Andrew & The Shark

The 7th President of the United States Andrew Jackson viewed The First Bank of the United States, the forerunner to the Federal Reserve, as a fountainhead of evil, foreseeing the dangers of a money monopoly. He opposed it and all it represented and believed it to be unconstitutional. Only five of the bank’s twenty-five directors were chosen by the government and the rest by shareholders of the bank. Thus, the public interest was always outweighed by the interests of the bank. “It is easy to conceive that great evils to our country and its institutions might flow from such a concentration of power in the hands of a few men irresponsible to the people”. He further feared the impact this would have on the “purity of our elections in peace and the independence of our country in war”. Andrew Jackson destroyed the Second Bank of the United States because it confounded the public and the private in its structure and its purposes. His words here to the bank president are paired with words from Finding Nemo.