not THAT B.K. Marcus!

The Bank of the United States was established in Philadelphia in 1791. By the 20th century the bank was one of the most important in the country. In 1930 rumours began to circulate that the bank was in trouble. On the 7th December long queues began forming outside the bank's branches. Over the next four days depositors took out $20 million from the bank. On the 11th December, all its branches closed, as the bank no longer had any money to give back to its customers. It was the most disastrous failure in the banking history of the United States. Investigators discovered that the bank's owners had been guilty of incompetence and three of them, B. K. Marcus, Saul Singer and Herbert Singer, were sentenced to terms in Sing Sing Prison.

B. K. Marcus, Saul Singer, and Herbert Singer

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Source: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USACbank.htm

Wow. Sing Sing. Couldn't have happened to nicer guys, I'm sure. It would be hard to come by a more ironic association for my nom de plume, nom de guerre, nom de marriage, nom de nouvelle famille, etc. Maybe if there had been a B.K. Marcus working as a Hamiltonian lickspittle during the conspiratorial genesis of The Federalist Papers ...

For those of you who don't know, "Spartacus Educational" is a British anarcho-commie website with a very lefty conspiracy skew on Anglo-American history.

For an American, anarcho-capitalist, semi-conspiracy skew on the history and economics of central banking, see the following:

The Mystery of Banking (PDF)

What Has Government Done to Our Money?

The Case Against The Fed

All by Murray Rothbard.