The irony of a $20

Are We Ignorant About Our Money?
Neal Ross
August 26, 2007


Sometimes I wonder about the people of this country. I often think they are either naive, or worse, ignorant, about so many things. For instance, everybody spends money, although more and more people are using plastic, in the form of debit and credit cards, instead of cash, or even a checking account.

That being the case, I am pretty sure that everybody has, at one time or another, held a $20 bill in their hand. I would speculate that not many of the realize the hypocrisy of a $20 bill.

Look at a $20 bill and see whose image graces it, Andrew Jackson, the 7th president of the United States. I guess a large number of people did not pay attention in history class, otherwise they would remember the fact that Andrew Jackson fought, and won, a battle to do away with the charter of the Second Bank of the United States.

The Second Bank of the United States held a misleading title. It was actually under private control and was only granted a charter by the United States government. The stocks in the bank were held by private investors, both foreign and domestic.

President Jackson resolutely opposed the bank. He felt that since it had been granted special privileges, such as being a storehouse for public funds with which the bank could use for it's own purposes without paying interest. Jackson also felt the bank possessed a powerful influence on national affairs, yet it had no oversight or higher entity to answer to.

With these concerns, President Jackson commenced to wage war against the bank, with the intent of removing its charter. President Jackson laid out his case before Congress in December of 1829, however Congress ruled that the bank, was in fact, a constitutional institution.

President Jackson was not deterred. In a ploy he allowed the bank to reapply for its charter. When Congress passed the motion, Jackson vetoed it informing the public of the evils of the bank, saying it was "subversive of the rights of the states" and that most of the stock was held by foreigners.

In September of 1833 President Jackson issued an order to have all U.S. deposits removed from the bank and placed into state banks. After doing so, the federal government began to see an annual surplus of about $10 million and, for the first time in the history of the United States, there was no federal debt.

The bank still had one last card to play, and it did. It contracted all its loans which caused a national panic resulting in a flood of worthless paper money. To counter this final offensive in July of 1836, Jackson issued his "Specie Circular" which was a decree that only gold and silver would be accepted in purchasing public lands. Soon afterwards the government began minting a new U.S. dollar and the battle was over, the Second Bank of the United States, was for all intensive purposes dead.

Andrew Jackson was the first and only president to take on the national banking interests and win. He was the only president to ever pay off completely the national debt.

Jackson understood what Thomas Jefferson meant, when years before Jefferson wrote, "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
Therefore, I find it highly ironic, and an insult to my intelligence, that the $20 bill has Andrew Jackson's image upon it.

Look at the very top of a $20 bill and what do you see, FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE. Go ahead and take a look at a $20, nowhere on it will you find the words U.S. dollar. It is a bill issued by another bank, the Federal Reserve Bank, which is the same as the bank that President Jackson fought to do away with.

This bill is worth less than the paper and clothe it is printed upon. It is created out of thin air and printed and distributed by a banking cartel the controls its value by the raising and lowering of interest rates, just like Jefferson warned us about.

If you also look under the seal for the Federal Reserve System you will find the statement, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." All that means is that bill is, by decree the currency that is accepted as the means of paying debts public and private. It is a fiat currency with nothing at all backing it other than governmental decree.

Compare a modern $20 bill to a bill from 1928. On an older bill you will find the following statement, "Redeemable in gold on demand at the United States Treasury, or in gold or lawful money at any federal reserve bank."

That is interesting in both the fact that it was redeemable in gold, and lawful money. Does that mean that the new modern $20 is, in all actuality, not lawful money, and not redeemable for anything? What it tells me is that the money we carry around today is worthless.

I would think that Andrew Jackson would find it an insult to his beliefs and his integrity to have his image upon a worthless piece of paper, issued by a bank very similar to one he fought so fervently to do away with.

I also find it sad that the majority of the people of this country do not find the irony in having Old Hickory grace the money they carry around in their wallets and purses. I guess as long as it pays their cable bills and buys their beer they are content. Sad, truly sad....