Robert Remini’s Andrew Jackson and the Bank War (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1967) has the following excerpt explaining part of Jackson’s opposition to the Second Bank of the United States:
Jackson seriously contended that the Bank was dangerous to the liberty of the American people because it concentrated enormous power in private hands and used this power to control legislation, influence elections, and even manipulate the the operation of the government to get what it wanted. The Bank, said Jackson, was a monopoly with special privileges granted by the government; it exercised formidable sway over the affairs of the American people yet it was independent of presidential, congressional, or popular regulation. And because Jackson was a man who was exceedingly conscious of power, as well as jealous of his own presidential prerogatives, he was resentful of the Bank and conditioned even before he took office to demand changes in its operations.
The similarities between the moral and political issues regarding central banking then and central banking today never cease to amaze.
