The Original Deep State

Donald Trump is not the first president to face down a deep-state cabal, that is, an unelected oligarchy of shadowy figures who wielded enormous power while being unaccountable to the American public. The first was President Andrew Jackson, who faced down the Bank of the United States in the 1820s and 1830s; then as now, the deep state has apparently included a significant financial element. Trump’s top economic aide Lawrence Kudlow said it last October: “I don’t want to get into a lot of Fed bashing,” but “their models are highly flawed. The deep state board staff, of course, has not been very helpful -- oops, did I say that?”

Yes, he did. And whatever the actual role of the Federal Reserve in the coup attempt against Trump, there is no doubt that some have been sounding warnings about it since at least 1931 – people in a position to know.

As Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster explains, the Federal Reserve was established in December 1913, during the “progressive” Woodrow Wilson administration. But the Fed was just a new version of the same Bank of the United States that Jackson fought: a private corporation that kept the public treasury. Its foes argued that it was dangerous to turn power over the public funds to an oligarchy of private financiers, since the possibility for corruption, and for a de facto second government developed by buying favors until large enough to challenge the government of the United States, was immense.

More