276

"The currency in circulation was increased from seven billion dollars in 

four years to twenty-one and a half billion. We are losing some 

considerable amounts of gold during the war period. As our exports 

have gone out, largely on a lend-lease basis, we have taken imports 

on which we have  given dollar balances. These countries are now 

drawing off these dollar balances in the form of gold.

MR. SMITH: Governor Eccles, what is the objective that the foreign 

governments are after in this projected program whereby we would 

contribute gold to an international fund?

GOVERNOR ECCLES: I would like to discuss OPA, and leave the 

stabilization fund for a time when I am prepared to go into it.

MR. SMITH: Just a minute. I feel that this fund is very pertinent to what 

we are talking about today.

MR. FORD: I believe that the stabilization fund is entirely off the @OPA 

and consequently we ought to stick to the business at hand."

The Congressmen never did get to discuss the Stabilization Fund, 

another setup whereby we would give the impoverished countries of 

Europe back the gold which had been sent over here. In 1945, Henry 

Hazlitt, commenting in Newsweek of January 22, on Roosevelt’s annual 

budget message to Congress, quoted Roosevelt as saying:

"I shall later recommend legislation reducing the present high gold 

reserve requirements of theFederal Reserve Banks."

169

Hazlitt pointed out that the reserve requirement was not high, it was 

just what it had been for the past thirty years. Roosevelt’s purpose was