Tuesday, September 30, 2008

FDR on Banking, Credits and Investments 1933


FDR in 1933: "There Must Be a Strict Supervision of All Banking and Credits and Investments. There Must Be an End to Speculation with Other People's Money."

We now move three-quarters of a century back in time to 1933. It was the middle of an era that our current moment is sometimes compared to: the Great Depression. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took his oath of office in March of that year, over 10,000 banks had collapsed, following the stock market crash of 1929. One-quarter of American workers were unemployed, and people were fighting over scraps of food. (See Democracy Now! Monday, September 29 for an excerpt of FDR’s inaugural speech on March 4, 1933, and an audio of Adam Cohen, author of the forthcoming book, Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America.)

“Is this the United States Congress or the Board of Directors of Goldman Sachs?” Rep. Dennis Kucinich Rejects $700 Billion Bailout

...The proposed legislation was forged during a marathon negotiating session over the weekend between lawmakers from both parties and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The 110-page bill would authorize Paulson to initiate what is likely to become the biggest government bailout in US history, allowing him to spend up to $700 billion to relieve faltering banks and other firms of bad assets backed by home mortgages, which are falling into foreclosure at record rates.

BLOGGER'S NOTE: I have come to trust certain analysts of news, politics, social patterns--yet there are so many unknown dynamics...Since I admit to virtually NO knowledge of finances I best now turn to other topics, as crucial as this one is.

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