Badlands Book Club: The Creature From Jekyll Island - Chapter 17

Ashe and CannCon settle in for Chapter 17 of The Creature from Jekyll Island, "Den of Vipers," and it does not lighten the mood. The chapter walks through the fight over the Second Bank of the United States: who held the power to emit bills, how Nicholas Biddle ran the bank like a private government, and why Andrew Jackson treated it as a threat to the republic. They follow the money into Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Jeffersonian arguments over paper money and foreign investors, then pull the thread forward to Woodrow Wilson and the same central-bank pattern in a later century. Along the way they dig into decision rights, the Electoral College versus a pure popular vote, and why the Founding Fathers built the system the way they did. Expect Jackson vs. Biddle, Webster in the mix, and more than a few "we're just describing today" moments. No sponsor reads in this cut. As always with this book, the history is dense and the parallels are the point.