Sounds interesting.  I would like to know the crux of his thesis.

Havent read it.  What class are you reading it for?

That is true. There was a first BUS (Bank of the United States) which Hamilton backed. Their charter in the 1790's was not renewed, so they bided their time until coming up with a 2nd BUS which got I believe a 20 year charter. Jefferson was opposed to the 1st BUS but that did not stop them from coming back. It was the 2nd BUS that Jackson pledged to end and when he did it brought the nation into a position where state-controlled banks could and did open up but backed on fractional reserve based on gold & silver. There were many attempts to do this in US history most notably the Federal Reserve in 1913. All of these central banks try to give the impression through their name that they are a government entity when they are really a privately owned corporation that creates money on the basis of debt. I believe that is why many of the founding fathers dreaded the central bank because they realised this from seeing how the Bank of England operated and knew the dangers of debt to the colonies and it also explains why it's taken them [the banks] so long to get a permanent foothold in the US via the Federal Reserve.

Peas in a pod….

One quote I thought would be very fitting:"?When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes? Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.?? Napoleon Bonaparte, 1815The part played during the Napoleonic wars by the economy and the already super rich banking elite is not to be underestimated just like the revolution that preceded it, and the revolution in the US that preceded France's. The practice of banks' money lending to one side or even both sides engaged in conflict is something that has repeated itself through history for better or for worse and I am convinced that Napoleon was fully aware of this.Second thing I wanted to mention I don't think I can I tried typing it out but I am terrible at this (I need practice!!) so I found an article that expressed exactly what was running around in my head. I'd recommend reading the whole thing as it's very interesting but I think the most important part that I could find regarding banking disputes, colonial scrip, fractional reserve banking, etc. is as follows:In 1764 Franklin returns to London and, from 1764 to 1775, serves as an agent for Pennsylvania (and later for several other colonies as well). He is now a renowned scientist and writer. The debates over colonial paper money, however, continue to engage him. In 1765, in response to Lord Grenville?s challenge to come up with some palatable way for the British to increase taxes on the colonists to help pay for the Seven Years War, Franklin writes up a proposal for a North-America-wide universal paper currency modeled on Pennsylvania?s land bank system. The British would run the colonial land bank and collect the interest on the paper money loaned out to colonists in place of any new direct taxes placed on the colonists. The colonies would get a universal paper currency to support internal trade throughout colonial America. Franklin?s proposal appears to be the first ever made for a universal or ?national? American paper currency. The colonists? unexpectedly violent response to the Stamp Act and the Pennsylvania Assembly?s instructions to Franklin to not let the British infringe on their money-issuing privileges led Franklin to abandon his proposal and obscure his authorship. The Pennsylvania Assembly also instructed Franklin to lobby for repeal of the new British restriction on colonial paper money enacted in 1764. In making his case Franklin adds an important new argument to his arsenal. He points out that while a bank-based paper money system with the paper money payable on demand in gold and silver may be preferable, such a bank-based system is ?impracticable? in the colonies as long as the colonies are held as a dependent country and not allowed to implement their own foreign trade and capital controls. Britain and other European countries can use gold and silver as their money for internal trade and so can develop a bank-based paper money system because they can execute laws that guard against the foreign trade that would cause an untimely export of their gold and silver. Franklin writes that gold and silver have a ?universal estimation? but ?that very universal estimation is an inconvenience which paper money is free from, since it [gold and silver money] tends to deprive a country of even the quantity of currency that should be retain?d as a necessary instrument of its internal commerce; and obliges it to be continually on its guard in making and executing?the laws that are to prevent the trade which exports it.? Britain does not allow the colonies to exercise such legal powers, and so the colonies cannot rely on retaining enough imported gold and silver to support their internal trade. The colonies, therefore, need a fiat paper money that is not linked to gold and silver money.Franklin knew very well the implications of opposing the British on these matters and went on to say:"The refusal of King George to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from clutches of the money manipulators was probably the prime cause of the revolution."Furthermore, he goes on to say:"The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament, which has caused in the Colonies hatred of England and the Revolutionary War."This is an important detail because I was always under the impression from books and television that the notorious Stamp Tax was the prime cause, and it may well have been, but it doesn't give me the full picture as much as that quote does.Actually on the very last page of the document it describes how in his last days Franklin was enthusiastic about the Bank of North America (precursor to 1st BUS):Although he had been an ardent supporter of colonial government paper money, Franklin was not opposed to a private bank-based system of paper money backed by reserves of gold and silver coins as long as the nation had sovereign power to control trade and capital flows to protect its gold and silver money supply from the trade disruptions that might cause it to be precipitously exported. With the sovereign power to regulate money and trade flows that came with independence, Franklin may have been willing to abandon the old system of legislatures? issuing paper money backed by land mortgages and future taxes for a new system of governments? chartering and regulating privately run banks that issued paper money backed by reserves of gold and silver. Certainly Franklin?s enthusiasm for the Bank of North America points in that direction.Sources: http://21stcenturycicero.wordpress.com/fraud/how-benjamin-franklin-made-new-england-prosperous/http://www.philadelphiafed.org/publications/economic-education/ben-franklin-and-paper-money-economy.pdf