 There's a great history here, and it's worth the while of all people who are associated with the agency to have some sense of what this agency has done. In the simple analysis, the OCC for many, many years has been at the forefront of change. The change of the financial sector to modernize it so that it can compete efficiently and effectively in the world as the world changes. From the harvest of the heartland to the markets on Wall Street, business is central to the American way of life. In a world scarcely imaginable to our forefathers, sophisticated electronic systems perform countless millions of financial transactions each day. But whether it is yesterday's exchange of gold and silver coin, or today's plastic credit cards, the fundamental relationship between buyer and seller is still the same as when our nation was born. The American Revolution was in large part a struggle for economic freedom. But the victory over England in 1783 brought challenges. Our first national government under the weak Articles of Confederation lacked the authority to create and supervise a banking system. Few banks existed to serve the needs of the citizenry, and the whole economy suffered. Specie, gold and silver, was in short supply, and the paper money was unreliable and inadequate. Given the growing financial needs of an expanding nation, individual states granted charters with note issuing powers to new banks. Several states conducted regular examinations to ensure that these banks operated within the law and could redeem paper notes with gold and silver on demand. To help promote orderly economic growth, Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first secretary of the treasury, encouraged Congress in 1791 to charter the Bank of the United States. It opened as a joint public and private venture to oversee the state banks and act as the young government's fiscal agent. In 1811, the first Bank of the United States expired at the end of its 20-year charter, and a second Bank of the United States was not established until 1816. It was the second Bank of the United States that soon became entangled in a web of political intrigue between President Andrew Jackson and his opponents in Congress. Jackson regarded the bank as a hydra-headed monster and a threat to American liberty. He killed the bank by withdrawing all federal deposits and allowing its charter to expire. Historians like to characterize the period 1830 to 1860 as the free banking era in America. What that simply meant was that bank charters were granted in large numbers and under the same terms essentially applicable to all corporations. The result of this free banking era was an enormous increase in the number of banks in many of the states. That made banking services widely available to the people of these states, but it also led to abuses, abuses in the sense that many of these banks were not regulated seriously, in some cases were not regulated at all by the states that had issued those charters. The result was a kind of currency mayhem in the United States. There was a time at which perhaps 10 or 12,000 varieties of paper money circulated. Some of that paper money was perfectly good. It was issued by banks that had the will and the ability to redeem those notes in specie. After all, all a paper bank note is is a promise to pay in hard money. But inevitably there were a fair number of the state chartered banks that had neither the will nor the ability to redeem those notes in specie. And state governments were not always scrupulous or diligent in enforcing the obligation. And this became a serious hindrance to commerce around the country. People in New York had no way of knowing whether a bank note issued by a bank in New Orleans was legitimate or what its value might actually be. It would take dramatic historical events to bring fundamental improvement to the country's banking system. Rebellion was in the air. For the government of Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War was as much a financial crisis as it was a military one. With the Union's future in doubt, tax revenues and import duties plummeted. The Treasury's gold stocks dwindled to alarming lows. It was clear that a solution to the financial crisis was needed as soon as possible. A major element of Lincoln's response was the design of a national banking system. He believed that a nationally chartered and sound financial institutions would do great good and provide great opportunity for people. The National Bank Act, passed by Congress in 1863, created a new class of federally chartered and supervised banks. By law, the new national banks were required to purchase U.S. bonds to back the bank notes they would then be allowed to issue. If a bank failed, depositors would be reimbursed from the sale of the bonds. More significantly, the soon-to-be reunited country would from then on have a uniform paper currency honored everywhere in America. And also having a stable set of institutions that have some coherence across state lines tends to facilitate commerce. And that's what it was intended to do. That's what the National Banking System, National Currency System was intended to do. I believe because what he wanted to have was a system that would help support the economy and well-being of the United States and the United States and people of the United States and understood that having entities that were well-supervised, nationally chartered that had a broad national reach, where the bills that they issued would then be guaranteed by the government because the institutions would be sufficiently stable, would make a huge advance in the financial well-being of the country. Now, one thing I think is really fascinating about the National Banking Act and the National Currency Act, Lincoln when he proposed the National Banking System didn't just do that, but he proposed the office of the controller of the currency at the very same time because he and Chase understood intimately that you couldn't have a safe and sound set of institutions that weren't properly supervised. So the supervision of the institutions and regulation are all bound up with the national banks themselves. A new bureau was created within the Department of the Treasury to implement the new laws. The office of the comptroller of the currency would serve as the administrative apparatus responsible for controlling the issue of national bank notes and supervising the national banks. The function that they first entrusted to the office in terms of trying to create a stable, reliable, national currency at a medium of exchange was viewed at that time in the midst of the Civil War as an enormously significant and important function. President Lincoln selected Indiana banker Hugh McCulloch to head the office. With the war over and the continent beckoning, America's westward expansion accelerated. The nation turned toward rebuilding the wartime devastation and expanding settlement and business opportunities from coast to coast. At the OCC, the leadership of Hugh McCulloch and his successors helped propel America into the front ranks of modern industrial nations. The principles of sound banking that they articulated seem fresh and valid even today. As the 20th century began, the United States took its place as an economic power to be reckoned with. The uniform national currency and the national banking system created along with it had helped support the expansion of manufacturing and trade that supplied domestic and foreign markets. Immigration boomed as people from all over the world came to America in search of opportunity. In 1913, President Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, which further strengthened the paper money system. All national banks were required to join the Federal Reserve System. The OCC took its place in the new framework and continued its role as the supervisor of national banks in an ever-expanding economy. As America's isolation ended, its economy and banking system grew to meet the demands of war and the peace and prosperity that followed. They called it the Roaring 20s, an age of rapid economic growth and increasing affluence never before seen by most Americans. We danced, we drank, despite prohibition, we spent and we borrowed, and much of the credit that financed the boom came from banks. For only with credit could most Americans afford radios, refrigerators, automobiles and all the new technological marvels that helped transform the nation into a boundless society with unlimited hopes and expectations for the future. The big banks became financial supermarkets serving the needs of not just business but of government and consumers. But the boom quickly became a bust when the stock market crashed. With now worthless stocks, speculators could not repay the money borrowed to purchase the stocks in the first place. Thousands of investors, many of them working people, were financially ruined. Overnight, billions of depositors' dollars disappeared. Panic gripped the nation as customers queued up in block-long lines in hopes of withdrawing their savings before the banks ran out of cash. In the final quarter of 1931 alone, a thousand U.S. banks failed. By 1931, there were five million jobless Americans. By 1933, the number had more than doubled. Industrial production tumbled. The few measures taken by governments seemed only to make a bad situation worse. The crisis demanded a fresh approach. Two days after taking office, President Roosevelt issued an emergency executive order that temporarily closed all of the nation's banks to stop the massive runs that threatened to destroy the entire banking system. But for every crisis, there are heroes, and among them in early 1933 were the men and women of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and their counterparts in state banking departments. Within a week after Roosevelt's bank holiday, OCC examiners verified the soundness of many banks and all across America they began to reopen. Those deemed unfit were liquidated, sold or reorganized. Confidence returned and Americans began to transfer their money from cookie jars and mattresses back to savings accounts. The banking system survived and the OCC under Comptroller J. F. T. O'Connor had played a major part. In the 30s, important safeguards were installed with the goal of ensuring that another such banking crisis would never occur. The Banking Act of 1933 empowered the government to set interest rate ceilings on bank deposits and narrowly defined the business of banking. Two years later, in 1935, Congress passed another law that limited the number of banks and retired the national currency first issued under OCC supervision in 1863. Thereafter, Federal Reserve notes became the nation's circulating currency. With these new measures in place, OCC's supervision prevented but a handful of national bank failures into the late 1950s. Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and forelike that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. As the world changed, the OCC changed with it. Men of vision such as Comptroller James J. Saxon sought to modernize the banking business and upgrade the OCC's regulatory capabilities. Jim Saxon recognized the world was changing and that the structure of our banking system had to change with it. That's what he did. Those who were around in 1863 would be astonished at what the business of banking has become today. Banking today has become much more of a financial services business in which not only bank accounts and certificates of deposit and credit cards are offered, but all sorts of other products and services, insurance, securities products and derivatives, all of the various things that have been developed over time. The combination of new competitive entries and new products has rapidly changed the complexion of what the banking business is today. All jobs and all professions require a lot more keeping up and continual retraining than they used to, but I think that's particularly true of the job that bank examiners are asked to do because of the evolving nature of the business. So the office, I think, has always felt an obligation to try and keep up with what's going on in the marketplace. I think the ability to stay abreast of risks and new emerging risks is a constant challenge. Technology is a glorious and wondrous thing. It makes things happen in nanoseconds now. We, in the supervisory role, benefit from the access to technology just as the emerging markets and emerging product offerings and emerging management techniques also benefit. I think the fundamentals are still pretty much the same and that is making certain that you are keeping abreast of how institutions are managing risks and keeping your eye on that ball all the time. The job of the national bank examiner in the fullest sense of the word of the job is to understand how the bank he is examining, or here she is examining, is run. To understand the techniques by which management and the board of directors organize their own bank, how they follow through the implementation of the basic policies and procedures which have been adopted by the board and implemented by management, and generally to evaluate the quality of the organization on both a quantitative and qualitative basis. The role of the regulator really has not changed that much. The regulator still has the job of ensuring the safety and soundness of the system, supervising and chartering the banks. The banking system as a whole is a fundamental, if not the fundamental, underpinning of the economy. It is, after all, a source of financing for vast numbers of individuals and small businesses, even though a lot of the financing for larger institutions has moved into the capital markets. There still are millions of people who rely on the banking system to provide the capital they need to start and grow businesses. From the beginning, the OCC has played a critical role in the evolution of American financial policy. Its supervision has a direct impact on the vitality of the national banking system and the communities it serves. As a self-supporting branch of the Department of the Treasury, the OCC is an agency that has withstood the test of time and crisis. Hugh McCulloch would be proud of the service his office and its people have rendered through the years. In the heartland and in the city, America still relies on its system of national banks. They continue to provide a safe and secure haven for the economic capital of communities across the land. For more than a century, the nation's first regulatory agency has enabled the national banking system to grow into the financial pillar it is today, supporting the miracle of the American economy. I'm Jerry Hawke, the 28th controller of the currency. In the opening frames of this video, my distinguished predecessor, John Hyman, spoke of the importance of the OCC's history and traditions to the men and women who work at the OCC and to all Americans who benefit from a safe and sound banking system. I hope that the time you've spent watching this video has helped you understand the contribution that the OCC and national banks have made over many years to the strength and prosperity of our country. Inscribed on the granite facade of the National Archives building here in Washington is the motto, What is past is prologue. It means that everything that we've experienced and learned throughout our history is preparation for the challenges to come. Certainly with the coming of the new century, the challenges will be many and varied, and they'll call upon all the accumulated wisdom we can muster. I think it's important that we ponder where we've been and how we've dealt with the challenges of the past to help us prepare for whatever the future holds. That's one reason why we've produced this video, but there's also a fascinating story here. As this video has shown, the history of the OCC and our national banking system has often been bound up with the greatest of our national leaders on the watershed events in our national history, like the Civil War, the Great Depression, FDR's New Deal, and JFK's New Frontier. At each of those critical junctures, the OCC has been asked to play an important role in safeguarding our nation's financial well-being. And at each juncture, we've risen to the challenge. It's a special honor for me to follow in the footsteps of the distinguished Americans going back to Hugh McCulloch, who have occupied the Office of the Controller. As OCC employees, you too are heirs to the special traditions that have always exemplified our office. I hope you have found this video useful and entertaining and a source of pride in the more than 130 years of outstanding service rendered to America by the Office of the Controller of the Currency.