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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:
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"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