Episode Details

Ashe in America and CannCon settle in for Chapter 18 of The Creature from Jekyll Island, picking up right after Jackson's war on the Second Bank. The Bank is dead, but banking is very much alive, and the chapter walks through the failed fixes that followed. They cover the push to kill small banknotes and force everyday trade back onto gold and silver, then how checkbook money and demand deposits made those limits pointless. Next come the safety-fund schemes, money backed by government securities (the Red Dog and Wildcat era that foreshadowed the Fed), and the mirage of "free banking" that still ran on state favors and gold-box tricks. From there the book turns to the Union in jeopardy: tariffs, legal plunder, Lincoln, and why the Civil War looks like an economic war as much as a moral one, with Mexico and the Monroe Doctrine in the mix. Ashe and CannCon keep pulling the thread to today, including how the 1830s money fights rhyme with current trade and industrial policy. No sponsor interview in this cut. Dense history, clear parallels, and a lot of "we're just describing the present."