Who is really more appropriate for the $20 bill?
Angela Ellis” letter in the September 22 issue of the Record-Bee certainly made an interesting point about removing the portrait of Andrew Jackson from the $20 Federal Reserve note. Not only should we not celebrate the individual responsible for the forced removal of Indians from the southeastern U.S. via the “Trail of Tears”, but I think Jackson himself would be appalled to see his face on a Federal Reserve note. One of the major centerpieces of his administration was his successful battle to prevent by veto the renewal of the Second National Bank of the United States, a precursor to the Federal Reserve System. He opposed the Bank because, again like the Federal Reserve System, it concentrated an excessive amount of the nation”s financial strength in a single institution; it served to make the rich even richer, and it usurped the function of regulating the money supply that was explicitly given to Congress in Section Eight of the Constitution. I suggest that Federal Reserve notes should carry the portraits of those who engineered the creation of the System, men like J.P. Morgan and Paul Warburg.
Steve Harness
Upper Lake
