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CHAPTER
13 - The 1930's
In 1930
Herbert Hoover appointed to the Federal Reserve Board an old friend from
World War I days, Eugene Meyer, Jr., who had a long record of public service
dating from 1915, when he went into partnership with Bernard Baruch in the
Alaska-Juneau Gold Mining Company. Meyer had been a Special Advisor to the
War Industries Board on Non-Ferrous Metals (gold, silver, etc.); Special
Assistant to the Secretary of War on aircraft production; in 1917 he was
appointed to the National Committee on War Savings, and was made Chairman of
the War Finance Corporation from 1918-1926. He then was appointed chairman
of the Federal Farm Loan Board from 1927-29. Hoover put him on the Federal
Reserve Board in 1930, and Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Reconstruction
Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 1946. Meyer must have been a man
of exceptional ability to hold so many important posts. However, there were
some Senators who did not believe he should hold any Government office,
because of his family background as an international gold dealer and his
mysterious operations in billions of dollars of Government securities in the
First World War. Consequently, the Senate held Hearings to determine whether
Meyer ought to be on the Federal Reserve Board.
At these Hearings, Representative Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House
Banking and Currency Committee, said:
"Eugene Meyer, Jr. has had his own crowd with him in the government since he
started in 1917.
His War Finance Corporation personnel took over the Federal Farm Loan
System, and almost
immediately afterwards, the Kansas City Join Stock Land Bank and the Ohio
Joint Stock Land
Bank failed."
REPRESENTATIVE RAINEY: Mr. Meyer, when he nominally resigned as head of the
Federal Farm Loan Board, did not really cease his activities there. He left
behind him an able body of wreckers. They are continuing his policies and
consulting with him. Before his appointment, he was frequently in
consultation with Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Dewey. Just before his
appointment, the Chicago Joint Land Stock Bank, the Dallas Joint Stock Land
Bank, the Kansas City Joint Land Stock Bank, and the Des Moines Land Bank
were all functioning. Their bonds
were selling at par. The then farm commissioner had an understanding with
Secretary Dewey that nothing would be done without the consent and approval
of the Federal Farm Loan Board. A few days afterwards, United States
Marshals, with pistols strapped at their sides, and sometimes with drawn
pistols, entered these five banks and demanded that the banks be turned over
to them. Word went out all over the United States, through the newspapers,
as to what had happened, and these banks were ruined. This led to the breach
with the old Federal Farm Loan Board, and to the resignation of three of its
members, and the appointment of Mr. Meyer to be head of that Board.
SENATOR CAREY: Who authorized the marshals to take over the banks?
REP. RAINEY: Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Dewey. That started the
ruin of all these rural banks, and the Gianninis bought them up in great
numbers."
World's Work
of February 1931, said:
"When the World War began for us in 1917, Mr. Eugene Meyer, Jr. was among
the first to be
called to Washington. In April, 1918, President Wilson named him Director of
the War Finance
Corporation. This corporation loaned out 700 million dollars to banking and
financial
institutions."
The Senate Hearings on Eugene Meyer, Jr. continued:
REPRESENTATIVE MCFADDEN: "Lazard Freres, the international banking house of
New York and Paris, was a Meyer family banking house. It frequently figures
in imports and exports of gold, and one of the important functions of the
Federal Reserve System has to do with gold movements in the maintenance of
its own operations. In looking over the minutes of the hearing we had last
Thursday, Senator Fletcher had asked Mr. Meyer, 'Have you any connections
with international banking?' Mr. Meyer had answered, 'Me? Not personally.'
This last question and answer do not appear in the stenographic transcript.
Senator Fletcher remembers asking the question and the answer. It is an odd
omission.
SENATOR BROOKHART: I understand that Mr. Meyer looked it over for
corrections.
REPRESENTATIVE MCFADDEN: Mr. Meyer is a brother-in-law of George Blumenthal,
a member of the firm of J.P. Morgan Company, which represents the Rothschild
interests. He also is a liaison officer between the French Government and
J.P. Morgan. Edmund Platt, who had eight years to go on a term of ten years
as Governor of the Federal Reserve Board, resigned to make room for Mr.
Meyer. Platt was given a Vice-Presidency of Marine Midland Corporation by
Meyer's brother-in-law Alfred A. Cook. Eugene Meyer, Jr. as head of the War
Finance Corporation, engaged in the placing of two billion dollars in
Government
securities, placed many of those orders first with the banking house now
located at 14 Wall Street in the name of Eugene Meyer, Jr. Mr. Meyer is now
a large stockholder in the Allied Chemical Corporation. I call your
attention to House Report No. 1635, 68th Congress, 2nd Session, which
reveals that at least twenty-four million dollars in bonds were duplicated.
Ten billion dollars worth of bonds surreptitiously destroyed. Our committee
on Banking and Currency found the records of the War Finance Corporation
under Eugene Meyer, Jr. extremely faulty. While the books were being brought
before our committee by the people who were custodians of them and taken
back to the Treasury at night, the committee discovered that alterations
were being made in the permanent records."
The record of public service did not prevent Eugene Meyer, Jr. from
continuing to serve the American people on the Federal Reserve Board, as
Chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and as head of the
International Bank.
President Rand, of the Marine Midland Corporation, questioned about his
sudden desire for the services of Edmund Platt, said:
"We pay Mr. Platt $22,000 a year, and we took his secretary over, of
course."
This meant another five thousand a year.
Senator Brookhart showed that Eugene Meyer, Jr. administered the Federal
Farm Loan Board against the interests of the American farmer, saying:
"Mr. Meyer never loaned more than 180 million dollars of the capital stock
of 500 million dollars
of the farm loan board, so that in aiding the farmers he was not even able
to use half of the
capital."
MR. MEYER: Senator Kenyon wrote me a letter which showed that I cooperated
with great advantage to the people of Iowa.
SENATOR BROOKHART: "You went out and took the opposite side from the Wall
Street crowd. They always send somebody out to do that. I have not yet
discovered in your statements much interest in making loans to the farmers
at large, or any real effort to help their condition. In your two years as
head of the Federal Farm Loan Board you made very few loans compared to your
capital. You loaned only one-eighth of the demand, according to your own
statement."
Despite the damning evidence uncovered at these Senate Hearings, Eugene
Meyer, Jr. remained on the Federal Reserve Board.
During this tragic period, chairman Louis McFadden of the House Banking and
Currency Committee continued his lone crusade against the "London
Connection" which had wrecked the nation. On June 10, 1932, McFadden
addressed the House of Representatives:
"Some people think the Federal Reserve banks are United States Government
institutions. They
are not government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which
prey upon the people
of the United
States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers. The
Federal Reserve banks are
the agents of the foreign central banks.
Henry Ford has said, 'The one aim
of these financiers is
world control by the creation of inextinguishable debts.' The truth is the
Federal Reserve Board
has usurped the Government of the United States by the arrogant credit
monopoly which operates
the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks."
On January 13, 1932, McFadden had introduced a resolution indicting the
Federal Reserve Board of Governors for "Criminal Conspiracy":
"Whereas I charge them, jointly and severally, with the crime of having
treasonably conspired
and acted against the peace and security of the United States and having
treasonably conspired to
destroy constitutional government in the United States. Resolved, that the
Committee on the
Judiciary is authorized and directed as a whole or by subcommittee to
investigate the official
conduct of the Federal Reserve Board and agents to determine whether, in the
opinion of the said
committee, they have been guilty of any high crime or misdemeanour which in
the contemplation
of the Constitution requires the interposition of the Constitutional powers
of the House."
No action was taken on this Resolution. McFadden came back on December 13,
1932 with a motion to impeach President Herbert Hoover. Only five
Congressmen stood with him on this, and the resolution failed. The
Republican majority leader of the House remarked, "Louis T. McFadden is now
politically dead."
On May 23, 1933, McFadden introduced House Resolution No. 158, Articles of
Impeachment against the Secretary of the Treasury, two Assistant Secretaries
of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and officers and
directors of the Federal Reserve Banks for their guilt and collusion in
causing the Great Depression. "I charge them with having unlawfully taken
over 80 billion dollars from the United States Government in the year 1928,
the said unlawful taking consisting of the unlawful recreation of claims
against the United States Treasury to the extent of over 80 billion dollars
in the year 1928, and in each year subsequent, and by having robbed the
United States Government and the people of the United States by their theft
and sale of the gold reserve of the United States."
The Resolution never reached the floor. A whispering campaign that McFadden
was insane swept Washington, and in the next Congressional elections, he was
overwhelmingly defeated by thousands of dollars poured into his home
district of Canton, Pennsylvania.
In 1932, the
American people elected Franklin D. Roosevelt President of the United
States. This was hailed as the freeing of the American people from the evil
influence which had brought on the Great Depression, the ending of Wall
Street domination, and the disappearance of the banker from Washington.
Roosevelt owed his political career to a fortuitous circumstance. As
Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I, because of old school
ties, he had intervened to prevent prosecution of a large ring of
homosexuals in the Navy which included several Groton and Harvard chums.
This brought him to the favorable appreciation of a wealthy international
homosexual set which travelled back and forth between New York and Paris,
and which was presided over by Bessie Marbury, of a very old and prominent
New York family. Bessie's "wife", who lived with her for a number of years,
was Elsie de Wolfe, later Lady Mendl in a "mariage de convenance", the
arbiter of the international set. They recruited J.P. Morgan's youngest
daughter, Anne Morgan, into their circle, and used her fortune to restore
the Villa Trianon in Paris, which became their headquarters. During World
War I, it was used as a hospital. Bessie Marbury expected to be awarded the
Legion of Honor by the French Government as a reward, but J.P. Morgan, Jr.,
who despised her for corrupting his youngest sister, requested the French
Government to withhold the award, which they did. Smarting from this rebuff,
Bessie Marbury threw herself into politics, and became a power in the
Democratic National Party. She had also recruited Eleanor Roosevelt into her
circle, and, during a visit to Hyde Park, Eleanor confided that she was
desperate to find something for "poor Franklin" to do, as he was confined to
a wheelchair, and was very depressed.
"I know what we'll do," exclaimed Bessie, "We'll run him for Governor of New
York!" Because of her power, she succeeded in this goal, and Roosevelt later
became President.
One of the men Roosevelt brought down from New York with him as a Special
Advisor to the Treasury was Earl Bailie of J & W Seligman Company, who had
become notorious as the man who handed the $415,000 bribe to Juan Leguia,
son of the President of Peru, in order to get the President to accept a loan
from J & W Seligman Company. There was a great deal of criticism of this
appointment, and Mr. Roosevelt, in keeping with his new role as defender of
the people, sent Earl Bailie back to bringing in New York.
Franklin D. Roosevelt himself was an international banker of ill repute,
having floated large issues of foreign bonds in this country in the 1920s.
These bonds defaulted, and our citizens lost millions of dollars, but they
still wanted Mr. Roosevelt as President. The New York Directory of Directors
lists Mr. Roosevelt as President and Director of United European Investors,
Ltd., in 1923 and 1924, which floated many millions of German marks in this
country, all of which defaulted. Poor's Directory of Directors lists him as
a director of The International Germanic Trust Company in 1928. Franklin D.
Roosevelt was also an advisor to the
Federal International Banking Corporation, an Anglo-American outfit dealing
in foreign securities in the United States.
Roosevelt's law firm of Roosevelt and O'Connor during the 1920s represented
many international corporations. His law partner, Basil O'Connor, was a
director in the following corporations:
Cuban-American Manganese Corporation, Venezuela-Mexican Oil Corporation,
West Indies Sugar Corporation, American Reserve Insurance Corporation, Warm
Springs Foundation. He was director in other corporations, and later head of
the American Red Cross.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office as President of the United States, he
appointed as Director of the Budget James Paul Warburg, son of Paul Warburg,
and Vice President of the International Acceptance Bank and other
corporations. Roosevelt appointed as Secretary of the Treasury W.H. Woodin,
one of the biggest industrialists in the country, Director of the American
Car Foundry Company and numerous other locomotive works, Remington Arms, The
Cuba Company, Consolidated Cuba Railroads, and other big corporations.
Woodin was later replaced by Henry Morgenthau, Jr., son of the Harlem real
estate operator who had helped put Woodrow Wilson in the White House. With
such a crew as this, Roosevelt's promises of radical social changes showed
little likelihood of fulfillment. One of the first things he did was to
declare a bankers' moratorium, to help the bankers get their records in
order.
World's Work says:
"Congress has left Charles G. Dawes and Eugene Meyer, Jr. free to appraise,
by their own
methods, the security which prospective borrowers of the two billion dollar
capital may offer."
Continue chapter 13B
Foreword
to Secrets of the Federal Reserve
Chapter
1
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2 -
3 -
4 -
5 -
6 -
7 -
8 -
9 -
10 -
11 -
12 -
13 -
14
ADDENDUM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIOGRAPHIES
INDEX
Taking Back Your Power
by Allen Aslan Heart
WHAT CAN YOU DO? Stop playing THEIR game. Take back
your power. Stop paying taxes that are not legal or lawful. Stop paying
bills you don't really owe. Stop using THEIR money. There ARE ways if you
open your mind and look for the gaps in their fences that keep the sheeple
in their pasture. Are you chattel or a real person? You are the one who
makes that choice.
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Secrets
of the Federal Reserve by Eustace
Mullins
