CHAPTER ELEVEN - Lord Montagu Norman

The collaboration between Benjamin Strong and Lord Montagu Norman is one of the greatest secrets of the twentieth century. Benjamin Strong married the daughter of the president of Bankers Trust in New York, and subsequently succeeded to its presidency.

Carroll Quigley, in Tragedy and Hope says:

"Strong became Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as the joint nominee of Morgan and of Kuhn, Loeb Company in 1914." ⁸⁷

Lord Montagu Norman is the only man in history who had both his maternal grandfather and his paternal grandfather serve as Governors of the Bank of England. His father was with Brown, Shipley Company, the London Branch of Brown Brothers (now Brown Brothers Harriman).

Montagu Norman (1871-1950) came to New York to work for Brown Brothers in 1894, where he was befriended by the Delano family, and by James Markoe, of Brown Brothers. He returned to England, and in 1907 was named to the Court of the Bank of England.

In 1912, he had a nervous breakdown, and went to Switzerland to be treated by Jung, as was fashionable among the powerful group which he represented.*
 

87 Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, Macmillan, New York, p. 326

* When people of this class are stricken by guilt feelings while plotting world wars and economic depressions which will bring misery, suffering and death to millions of the world’s inhabitants, they sometimes have qualms. These qualms are jeered at by their peers as "a failure of nerve". After a bout with their psychiatrists, they return to their work with renewed gusto, with no further digressions of pity for "the little people" who are to be their victims.

Lord Montagu Norman was Governor of the Bank of England from 1916 to 1944. During this period, he participated in the central bank conferences which set up the Crash of 1929 and a worldwide depression. In The Politics of Money by Brian Johnson, he writes,

"Strong and Norman, intimate friends, spent their holidays together at Bar Harbour and in the South of France."

 

Johnson says, "Norman therefore became Strong’s alter ego. . . . " Strong’s easy money policies on the New York money market from 1925-28 were the fulfillment of his agreement with Norman to keep New York interest rates below those of London. For the sake of international cooperation, Strong withheld the steadying hand of high interest rates from New York until it was too late. Easy money in New York had encouraged the surging American boom of the late 1920s, with its fantastic heights of speculation." ⁸⁸

88 Brian Johnson, The Politics of Money, McGraw Hill, New York, 1970, p. 63

Benjamin Strong died suddenly in 1928. The New York Times obituary, Oct. 17, 1928, describes the conference between the directors of the three great central banks in Europe in July, 1927,

"Mr. Norman, Bank of England, Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and Dr. Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, their meeting referred to at the time as a meeting of ‘the world’s most exclusive club’. No public reports were ever made of the foreign conferences, which were wholly informal, but which covered many important questions of gold movements, the stability of world trade, and world economy."

The meetings at which the future of the world’s economy are decided are always reported as being "wholly informal", off the record, no reports made to the public, and on the rare occasions when outraged Congressmen summon these mystery figures to testify about their activities they merely trace the outline of steps taken, and develop no information about what was really said or decided.

At the Senate Hearings on the Federal Reserve System in 1931, H. Parker Willis, one of the authors and First Secretary of the Federal Reserve Board from 1914 until 1920, pointedly asked Governor George Harrison, Strong’s successor as Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York:

"What is the relationship between the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the money committee of the Stock Exchange?"

"There is no relationship," Governor Harrison replied.

"There is no assistance or cooperation in fixing the rate in any way?", asked Willis.

"No," said Governor Harrison, "although on various occasions they advise us of the state of the money situation, and what they think the rate ought to be." This was an absolute contradiction of his statement that "There is no relationship".

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York which set the discount rate for the other Reserve Banks, actually maintained a close liaison with the money committee of the Stock Exchange.

The House Stabilization Hearings of 1928 proved conclusively that the Governors of the Federal Reserve System had been holding conferences with heads of the big European central banks.

Even had the Congressmen known the details of the plot which was to culminate in the Great Depression of 1929-31, there would have been nothing they could have done to stop it. The international bankers who controlled gold movements could inflict their will on any country, and the United States was as helpless as any other.

Notes from these House Hearings follow:

MR. BEEDY: "I notice on your chart that the lines which produce the most violent fluctuations are found under ‘Money Rates in New York.’ As the rates of money rise and fall in the big cities the loans that are made on investments seem to take advantage of them, at present, a quite violent change, while industry in general does not seem to avail itself of these violent changes, and that line is fairly even, there being no great rises or declines.

GOVERNOR ADOLPH MILLER: This was all more or less in the interests of the international situation. They sold gold credits in New York for sterling balances in London.

REPRESENTATIVE STRONG: (No relation to Benjamin): Has the Federal Reserve Board the power to attract gold to this country?

E.A. GOLDENWEISER, research director for the Board: The Federal Reserve Board could attract gold to this country by making money rates higher.

GOVERNOR ADOLPH MILLER: I think we are very close to the point where any further solicitude on our part for the monetary concerns of Europe can be altered. The Federal Reserve Board last summer, 1927, set out by a policy of open market purchases, followed in course by reduction on the discount rate at the Reserve Banks, to ease the credit situation and to cheapen the cost of money. The official reasons for that departure in credit policy were that it would help to stabilize international exchange and stimulate the exportation of gold.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: Will you tell us briefly how that matter was brought to the Federal Reserve Board and what were the influences that went into the final determination?

GOVERNOR ADOLPH MILLER: You are asking a question impossible for me to answer.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: Perhaps I can clarify it--where did the suggestion come from that caused this decision of the change of rates last summer?

GOVERNOR ADOLPH MILLER: The three largest central banks in Europe had sent representatives to this country. There were the Governor of the Bank of England, Mr. Hjalmar Schacht, and Professor Rist, Deputy Governor of the Bank of France. These gentlemen were in conference with officials of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. After a week or two, they appeared in Washington for the better part of a day. They came down the evening of one day and were the guests of the Governors of the Federal Reserve Board the following day, and left that afternoon for New York.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: Were the members of the Board present at this luncheon?

GOVERNOR ADOLPH MILLER: Oh, yes, it was given by the Governors of the Board for the purpose of bringing all of us together.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: Was it a social affair, or were matters of importance discussed?

GOVERNOR MILLER: I would say it was mainly a social affair. Personally, I had a long conversation with Dr. Schacht alone before the luncheon, and also one of considerable length with Professor Rist. After the luncheon I began a conversation with Mr. Norman, which was joined in by Governor Strong of New York.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: Was that a formal meeting of the Board?

GOVERNOR ADOLPH MILLER: No.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: It was just an informal discussion of the matters they had been discussing in New York?

GOVERNOR MILLER: I assume so. It was mainly a social occasion. What I said was mainly in the nature of generalities. The heads of these central banks also spoke in generalities.

MR. KING: What did they want?

GOVERNOR MILLER: They were very candid in answers to questions. I wanted to have a talk with Mr. Norman, and we both stayed behind after luncheon, and were joined by the other foreign representatives and the officials of the New York Reserve Bank. These gentlemen were all pretty concerned with the way the gold standard was working. They were therefore desirous of seeing an easy money market in New York and lower rates, which would deter gold from moving from Europe to this country. That would be very much in the interest of the international money situation which then existed.

MR. BEEDY: Was there some understanding arrived at between the representatives of these foreign banks and the Federal Reserve Board or the New York Federal Reserve Bank?

GOVERNOR MILLER: Yes.

MR. BEEDY: It was not reported formally?

GOVERNOR MILLER: No. Later, there came a meeting of the Open-Market Policy Committee, the investment policy committee of the Federal Reserve System, by which and to which certain recommendations were made. My recollection is that about eighty million dollars worth of securities were purchased in August consistent with this plan.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: Was there any conference between the members of the Open Market Committee and those bankers from abroad?

GOVERNOR MILLER: They may have met them as individuals, but not as a committee.

MR. KING: How does the Open-Market Committee get its ideas?

GOVERNOR MILLER: They sit around and talk about it. I do not know whose idea this was. It was distinctly a time in which there was a cooperative spirit at work.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: You have outlined here negotiations of very great importance.

GOVERNOR MILLER: I should rather say conversations.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: Something of a very definite character took place?

GOVERNOR MILLER: Yes.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: A change of policy on the part of our whole financial system which has resulted in one of the most unusual situations that has ever confronted this country financially (the stock market speculation boom of 1927-1929). It seems to me that a matter of that importance should have been made a matter of record in Washington.

GOVERNOR MILLER: I agree with you.

REPRESENTATIVE STRONG: Would it not have been a good thing if there had been a direction that those powers given to the Federal Reserve System should be used for the continued stabilization of the purchasing power of the American dollar rather than be influenced by the interests of Europe?

GOVERNOR MILLER: I take exception to that term "influence". Besides, there is no such thing as stabilizing the American dollar without stabilizing every other gold currency. They are tied together by the gold standard. Other eminent men who come here are very adroit in knowing how to approach the folk who make up the personnel of the Federal Reserve Board.

MR. STEAGALL: The visit of these foreign bankers resulted in money being cheaper in New York?

GOVERNOR MILLER: Yes, exactly.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: I would like to put in the record all who attended that luncheon in Washington.

GOVERNOR MILLER: In addition to the names I have given you, there was also present one of the younger men from the Bank of France. I think all members of the Federal Reserve Board were there. Under Secretary of the Treasury Ogden Mills was there, and the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Schuneman, also, two or three men from the State Department and Mr. Warren of the Foreign Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Oh yes, Governor Strong was present.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: This conference, of course, with all of these foreign bankers did not just happen. The prominent bankers from Germany, France, and England came here at whose suggestion?

GOVERNOR MILLER: A situation had been created that was distinctly embarrassing to London by reason of the impending withdrawal of a certain amount of gold which had been recovered by France and that had originally been shipped and deposited in the Bank of England by the French Government as a war credit. There was getting to be some tension of mind in Europe because France was beginning to put her house in order for a return to the gold standard. This situation was one which called for some moderating influence.

MR. KING: Who was the moving spirit who got those people together?

GOVERNOR MILLER: That is a detail with which I am not familiar.

REPRESENTATIVE STRONG: Would it not be fair to say that the fellows who wanted the gold were the ones who instigated the meeting?

GOVERNOR MILLER: They came over here.

REPRESENTATIVE STRONG: The fact is that they came over here, they had a meeting, they banqueted, they talked, they got the Federal Reserve Board to lower the discount rate, and to make the purchases in the open market, and they got the gold.

MR. STEAGALL: Is it true that action stabilized the European currencies and upset ours?

GOVERNOR MILLER: Yes, that was what it was intended to do.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: Let me call your attention to the recent conference in Paris at which Mr. Goldenweiser, director of research for the Federal Reserve Board, and Dr. Burgess, assistant Federal Reserve Agent of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, were in consultation with the representatives of the other central banks. Who called the conference?

GOVERNOR MILLER: My recollection is that it was called by the Bank of France.

GOVERNOR YOUNG: No, it was the League of Nations who called them together."

The secret meeting between the Governors of the Federal Reserve Board and the heads of the European central banks was not called to stabilize anything. It was held to discuss the best way of getting the gold held in the United States by the System back to Europe to force the nations of that continent back on the gold standard.

The League of Nations had not yet succeeded in doing that, the objective for which that body was set up in the first place, because the Senate of the United States had refused to let Woodrow Wilson betray us to an international monetary authority. It took the Second World War and Franklin D. Roosevelt to do that. Meanwhile, Europe had to have our gold and the Federal Reserve System gave it to them, five hundred million dollars worth.

The movement of that gold out of the United States caused the deflation of the stock boom, the end of the business prosperity of the 1920s and the Great Depression of 1929-31, the worst calamity which has ever befallen this nation. It is entirely logical to say that the American people suffered that depression as a punishment for not joining the League of Nations.

The bankers knew what would happen when that five hundred million dollars worth of gold was sent to Europe. They wanted the Depression because it put the business and finance of the United States in their hands.

The Hearings continue:

MR. BEEDY: "Mr. Ebersole of the Treasury Department concluded his remarks at the dinner we attended last night by saying that the Federal Reserve System did not want stabilization and the American businessman did not want it. They want these fluctuations in prices, not only in securities but in commodities, in trade generally, because those who are now in control are making their profits out of that very instability. If control of these people does not come in a legitimate way, there may be an attempt to produce it by general upheavals such as have characterized society in days gone by. Revolutions have been promoted by dissatisfaction with existing conditions, the control being in the hands of the few, and the many paying the bills.

CHAIRMAN MCFADDEN: I have here a letter from a member of the Federal Reserve Board who was summoned to appear here. I would like to have it put in the record. It is from Governor Cunningham:

Dear Mr. Chairman:

For the past several weeks I have been confined to my home on account of illness and am now preparing to spend a few weeks away from Washington for the purpose of hastening onvalescence.

Edward H. Cunningham

This is in answer to an invitation extended him to appear before our Committee. I also have a letter from George Harrison, Deputy Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

My dear Mr. Congressman:

Governor Strong sailed for Europe last week. He had not been at all well since the first of the year, and, while he did appear before your Committee last March, it was only shortly after that that he suffered a very severe attack of shingles, which has sorely racked his nerves.

George L. Harrison, May 19, 1928

I also desire to place in the record a statement in the New York Journal of Commerce, dated May 22, 1928, from Washington:

‘It is stated in well-informed circles here that the chief topic being taken up by Governor Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on his present visit to Paris is the arrangement of stabilization credits for France, Rumania, and Yugoslavia. A second vital question Mr. Strong will take up is the amount of gold France is to draw from this country.’"

Further questioning by Chairman McFadden about the strange illness of Benjamin Strong brought forth the following testimony from Governor Charles S. Hamlin of the Federal Reserve Board on May 23rd, 1928:

"All I know is that Governor Strong has been very ill, and he has gone over to Europe primarily, I understand, as a matter of health. Of course, he knows well the various offices of the European central banks and undoubtedly will call on them."

Governor Benjamin Strong died a few weeks after his return from Europe, without appearing before the Committee.

The purpose of these hearings before the House Committee on Banking and Currency in 1928 was to investigate the necessity for passing the Strong bill, presented by Representative Strong (no relation to Benjamin, the international banker), which would have provided that the Federal Reserve System be empowered to act to stabilize the purchasing power of the dollar.

This had been one of the promises made by Carter Glass and Woodrow Wilson when they presented the Federal Reserve Act before Congress in 1912, and such a provision had actually been put in the Act by Senator Robert L. Owen, but Carter Glass’ House Committee on Banking and Currency had struck it out. The traders and speculators did not want the dollar to become stable, because they would no longer be able to make a profit. The citizens of this country had been led to gamble on the stock market in the 1920s because the traders had created a nationwide condition of instability.

The Strong Bill of 1928 was defeated in Congress.

The financial situation in the United States during the 1920s was characterized by an inflation of speculative values only. It was a trader-made situation. Prices of commodities remained low, despite the over-pricing of securities on the exchange.

The purchasers did not expect their securities to pay dividends. The idea was to hold them awhile and sell them at a profit. It had to stop somewhere, as Paul Warburg remarked in March, 1929. Wall Street did not let it stop until the people had put their savings into these over-priced securities. We had the spectacle of the President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, acting as a shill for the stock market operators when he recommended to the American people that they continue buying on the market, in 1927.

There had been uneasiness about the inflated condition of the market, and the bankers showed their power by getting the President of the United States, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to issue statements that brokers’ loans were not too high, and that the condition of the stock market was sound.

Irving Fisher warned us in 1927 that the burden of stabilizing prices all over the world would soon fall on the United States. One of the results of the Second World War was the establishment of an International Monetary Fund to do just that.

Professor Gustav Cassel remarked in the same year that:

"The downward movement of prices has not been a spontaneous result of forces beyond our control. It is the result of a policy deliberately framed to bring down prices and give a higher value to the monetary unit."

The Democratic Party, after passing the Federal Reserve Act and leading us into the First World War, assumed the role of an opposition party during the 1920s. They were on the outside of the political fence, and were supported during those lean years by liberal handouts from Bernard Baruch, according to his biography. How far outside of it they were and how little chance they had in 1928, is shown by a plank in the official Democratic Party platform adopted at Houston on June 28, 1928:

"The administration of the Federal Reserve System for the advantage of the stock-market speculators should cease. It must be administered for the benefit of farmers, wage-earners, merchants, manufacturers, and others engaged in constructive business."

This idealism insured defeat for its protagonist, Al Smith, who was nominated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The campaign against Al Smith also was marked by appeals to religious intolerance, because he was a Catholic. The bankers stirred up anti-Catholic sentiment all over the country to achieve the election of their World War I protégé, Herbert Hoover.

Instead of being used to promote the financial stability of the country, as had been promised by Woodrow Wilson when the Act was passed, financial instability has been steadily promoted by the Federal Reserve Board. An official memorandum issued by the Board on March 13, 1939, stated that:

"The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System opposes any bill which proposes a stable price level."

Politically, the Federal Reserve Board was used to advance the election of the bankers’ candidates during the 1920s. The "Literary Digest" on August 4, 1928, said, on the occasion of the Federal Reserve Board raising the rate to five percent in a Presidential year:

"This reverses the politically desirable cheap money policy of 1927, and gives smooth conditions on the stock market. It was attacked by the Peoples’ Lobby of Washington, D.C. which said that ‘This increase at a time when farmers needed cheap money to finance the harvesting of their crops was a direct blow at the farmers, who had begun to get back on their feet after the Agricultural Depression of 1920-21.

"The New York World" said on that occasion:

"Criticism of Federal Reserve Board policy by many investors is not based on its attempt to deflate the stock market, but on the charge that the Board itself, by last year’s policy, is completely responsible for such stock market inflation as exists."

A damning survey of the Federal Reserve System’s first fifteen years appears in the "North American Review" of May, 1929, by H. Parker Willis, professional economist who was one of the authors of the Act and First Secretary of the Board from 1914 until 1920.

He expresses complete disillusionment.

"My first talk with President-elect Wilson was in 1912. Our conversation related entirely to banking reform. I asked whether he felt confident we could secure the administration of a suitable law and how we should get it applied and enforced. He answered: ‘We must rely on American business idealism.’ He sought for something which could be trusted to afford opportunity to American Idealism. It did serve to finance the World War and to revise American banking practices. The element of idealism that the President prescribed and believed we could get on the principle of noblesse oblige from American bankers and businessmen was not there.

Since the inauguration of the Federal Reserve Act we have suffered one of the most serious financial depressions and revolutions ever known in our history, that of 1920-21. We have seen our agriculture pass through a long period of suffering and even of revolution, during which one million farmers left their farms, due to difficulties with the price of land and the odd status of credit conditions.

 

We have suffered the most extensive era of bank failures ever known in this country. Forty-five hundred banks have closed their doors since the Reserve System began functioning. In some Western towns there have been times when all banks in that community failed, and given banks have failed over and over again. There has been little difference in liability to failure between members and non-members of the Federal Reserve System.

"Wilson’s choice of the first members of the Federal Reserve Board was not especially happy. They represented a composite group chosen for the express purpose of placating this, that, or the other big interest. It was not strange that appointees used their places to pay debts. When the Board was considering a resolution to the effect that future members of the reserve system should be appointed solely on merit, because of the demonstrated incompetence of some of their number. Comptroller John Skelton Williams moved to strike out the word ‘solely’ and in this he was sustained by the Board. The inclusion of certain elements (Warburg, Strauss, etc.) in the Board gave an opportunity for catering to special interests that was to prove disastrous later on.

"President Wilson erred, as he often erred, in supposing that the holding of an important office would transform an incumbent and revivify his patriotism. The Reserve Board reached the low ebb of the Wilson period with the appointment of a member who was chosen for his ability to get delegates for a Democratic candidate for the Presidency. However, this level was not the dregs reached under President Harding. He appointed an old crony, D.R. Crissinger, as Governor of the Board, and named several other super-serviceable politicians to other places. Before his death he had done his utmost to debauch the whole undertaking. The System has gone steadily downhill ever since.

"Reserve Banks had hardly assumed their first form when it became apparent that local bankers had sought to use them as a means of taking care of ‘favorite sons’, that is, persons who had by common consent become a kind of general charge upon the banking community, or inefficient of various kinds. When reserve directors were to be chosen, the country bankers often refused to vote, or, when they voted, cast their ballots as directed by city correspondents. In these circumstances popular or democratic control of reserve banks was out of the question.

 

Reasonable efficiency might have been secured if honest men, recognizing their public duty, had assumed power. If such men existed, they did not get on the Federal Reserve Board. In one reserve bank today the chief management is in the hands of a man who never did a day’s actual banking in his life, while in another reserve institution both Governor and Chairman are the former heads of now defunct banks. They naturally have a high failure record in their district. In a majority of districts the standard of performance as judged by good banking standards is disgracefully low among reserve executive officials. The policy of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is known in the System as the ‘Friends and Relatives Banks.’

"It was while making war profits in considerable amounts that someone conceived the idea of using the profits to provide themselves with phenomenally costly buildings. Today the Reserve Banks must keep a full billion dollars of their money constantly at work merely to pay their own expenses in normal times.

"The best illustration of what the System has done and not done is offered by the experience which the country was having with speculation, in May, 1929. Three years prior to that, the present bull market was just getting under way. In the autumn of 1926 a group of bankers, among them one of world famous name, were sitting at a table in a Washington hotel. One of them raised the question whether the low discount rates of the System were not likely to encourage speculation.

"‘Yes’, replied the famous banker, ‘they will, but that cannot be helped. It is the price we must pay for helping Europe.’

"It may well be questioned whether the encouragement of speculation by the Board has been the price paid for helping Europe or whether it is the price paid to induce a certain class of financiers to help Europe, but in either case European conditions should not have had anything to do with the Board’s discount policy. The fact of the matter is that the Federal Reserve Banks do not come into contact with the community.

"The ‘small man’ from Maine to Texas has gradually been led to invest his savings in the stock market, with the result that the rising tide of speculation, transacted at a higher and higher rate of speed, has swept over the legitimate business of the country.

"In March, 1928, Roy A. Young, Governor of the Board, was called before a Senate committee.

‘Do you think the brokers’ loans are too high?", he was asked.

"‘I am not prepared to say whether brokers’ loans are too high or too low,’ he replied, ‘but I am sure they are safely and conservatively made.’

"Secretary of the Treasury Mellon in a formal statement assured the country that they were not too high, and Coolidge, using material supplied him by the Federal Reserve Board, made a plain statement to the country that they were not too high. The Federal Reserve Board, charged with the duty of protecting the interests of the average man, thus did its utmost to assure the average man that he should feel no alarm about his savings. Yet the Federal Reserve Board issued on February 2, 1929, a letter addressed to the Reserve Bank Directors cautioning them against grave danger of further speculation.

"What could be expected from a group of men such as composed the Board, a set of men who were solely interested in standing from under when there was any danger of friction, displaying a bovine and canine appetite for credit and praise, while eager only to ‘stand in’ with the ‘big men’ whom they know as the masters of American finance and banking?"

H. Parker Willis omitted any reference to Lord Montague Norman and the machinations of the Bank of England which were about to result in the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.

Go Back

CHAPTER TWELVE - The Great Depression

R.G. Hawtrey, the English economist, said, in the March, 1926 American Economic Review:

"When external investment outstrips the supply of general savings the investment market must carry the excess with money borrowed from the banks. A remedy is control of credit by a rise in bank rate."

The Federal Reserve Board applied this control of credit, but not in 1926, nor as a remedial measure. It was not applied until 1929, and then the rate was raised as a punitive measure, to freeze out everybody but the big trusts.

Professor Cassel, in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 1928, wrote that:

"The fact that a central bank fails to raise its bank rate in accordance with the actual situation of the capital market very much increases the strength of the cyclical movement of trade, with all its pernicious effects on social economy. A rational regulation of the bank rate lies in our hands, and may be accomplished only if we perceive its importance and decide to go in for such a policy.

With a bank rate regulated on these lines the conditions for the development of trade cycles would be radically altered, and indeed, our familiar trade cycles would be a thing of the past."

This is the most authoritative premise yet made relating that our business depressions are artificially precipitated. The occurrence of the Panic of 1907, the Agricultural Depression of 1920, and the Great Depression of 1929, all three in good crop years and in periods of national prosperity, suggests that premise is not guesswork. Lord Maynard Keynes pointed out that most theories of the business cycle failed to relate their analysis adequately to the money mechanism. Any survey or study of a depression which failed to list such factors as gold movements and pressures on foreign exchange would be worthless, yet American economists have always dodged this issue.

The League of Nations had achieved its goal of getting the nations of Europe back on the gold standard by 1928, but three-fourths of the world’s gold was in France and the United States. The problem was how to get that gold to countries which needed it as a basis for money and credit. The answer was action by the Federal Reserve System.

Following the secret meeting of the Federal Reserve Board and the heads of the foreign central banks in 1927, the Federal Reserve Banks in a few months doubled their holdings of Government securities and acceptances, which resulted in the exportation of five hundred million dollars in gold in that year. The System’s market activities forced the rates of call money down on the Stock Exchange, and forced gold out of the country. Foreigners also took this opportunity to purchase heavily in Government securities because of the low call money rate.

"The agreement between the Bank of England and the Washington Federal Reserve authorities many months ago was that we would force the export of 725 million of gold by reducing the bank rates here, thus helping the stabilization of France and Europe and putting France on a gold basis." 89

(April 20, 1928)

89 Clarence W. Barron, They Told Barron, Harpers, New York, 1930, p. 353

On February 6, 1929, Mr. Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, came to Washington and had a conference with Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury. Immediately after that mysterious visit, the Federal Reserve Board abruptly changed its policy and pursued a high discount rate policy, abandoning the cheap money policy which it had inaugurated in 1927 after Mr. Norman’s other visit. The stock market crash and the deflation of the American people’s financial structure was scheduled to take place in March. To get the ball rolling, Paul Warburg gave the official warning to the traders to get out of the market. In his annual report to the stockholders of his International Acceptance Bank, in March, 1929, Mr. Warburg said:

"If the orgies of unrestrained speculation are permitted to spread, the ultimate collapse is certain not only to affect the speculators themselves, but to bring about a general depression involving  the entire country."

During three years of "unrestrained speculation", Mr. Warburg had not seen fit to make any remarks about the condition of the Stock Exchange. A friendly organ, The New York Times, not only gave the report two columns on its editorial page, but editorially commented on the wisdom and profundity of Mr. Warburg’s observations. Mr. Warburg’s concern was genuine, for the stock market bubble had gone much farther than it had been intended to go, and the bankers feared the consequences if the people realized what was going on. When this report in The New York Times started a sudden wave of selling on the Exchange, the bankers grew panicky, and it was decided to ease the market somewhat. Accordingly, Warburg’s National City Bank rushed twenty-five million dollars in cash to the call money market, and postponed the day of the crash.

The revelation of the Federal Reserve Board’s final decision to trigger the Crash of 1929 appears, amazingly enough, in The New York Times. On April 20, 1929, the Times headlined,

"Federal Advisory Council Mystery Meeting in Washington.

Resolutions were adopted by the council and transmitted to the board, but their purpose was closely guarded. An atmosphere of deep mystery was thrown about the proceedings both by the board and the council. Every effort was made to guard the proceedings of this extraordinary session. Evasive replies were given to newspaper correspondents."

Only the innermost council of "The London Connection" knew that it had been decided at this "mystery meeting" to bring down the curtain on the greatest speculative boom in American history. Those in the know began to sell off all speculative stocks and put their money in government bonds. Those who were not privy to this secret information, and they included some of the wealthiest men in America, continued to hold their speculative stocks and lost everything they had.

In FDR, My Exploited Father-in-Law, Col. Curtis B. Dall, who was a broker on Wall Street at that time, writes of the Crash,

"Actually it was the calculated ‘shearing’ of the public by the World Money-Powers, triggered by the planned sudden shortage of the supply of call money in the New York money market." 90

90 Col. Curtis B. Dall, F.D.R., My Exploited Father-in-Law, Liberty Lobby, Wash., D.C. 1970

Overnight, the Federal Reserve System had raised the call rate to twenty percent. Unable to meet this rate, the speculators’ only alternative was to jump out of windows.

The New York Federal Reserve Bank rate, which dictated the national interest rate, went to six percent on November 1, 1929. After the investors had been bankrupted, it dropped to one and one-half percent on May 8, 1931. Congressman Wright Patman in "A Primer On Money", says that the money supply decreased by eight billion dollars from 1929 to 1933, causing 11,630 banks of the total of 26,401 in the United States to go bankrupt and close their doors.

The Federal Reserve Board had already warned the stockholders of the Federal Reserve Banks to get out of the Market, on February 6, 1929, but it had not bothered to say anything to the rest of the people. Nobody knew what was going on except the Wall Street bankers who were running the show. Gold movements were completely unreliable. The Quarterly Journal of Economics noted that:

"The question has been raised, not only in this country, but in several European countries, as to whether customs statistics record with accuracy the movements of precious metals, and, when investigation has been made, confidence in such figures has been weakened rather than strengthened. Any movement between France and England, for instance, should be recorded in each country, but such comparison shows an average yearly discrepancy of fifty million francs for France and eighty-five million francs for England. These enormous discrepancies are not accounted for."

The Right Honorable Reginald McKenna stated that:

"Study of the relations between changes in gold stock and movement in price levels shows what should be very obvious, but is by no means recognized, that the gold standard is in no sense automatic in operation. The gold standard can be, and is, usefully managed and controlled for the benefit of a small group of international traders."

In August 1929, the Federal Reserve Board raised the rate to six percent. The Bank of England in the next month raised its rate from five and one-half percent to six and one-half percent. Dr. Friday in the September, 1929, issue of Review of Reviews, could find no reason for the Board’s action:

"The Federal Reserve statement for August 7, 1929, shows that signs of inadequacy for autumn requirements do not exist. Gold resources are considerably more than the previous year, and gold continues to move in, to the financial embarrassment of Germany and England. The reasons for the Board’s action must be sought elsewhere. The public has been given only the hint that ‘This problem has presented difficulties because of certain peculiar conditions’. Every reason which Governor Young advanced for lowering the bank rate last year exists now. Increasing the rate means that not only is there danger of drawing gold from abroad, but imports of the yellow metal have been in progress for the last four months. To do anything to accentuate this is to take the responsibility for bringing on a world-wide credit deflation."

Thus we find that not only was the Federal Reserve System responsible for the First World War, which it made possible by enabling the United States to finance the Allies, but its policies brought on the world-wide depression of 1929-31. Governor Adolph C. Miller stated at the Senate Investigation of the Federal Reserve Board in 1931 that:

"If we had had no Federal Reserve System, I do not think we would have had as bad a speculative situation as we had, to begin with."

Carter Glass replied,

"You have made it clear that the Federal Reserve Board provided a terrific credit expansion by these open market transactions."

Emmanuel Goldenweiser said,

"In 1928-29 the Federal Board was engaged in an attempt to restrain the rapid increase in security loans and in stock market speculation. The continuity of this policy of restraint, however, was interrupted by reduction in bill rates in the autumn of 1928 and the summer of 1929."

Both J.P. Morgan and Kuhn, Loeb Co. had "preferred lists" of men to whom they sent advance announcements of profitable stocks. The men on these preferred lists were allowed to purchase these stocks at cost, that is, anywhere from 2 to 15 points a share less than they were sold to the public. The men on these lists were

• fellow bankers

• prominent industrialists

• powerful city politicians

• national Committeemen of the Republican and Democratic Parties

• rulers of foreign countries

The men on these lists were notified of the coming crash, and sold all but so-called gilt-edged stocks, General Motors, Dupont, etc. The prices on these stocks also sank to record lows, but they came up soon afterwards. How the big bankers operated in 1929 is revealed by a Newsweek story on May 30, 1936, when a Roosevelt appointee, Ralph W. Morrison, resigned from the Federal Reserve Board:

"The consensus of opinion is that the Federal Reserve Board has lost an able man. He sold his Texas utilities stock to Insull for ten million dollars, and in 1929 called a meeting and ordered his banks to close out all security loans by September 1. As a result, they rode through the depression with flying colors."

Predictably enough, all of the big bankers rode through the depression "with flying colors." The people who suffered were the workers and farmers who had invested their money in get-rich stocks, after the President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, and the Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, had persuaded them to do it.

There had been some warnings of the approaching crash in England, which American newspapers never saw. The London Statist on May 25, 1929 said:

"The banking authorities in the United States apparently want a business panic to curb speculation."

The London Economist on May 11, 1929, said:

"The events of the past year have seen the beginnings of a new technique, which, if maintained and developed, may succeed in ‘rationing the speculator without injuring the trader.’"

Governor Charles S. Hamlin quoted this statement at the Senate hearings in 1931 and said, in corroboration of it:

"That was the feeling of certain members of the Board, to remove Federal Reserve credit from the speculator without injuring the trader."

Governor Hamlin did not bother to point out that the "speculators" he was out to break were the school-teachers and small town merchants who had put their savings into the stock market, or that the "traders" he was trying to protect were the big Wall Street operators, Bernard Baruch and Paul Warburg.

When the Federal Reserve Bank of New York raised its rate to six percent on August 9, 1929, market conditions began which culminated in tremendous selling orders from October 24 into November, which wiped out a hundred and sixty billion dollars worth of security values. That was a hundred and sixty billions which the American citizens had one month and did not have the next. Some idea of the calamity may be had if we remember that our enormous outlay of money and goods in the Second World War amounted to not much more than two hundred billions of dollars, and a great deal of that remained as negotiable securities in the national debt. The stock market crash is the greatest misfortune which the United States has ever suffered.

The Academy of Political Science of Columbia University in its annual meeting in January, 1930, held a post-mortem on the Crash of 1929. Vice-President Paul Warburg was to have presided, and Director Ogden Mills was to have played an important part in the discussion. However, these two gentlemen did not show up. Professor Oliver M.W. Sprague of Harvard University remarked of the crash:

"We have here a beautiful laboratory case of the stock market’s dropping apparently from its own weight."

It was pointed out that there was no exhaustion of credit, as in 1893, nor any currency famine, as in the Panic of 1907, when clearing-house certificates were resorted to, nor a collapse of commodity prices, as in 1920. What then, had caused the crash? The people had purchased stocks at high prices and expected the prices to continue to rise. The prices had to come down, and they did. It was obvious to the economists and bankers gathered over their brandy and cigars at the Hotel Astor that the people were at fault. Certainly the people had made a mistake in buying over-priced securities, but they had been talked into it by every leading citizen from the President of the United States on down. Every magazine of national circulation, every big newspaper, and every prominent banker, economist, and politician, had joined in the big confidence game of urging people to buy those over-priced securities. When the Federal Reserve Bank of New York raised its rate to six percent, in August 1929, people began to get out of the market, and it turned into a panic which drove the prices of securities down far below their natural levels. As in previous panics, this enabled both Wall Street and foreign operators in the know to pick up "blue-chip" and gilt-edged" securities for a fraction of their real value.

The Crash of 1929 also saw the formation of giant holding companies which picked up these cheap bonds and securities, such as the Marine Midland Corporation, the Lehman Corporation, and the Equity Corporation. In 1929 J.P. Morgan Company organized the giant food trust, Standard Brands. There was an unequaled opportunity for trust operators to enlarge and consolidate their holdings.

Emmanuel Goldenweiser, director of research for the Federal Reserve System, said, in 1947:

"It is clear in retrospect that the Board should have ignored the speculative expansion and allowed it to collapse of its own weight."

This admission of error eighteen years after the event was small comfort to the people who lost their savings in the Crash.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 was the beginning of a world-wide credit deflation which lasted through 1932, and from which the Western democracies did not recover until they began to rearm for the Second World War. During this depression, the trust operators achieved further control by their backing of three international swindlers, The Van Sweringen brothers, Samuel Insull, and Ivar Kreuger. These men pyramided billions of dollars worth of securities to fantastic heights. The bankers who promoted them and floated their stock issue could have stopped them at any time, by calling loans of less than a million dollars, but they let these men go on until they had incorporated many industrial and financial properties into holding companies, which the banks then took over for nothing. Insull piled up public utility holdings throughout the Middle West, which the banks got for a fraction of their worth. Ivar Kreuger was backed by Lee Higginson Company, supposedly one of the nation’s most reputable banking houses. The Saturday Evening Post called him "more than a financial titan", and the English review Fortnightly said, in an article written December 1931, under the title,

"A Chapter in Constructive Finance":

"It is as a financial irrigator that Kreuger has become of such vital importance to Europe." *

* NOTE: Ivar Kreuger, we may recall, was occasionally the personal guest of his old friend, President Herbert Hoover, at the White House. Hoover seems to have maintained a cordial relationship with many of the most prominent swindlers of the twentieth century, including his partner, Emile Francqui. The receivership of the billion dollar Kreuger Fraud was handled by Samuel Untermeyer, former counsel for Pujo Committee hearings.

"Financial irrigator" we may remember, was the title bestowed upon Jacob Schiff by Newsweek Magazine, when it described how Schiff had bought up American railroads with Rothschild’s money.

The New Republic remarked on January 25th, 1933, when it commented on the fact that Lee Higginson Company had handled Kreuger and Toll Securities on the American market:

"Three-quarters of a billion dollars was made away with. Who was able to dictate to the French police to keep secret the news of this extremely important suicide for some hours, during which somebody sold Kreuger securities in large amounts, thus getting out of the market before the debacle?"

The Federal Reserve Board could have checked the enormous credit expansion of Insull and Kreuger by investigating the security on which their loans were being made, but the Governors never made any examination of the activities of these men.

The modern bank with the credit facilities it affords, gives an opportunity which had not previously existed for such operators as Kreuger to make an appearance of abundant capital by the aid of borrowed capital. This enables the speculator to buy securities with securities. The only limit to the amount he can corner is the amount to which the banks will back him, and, if a speculator is being promoted by a reputable banking house, as Kreuger was promoted by Lee Higginson Company, the only way he could be stopped would be by an investigation of his actual financial resources, which in Kreuger’s case would have proved to be nil.

The leader of the American people during the Crash of 1929 and the subsequent depression was Herbert Hoover. After the first break of the market (the five billion dollars in security values which disappeared on October 24, 1929) President Hoover said:

"The fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis."

His Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, stated on December 25, 1929, that:

"The Government’s business is in sound condition."

His own business, the Aluminum Company of America, apparently was not doing so well, for he had reduced the wages of all employees by ten percent.

The New York Times reported on April 7, 1931,

"Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, conferred with the Federal Reserve Board here today. Mellon, Meyer, and George L. Harrison, Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, were present."

The London Connection had sent Norman over this time to ensure that the Great Depression was proceeding according to schedule. Congressman Louis McFadden had complained, as reported in The New York Times, July 4, 1930,

"Commodity prices are being reduced to 1913 levels. Wages are being reduced by the labor surplus of four million unemployed. The Morgan control of the Federal Reserve System is exercised through control of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the mediocre representation and acquiescence of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington."

As the depression deepened, the trust’s lock on the American economy strengthened, but no finger was pointed at the parties who were controlling the system.

Go Back