Even Ben Bernanke wants Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill


When the Treasury Department announced last week that the next edition of the $10 bill would feature a woman alongside Alexander Hamilton, women's suffrage fans everywhere rejoiced, but with a major quibble: Why not put a woman on the $20 bill instead and evict Andrew Jackson?
The nonprofit Women on 20s has been campaigning for months to replace Jackson, an idea Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said he supports Monday in a Brookings Institution blog post expanding on his public opposition to demoting Hamilton:
Replace Andrew Jackson, a man of many unattractive qualities and a poor president, on the twenty dollar bill. Given his views on central banking, Jackson would probably be fine with having his image dropped from a Federal Reserve note. Another, less attractive, possibility is to circulate two versions of the ten dollar bill, one of which continues to feature Hamilton. [Brookings Institution]
Bernanke also called honoring a woman on federal currency a "fine idea," giving historical figures like Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Rosa Parks some much-needed validation.
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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.
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