rfc11

Reference 11
The Great Depression
When we were reading over this document, we noticed some parallels, between the rhetoric used by Rep. McFadden, in 1932, and Ross Perot, in 1992, with NAFTA.
Perot, generally, talks about companies moving overseas, putting Americans out of work, for "cheap labor, lower environmental standards, etc."
McFadden is talking about "cheap, exported credit, loaned by the Federal Reserve Banks, enabling foreign companies to use cheap labor to make products more cheaply than they can be made here," putting American businesses out of business, and, thereby, Americans losing their jobs. The mechanism is different, but the same scorn for "cheap, foreign labor, and the companies that are taking advantage of it" is there. Congressional Record of June 10, 1932

We think some things need to be clarified in order to get a full understanding of his argument.
McFadden talks about so many Federal Reserve Notes being held by foreigners, and that the wealth of Americans is being exported to these foreigners in order to redeem these FRNs.
Back then, in the '30's, regular money, used to buy things, was gold and silver coins. One could turn in their coins for Federal Reserve Notes, or get gold or silver certificates. These slips of paper were redeemable by the holder for money: gold and silver coins. So, if a foreign holder wanted to redeem an FRN, the Federal Reserve would have to send the holder the amount of money (gold or silver coins) that is called for, on each note of currency..
Also, he says that an independent treasury needs to be reestablished.
According to what we've heard recently, the U.S. Government does not have its own Treasury, as it used to,
and most people think it still has.
The Treasury Dept. is in fact a part of the Federal Reserve System, a privately owned corporation!!!
When the IRS collects its taxes, those taxes go to the Treasury Dept., and the government gets access to that money anytime it wants to.
As far as we know, this pool of money is not loaned to the government, as is the case with the paper currency, when it is newly created. It is just held there until the government wants it, we believe.
Louis T. McFadden was Chairman of the House Banking Committee. in the early 1930's. The same as Henry Gonzalez was in the late `80's and early `90's.
From the Congressional Record of June 10, 1932:
Rep. McFadden:
"Mr. Chairman, last December, I introduced a resolution here asking for an examination and audit of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks and all related matters. If the House sees fit to make such an investigation, the people of the United States will obtain information of great value.
This is a government of the people, by the people, for the people, consequently nothing should be concealed from the people. The man who deceives the people is a traitor to the United States. The man who knows or suspects that a crime has been committed and who conceals or covers up that crime is an accessory to it.
Mr. Speaker, it is a monstrous thing for this great Nation of people to have its destiny, presided over by a traitorous government board, acting in secret concert with international usurers. Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its power but the truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States. It controls everything here and it controls all our foreign relations.
It makes and breaks governments at will.
No man and no body of men is more entrenched in power than the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. These evil-doers have robbed this country of more than enough money to pay the national debt.
What the national Government has permitted the Federal Reserve Board to steal, from the people, should now be restored to the people.
The people have a valid claim against the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks.
If that claim is enforced, Americans will not need to stand in breadlines or to suffer and die of starvation in the streets. Homes will be saved, families will be kept together, and American children will not be dispersed and abandoned. The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks owe the United States Government an immense sum of money.
We ought to find out the exact amount of the people's claim. We should know the amount of the indebtedness of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks to the people and we should collect that amount immediately. We certainly should investigate this treacherous and disloyal conduct of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks.
Here is a Federal Reserve Note.
Immense numbers of these notes are now held abroad. I am told they amount to upward of a billion dollars. They constitute a claim against our government and likewise a claim against the money our people have deposited in the member banks of the Federal Reserve System.
Our people's money to the extent of $1,300,000,000 has, within the last few months, been shipped abroad, to redeem Federal Reserve Notes and to pay other gambling debts of the traitorous, Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks.
The greater part of our monetary stock has been shipped to foreigners. Why should we promise to pay the debts of foreigners to foreigners?
Why should our government be put into the position of supplying money to foreigners?
Why should American farmers and wage earners add millions of foreigners to the number of their dependents?
Why should the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks be permitted to finance our competitors in all parts of the world?
Do you know why the tariff was raised?
It was raised to shut out the flood of Federal Reserve goods pouring in here, from every quarter of the globe--cheap goods produced by cheaply paid foreign labor-- on unlimited supplies of money and credit, sent out of this country, by the dishonest, and unscrupulous, Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks.
Go out in Washington to buy an electric light bulb and you will probably be offered one that was made in Japan, on American money.
Go out to buy a pair of fabric gloves and, inconspicuously written on the inside of the gloves that will be offered to you, will be found the words 'made in Germany' and that means 'made on the public credit of the United States Government paid to German firms in American gold taken from the confiscated bank deposits of the American people.'
The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks are spending $100,000,000 a week buying government securities, in the open market, and are, thus, making a great bid for foreign business.
They are trying to make rates so attractive that the human-hair merchants and distillers and other business entities, in foreign lands, will come here and hire more of the public credit of the United States Government, and pay the Federal Reserve outfit, for getting it for them.
Mr. Chairman, when the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of the United States did not perceive that a world system was being set up here, which would make the savings of an American school-teacher available to a narcotic-drug vendor in Cacao.
They did not perceive that the United States was to be lowered to a position of a coolie country, which has nothing, but raw materials and heavy goods for export; that Russia was destined to supply manpower, and that this country was to supply financial power, to an international superstate--a superstate controlled by international bankers and international industrialists, acting together, to enslave the world, for their own pleasure.
The people of the United States are being greatly wronged. If they are not, then I do not know what `wronging the people' means.
They have been driven from their employments. They have been dispossessed of their homes. They have been evicted from their rented quarters. They have lost their children. They have been left to suffer and to die for the lack of shelter, food, clothing, and medicine.
The wealth of the United States, and the working capital of the United States, has been taken away from them and has, either, been locked in the vaults of certain banks and great corporations, or exported to foreign countries, for the benefit of the foreign customers of those banks and corporations.
So far as the people of the United States are concerned, the cupboard is bare.
It is true that the warehouses and coalyards and grain elevators are full, but the warehouses and coalyards and grain elevators are padlocked and the great banks and corporations hold the keys.
The sacking of the United States by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks and their confederates is the greatest crime in history.
Mr. Chairman, a serious situation confronts the House of Representatives today.
We are the trustees of the people and the rights of the people are being taken away from them.
Through the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, the people are losing the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.
Their property has been taken from them without due process of law.
Mr. Chairman, common decency requires us, to examine the public accounts of the government, to see what crimes, against the public welfare, have been, and are being, committed.
What is needed, here, is a return to the Constitution of the United States.
We need to have a complete divorce of Bank and State.
The old struggle that was fought out, here, in Jackson's day, must be fought over again.
The independent United States Treasury should be re-established and the government should keep its own money under lock and key in the building, the people provided for that purpose. Asset currency, the device of the swindler, should be done away with. The government should buy gold and issue United States currency on it. The business of the independent bankers should be restored to them.
The State banking systems should be freed from coercion.
The Federal Reserve districts should be abolished and State boundaries should be respected. Bank reserves should be kept within the borders of the States, whose people own them, and this reserve money, of the people, should be protected, so that international bankers and acceptance bankers and discount dealers cannot draw it away from them. The exchanges should be closed while we are putting our financial affairs in order.
The Federal Reserve Act should be repealed and the Federal Reserve Banks, having violated their charters, should be liquidated immediately.
Faithless government officers who have violated their oaths of office should be impeached and brought to trial.
Unless this is done by us, I predict that the American people, outraged, robbed, pillaged, insulted, will rise in their wrath and send a President, here, who will sweep the money changers out of the temple."
Speech before Congress, 1935, by Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking Committee, Congressional Record of June 10, 1932
McFadden was eliminated from the debate by his "untimely death, in 1935."
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