Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins

CHAPTER 13B - The 1930's

Digg, Reddit, Propellor, Stumble and more

Debt Elimination, Accelerated Mortgage Pay-off, and Real Money are the Paths to Real Freedom. Eliminate Debt. Get out of Debt Now! Get Your Bailout Started Today!

Debt Elimination Is Real Freedom
Accelerated Mortgage Payoff - Eliminate Credit Card Debt - Eliminate Student Loans - Mortgage Elimination - Tax Freedom - Avoid the Draft  -  Asset Protection - Credit Repair - Stop Foreclosure - Earn Real Money - Accelerated Equity - Eliminate Debt - Get out of Debt - Bailout for the People!

EZRA POUND
(St. Elizabeth's Hospital,
Washington, D.C. 1950)

Dr. Pound wrote this introduction for the earliest version of this book, published by Kasper and Horton, New York, 1952. Because he was being held as a political prisoner without trial by the Federal Government, he could not afford to allow his name to appear on the book because of additional reprisals against him. Neither could he allow the book to be dedicated to him, although he had commissioned its writing. The author is gratified to be able to remedy these necessary omissions, thirty-three years after the events.) Eustace Mullins

 CHAPTER 13B - The 1930's

Roosevelt also set up the Securities Exchange Commission, to see to it that no new faces got into the Wall Street gang, which caused the following colloquy in Congress:

REPRESENTATIVE WOLCOTT: At hearings before this committee in 1933, the economists showed us charts which proved beyond all doubt that the dollar value commodities followed the price level of gold. It did not, did it?

LEON HENDERSON: No.

REPRESENTATIVE GIFFORD: Wasn't Joe Kennedy put in [as Chairman of the Securities Exchange Committee] by President Roosevelt because he was sympathetic with big business?

LEON HENDERSON: I think so.

Paul Einzig pointed out in 1935 that:

"President Roosevelt was the first to declare himself openly in favor of a monetary policy aiming at a deliberately engineered rise in prices. In a negative sense his policy was successful. Between 1933 and 1935 he succeeded in reducing private indebtedness, but this was done at the cost of increasing public indebtedness."

In other words, he eased the burden of debts off of the rich onto the poor, since the rich are few and the poor many.

Senator Robert L. Owen, testifying before the House Committee on Banking and Currency in 1938, said:

"I wrote into the bill which was introduced by me in the Senate on June 26, 1913, a provision that the powers of the System should be employed to promote a stable price level, which meant a dollar of stable purchasing, debt-paying power. It was stricken out. The powerful money interests got control of the Federal Reserve Board through Mr. Paul Warburg, Mr. Albert Strauss, and Mr. Adolph C. Miller and they were able to have that secret meeting of May 18, 1920, and bring about a contraction of credit so violent it threw five million people out of employment. In 1920 that Reserve Board deliberately caused the Panic of 1921. The same people, unrestrained in the
stock market, expanding credit to a great excess between 1926 and 1929, raised the price of stocks to a fantastic point where they could not possibly earn dividends, and when the people realized this, they tried to get out, resulting in the Crash of October 24, 1929."

Senator Owen did not go into the question of whether the Federal Reserve Board could be held responsible to the public. Actually, they cannot. They are public officials who are appointed by the President, but their salaries are paid by the private stockholders of the Federal Reserve Banks.

Governor W.P.G. Harding of the Federal Reserve Board testified in 1921 that:

"The Federal Reserve Bank is an institution owned by the stockholding member banks. The Government has not a dollar's worth of stock in it."

However, the Government does give the Federal Reserve System the use of its billions of dollars of credit, and this gives the Federal Reserve its characteristic of a central bank, the power to issue currency on the Government's credit. We do not have Federal Government notes or gold certificates as currency. We have Federal Reserve Bank notes, issued by the Federal Reserve Banks, and every dollar they print is a dollar in their pocket.

W. Randolph Burgess, of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, stated before the Academy of Political Science in 1930 that:

"In its major principles of operation the Federal Reserve System is no different from other banks of issue, such as the Bank of England, the Bank of France, or the Reichsbank."

All of these central banks have the power of issuing currency in their respective countries. Thus, the people do not own their own money in Europe, nor do they own it here. It is privately printed for private profit. The people have no sovereignty over their money, and it has developed that they have no sovereignty over other major political issues such as foreign policy.

As a central bank of issue, the Federal Reserve System has behind it all the enormous wealth of the American people. When it began operations in 1913, it created a serious threat to the central banks of the impoverished countries of Europe. Because it represented this great wealth, it attracted far more gold than was desirable in the 1920s, and it was apparent that soon all of the world's gold would be piled up in this country. This would make the gold standard a joke in Europe, because they would have no gold over there to back their issue of money and credit. It was the Federal Reserve's avowed aim in 1927, after the secret meeting with the heads of the foreign central banks, to get large quantities of that gold sent back to Europe, and its methods of doing so, the low interest rate and heavy purchases of Government securities, which created vast sums of new money, intensified the stock market speculation and made the stock market crash and resultant depression a national disaster.

Since the Federal Reserve System was guilty of causing this disaster, we might suppose that they would have tried to alleviate it. However, through the dark years of 1931 and 1932, the Governors of the Federal Reserve Board saw the plight of the American people worsening and did nothing to help them. This was more criminal than the original plotting of the Depression. Anyone who lived through those years in this country remembers the widespread unemployment, the misery, and the hunger of our people. At any time during those years the Federal Reserve Board could have acted to relieve this situation.

The problem was to get some money back into circulation. So much of the money normally used to pay rent and food bills had been sucked into Wall Street that there was no money to carry on the business of living. In many areas, people printed their own money on wood and paper for use in their communities, and this money was good, since it represented obligations to each other which people fulfilled.

The Federal Reserve System was a central bank of issue. It had the power to, and did, when it suited its owners, issue millions of dollars of money. Why did it not do so in 1931 and 1932? The Wall Street bankers were through with Mr. Herbert Hoover, and they wanted Franklin D. Roosevelt to come in on a wave of glory as the saviour of the nation. Therefore, the American people had to starve and suffer until March of 1933, when the White Knight came riding in with his crew of Wall Street bribers and put some money into circulation. That was all there was to it. As soon as Mr. Roosevelt took office, the Federal Reserve began to buy Government securities at the rate of ten million dollars a week for ten weeks, and created a hundred million dollars in new money, which alleviated the critical famine of money and credit, and the factories started hiring people again.

During the Roosevelt Administration, The Federal Reserve Board, insofar as the public was concerned, was Marriner Eccles, an emulator and admirer of "the Chief". Eccles was a Utah banker, President of the First Securities Corporation, a family investment trust consisting of a number of banks which Eccles had picked up cheap during the Agricultural Depression of 1920-21. Eccles also was a director of such corporations as Pet Milk Company, Mountain States Implement Company, and Amalgamated Sugar. As a big banker, Eccles fitted in well with the group of powerful men who were operating Roosevelt.
There was some discussion in Congress as to whether Eccles ought to be on the Federal Reserve Board at the same time he had all of these banks in Utah, but he testified that he had very little to do with the First Securities Corporation besides being President of it, and so he was confirmed as Chairman of the Board.

Eugene Meyer, Jr. now resigned from the Board to spend more of his time lending the two billion dollar capital of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and determining the value of collateral by his own methods.

The Banking Act of 1935, which greatly increased Roosevelt's power over the nation's finances, was an integral part of the legislation by which he proposed to extend his reign in the United States. It was not opposed by the people as was the National Recovery Act, because it was not so naked an infringement of their liberties. It was, however, an important measure. First of all, it extended the terms of office of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors to fourteen years, or, three and a half times the length of a Presidential term. This meant that a President assuming office who might be hostile to the Board could not appoint a majority to it who would be favorable to him. Thus, a monetary policy inaugurated before a President came into the White House would go on regardless of his wishes.

The Banking Act of 1935 also repealed the clause of the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933, which had provided that a banking house could not be on the Stock Exchange and also be involved in investment banking. This clause was a good one, since it prevented a banking house from lending money to a corporation which it owned. Still it is to be remembered that this clause covered up some other provisions in that Act, such as the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, providing insurance money to the amount of 150 million dollars, to guarantee fifteen billion dollars worth of deposits. This increased the power of the big bankers over small banks and gave them another excuse to investigate them. The Banking Act of 1933 also legislated that all earnings of the Federal Reserve Banks must by law go to the banks themselves. At last the provision in the Act that the Government share in the profits was gotten rid of. It had never been observed, and the increase in the assets of the Federal Reserve Banks from 143 million dollars in 1913 to 45 billion dollars in 1949 went entirely to the private stockholders of the banks. Thus, the one constructive provision of the Banking Act of 1933 was repealed in 1935, and also the Federal Reserve Banks were now permitted to loan directly to industry, competing with the member banks, who could not hope to match their capacity in arranging large loans.

When the provision that banks could not be involved in investment banking and operate on the Stock Exchange was repealed in 1935, Carter Glass, originator of that provision, was asked by reporters:

"Does that mean that J.P. Morgan can go back into investment banking?"

"Well, why not?" replied Senator Glass. "There has been an outcry all over the country that the banks will not make loans. Now the Morgans can go back to underwriting."

Because that provision was unfavorable to them, the bankers had simply clamped down on making loans until it was repealed.

Newsweek of March 14, 1936, noted that:

"The Federal Reserve Board fired nine chairmen of Reserve Banks, explaining that 'it intended to make the chairmanships of the Reserve Banks largely a part-time job on an honorary basis.'"

This was another instance of the centralization of control in the Federal Reserve System. The regional district system had never been an important factor in the administration of monetary policy, and the Board was not cutting down on its officials outside of Washington. The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency had asked, during the Gold Reserve Hearings of 1934:

"Is it not true, Governor Young, that the Secretary of the Treasury for the past twelve years has dominated the policy of the Federal Reserve Banks and the Federal Reserve Board with respect to the purchase of United States bonds?"

Governor Young had denied this, but it had already been brought out that on both of his hurried trips to this country in 1927 and 1929 to dictate Federal Reserve policy, Governor Montagu Norman of the Bank of England had gone directly to Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury, to get him to purchase Government securities on the open market and start the movement of gold out of this country back to Europe.

The Gold Reserve Hearings had also brought in other people who had more than a passing interest in the operations of the Federal Reserve System. James Paul Warburg, just back from the London Economic Conference with Professor O.M.W. Sprague and Henry L. Stimson, came in to declare that he thought we ought to modernize the gold standard. Frank Vanderlip suggested that we do away with the Federal Reserve Board and set up a Federal Monetary Authority. This would have made no difference to the New York bankers, who would have selected the personnel anyway. And Senator Robert L. Owen, longtime critic of the system, made the following statement:

"The people did not know the Federal Reserve Banks were organized for profit-making. They were intended to stabilize the credit and currency supply of the country. That end has not been accomplished. Indeed, there has been the most remarkable variation in the purchasing power of money since the System went into effect. The Federal Reserve men are chosen by the big banks, through discreet little campaigns, and they naturally follow the ideals which are portrayed to them as the soundest from a financial point of view."

Benjamin Anderson, economist for the Chase National Bank of New York, said:

"At the moment, 1934, we have 900 million dollars excess reserves. In 1924, with increased reserves of 300 million, you got some three or four billion in bank expansion of credit very quickly. That extra money was put out by the Federal Reserve Banks in 1924 through buying government securities and was the cause of the rapid expansion of bank credit. The banks continued to get excess reserves because more gold came in, and because, whenever there was a slackening, the Federal Reserve people would put out some more. They held back a bit in 1926. Things firmed up a bit that year. And then in 1927 they put out less than 300 million additional reserves, set the wild stock market going, and that led us right into the smash of 1929."

Dr. Anderson also stated that:

"The money of the Federal Reserve Banks is money they created. When they buy Government securities they create reserves. They pay for the Government securities by giving checks on themselves, and those checks come to the commercial banks and are by them deposited in the Federal Reserve Banks, and then money exists which did not exist before."

SENATOR BULKLEY: It does not increase the circulating medium at all?
ANDERSON: No.

Continue chapter 13C