those desposits in smaller banks run by his mates!

And what did they do with those deposits?

They used those fresh federal deposits as a base and applied fractional reserve banking to create loans for land speculation, which created a bubble which Jackson himself burst with the Specie Circular.

That was the cause of the 1837 Panic.

It was not Biddle's credit expansion in 1830 for public works and infrastructure development. It was Jackson's mates using illegaly acquired federal deposits to create a speculation bubble in land, which Jackson then burst.

The author of the article linked to be Nimmo states of Legget:
Leggett blamed artificial credit creation for the Panic of 1837:

But what the author does not mention in his article is who created that artiifical credit creation nor the withdrawal of the federal funds by Jackson.

Here are several authors praising Nicholas Biddle for his management of the Second Bank of the United States:
For nearly a decade, Biddle provided good bank management. Historian Walter A. McDougall observed that as a result of Biddle's "prudential care, Americans never knew, before or since, a sounder currency than in the very years when Jackson claimed the BUS `failed.' The charge was all the more scurrilous, given the indispensable help Biddle provided for Jackson's program to retire the national debt."22 Economic historian Bray Hammond wrote that Biddle was "a devoted, conscientious, and exceptionally able manager of the federal Bank up to the time the President and his advisers decided to do away with her and him too." 23 Andrew Burstein noted: "The Bank of the United States was perfectly well managed. It regulated the availability of credit through its practical control over the loan activities of state banks. But to Jackson, the national bank was a morally suspect institution, a symbol of secret manipulation." 24 Taking a more critical position, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., argued: "Biddle not only suppressed all internal dissent but insisted flatly that the Bank was not accountable to the government or the people." Schlesinger wrote: "In Biddle's eyes the bank was...an independent corporation, on a level with the state, and not responsible to it except as the narrowest interpretation of the charter compelled. Biddle tried to strengthen this position by flourishing a theory that the bank was beyond political good or evil, but Alexander Hamilton had written with far more candor that `such a bank is not a mere matter of private property, but a political machine of the greatest importance to the State.' The Second Bank of the United States was, in fact, as Hamilton had intended such a bank should be, the keystone in the alliance between the government and the business community." 25 That was anathema to Jackson. The BUS represented to Jackson the power of an unaccountable elite. Nevertheless, it did more for the economy than Jackson recognized. Historian Walter A. McDougall wrote: "The BUS ran twenty-nine branches around the country, did $70 million of business per year, issued 20 percent of the banknotes in circulation, held one-third of all American deposits, and was the sole depository for the annual surpluses accumulated by the federal government. It did not, however, have a death grip on local economies. In order to maintain leverage over state banks the BUS had to hold more of their dubious bonds than they did its own trustworthy notes. Hence the BUS was a guaranteed conduit funneling capital and credit to the West and South rather than squeezing them."

[source : Andrew jackson, banks, and the Panic of 1837, http://lehrmaninstitute.org/history/Andrew-Jackson-1837.html]

And from the same essay, how Jackson caused the panic:
Schouler contended: "For a brief spell, in fact, the monetary situation was sound again. The National Bank had been forced in self defence to strengthen itself. State banks, too, took due precautions to qualify themselves for receiving the public funds. But the deeper mischief of the new situation developed slowly; and as commonly happens when the money market is deranged, the people slid into the climax quite unaware of it, mistaking the flush of fever for prosperity. Jackson's gold dollar could not crowd out the baser paper of the local banks, its nominal equivalent. When bills are redeemable at sight in specie, banks will hoard bullion to meet the demands at their counter; the community prefer paper meantime as their more convenient medium of traffic, since the sound currency of a nation is not gold, but the paper which is as good as gold. These precious mint drops were soon carried under the vast and rising flood of pulp money. For now sprang up in the States a mania for new banks and now paper. The twenty three pet banks with which Kendall organized the new system in 1833 were all too few to hold custody of the public moneys. Every quarter of the Union, every State, every district having party constituents to please, must run with its barrel, its pitcher, or its cup to share the Pactolian stream which spouted from the national Treasury. Great was the lobbying to procure local charters in such times; the New York legislature this spring incorporated ten new banks, besides increasing the capital of one already existing; a movement for a fifty million bank in Boston was engineered by Democratic magnates in August; and this was only the beginning of a fever which made other States soon beat the ground in frenzy. The banks already admitted to Jackson's favor closed up to keep others out; but some got into the pet circle by steady pressure, others by a flying leap, while those which were kept out altogether had very little local supervision to restrain them from being as reckless as they chose. And thus did it come about that bank loans were enormously expanded and the business of the country worked up into a fever of speculation whose crisis was reached in three years. Instead of stringency in the money market, the evil at first apprehended, Jackson's empiricism cost the country in the end a calamitous inflation.

Henry Clews in 28 Years on Wall Street also praises Biddle for his management and mocks Jackson and van Buren for wrecking the economy.

But for a much more detailed explanation as to how and why Jackson became President I would direct you to either:
1. How Andrew Jackson Destroyed the United States;
2. Overturning the Myth of Andrew Jackson.


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