President Jackson speaks on the financial bailout

photo via brad ruggles

President Andrew Jackson, our seventh president, addressed a delegation of bankers in 1832 in a “Come to Jesus” meeting:

Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank.

You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin!

You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out.

I think that about sums it up.

[via Brad Ruggles]