Wednesday Open Line


Banks had operated in America for about a half century before someone tried to make an unauthorized withdrawal. On this date in 1831, Edward Smith committed the first bank robbery in the U.S. — hitting the City Bank on New York’s Wall Street. He entered the bank after it closed, using a duplicate set of keys, and got away with $245,000 — a huge sum at the time. But he was caught, convicted and spent five years in New York’s Sing-Sing Prison. Now, across the nation, there are over 91,000 commercial banking establishments. As one 20th century bank robber supposedly noted, that’s where the money is — bank deposits total over $8 trillion. You can find current data on the country’s economy by downloading the ‘America’s Economy’ mobile application at <www.census.gov/mobile>.