[This is great stuff.]
Jackson won the bank war in 1832. The central bankers and the academic Establishment have never forgiven him for this. His position on the Second Bank is universally excoriated in economic history textbooks and monographs. This story even gets into lower division history textbooks. Students who are told about central banks only twice in the textbooks are told that Jackson was a narrow-minded bigot on central banking. The only other reference to central banking in the textbooks is the story -- carefully sanitized -- of the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, a victory described, though never explained, as a triumph of the American people over the political control of money. It was, of course, a triumph of the big bank cartel over competitive banks that offered greater safety. The bankers feared bank runs on overleveraged banks, meaning large New York City banks.
As an historian by training, I can think of no cartelization of any industry that has been more successfully concealed by academia. This is by far the largest, richest, and most successful cartel in American history. Yet there is almost no criticism of the system and its enforcement tool, the Federal Reserve System. Whatever mild technical quibbles the academic community has had with the FED, the central issue of central banking is never even mentioned, let alone refuted. What is the central issue? That all central banking is a government-licensed enforcement arrangement of a well-organized, well-funded cartel. As with all cartels, it operates at the expense of competitors who would otherwise offer better opportunities to the public.
I think that's the most memorable way I've seen the Fed arrangement + context described.
Good example for writers: it's not just that you provide an accurate description and explanation, it's that you make it as memorable as you possibly can. So it sticks.
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