The 2nd Bank of the United States

This often happens to me. I start down a thought road, planning to talk about one thing, and then I get off on a different road. As Sherlock Holmes described it, I follow the thread where it leads. I had planned to talk about this week's refusal by the Supreme Court to issue a writ of cert to hear Gee v Planned Parenthood, but I got interested in Justice Thomas’ dissent. Understandably, he is upset at the refusal of the Court to hear the case. There are those who believe that his dissent is rooted in ideology, and it may be. Clearly, he hates abortion and would vote to overturn Roe v Wade faster than a Michael Cohen news story gets on the air. But he does make a valid point – the jurisdiction and duty of the Court, as intended by the Framers, was to resolve questions such as this case asks. Especially when there are differing opinions as to what is going on with a given law in the lower Courts. So… There once came a time when the economic situation was chaotic. A long war had drained national resources and there was an overabundance of land and property available for speculative deals. To that end, numerous banks began making speculative loans backed up by literally nothing. The overextension of easy credit along with declining prices of non-land goods was causing a great deal of concern. And when the crap hit the fan, all hell broke loose. Banks panicked and began calling in loans and foreclosing on the properties. And then the politicians got involved…