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Complete DFr New Deal
Notes from “The Wall Street Trilogy A History” Anthony C. Sutton.
Pg. 209. Volume 2. Wall Street and FDR. Part 1. FDR on Wall Street. Chapt. 1. Roosevelts and Delanos. “The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson--and I am not wholly excepting the administration of Woodrow Wilson. The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of America, only on a far bigger and broader basis.” FDR to Col. House, Nov. 21, 1933.
Pg. 214. In the 1928 election, Hoover, the Republican, was a J.P. Morgan puppet. Smith, his opponent, was in the pocket of the DuPonts, for whom J.P. Morgan was the banker. WS withdrew its support for Hoover in 1932 and supported FDR. Why? Hoover would not accept the Swope plan, created by Gerald Swope, long time President of General Electric. By contrast, FDR accepted the plan, and it became the National Industrial Recovery Act.
Pg. 216. FDR's biographers pass over his business career with little attention simply because FDR was a creation of WS, an integral part of the NY banking fraternity, and had the pecuniary interests of the financial establishment very much at heart. A long paragraph of FDR's business leadership positions follows, 11 corporate directorships, two law partnerships, and the President of a large trade association.
Pg. 218. The Delano Family and Wall Street. The Delano family can trace its linage to a 600 BC Roman family. According to Delano family history, FDR shared ancestry with 1/3 of his predecessors.
Pg. 221. The three previous pages list the accomplishments of FDR's favorite uncle, Fred, who, as a business man/public servant, was placed in important positions when FDR attained power. On the private side, he was president of three railroads by 1913. In 1914 Woodrow Wilson appointed him to the Federal Reserve Board. After WW1 he became more interested in public service. In the early 30s he became interested in socialist planning schemes.
Pg. 221. The Roosevelt family and Wall Street. FDR's great-grandfather James Roosevelt founded the Bank of New York in 1784. The investment banking firm of Roosevelt and Son of NY City was founded in 1797. In the 1930s George E. Roosevelt, FDR’s cousin, was the fifth member of the family in direct succession to head the firm. The family's sugar refining interests stretch from 1740s to 1930s. The family was associated with the development of transportation. Skipping ahead, we come to FDR’s cousin Teddy Roosevelt, who inherited the Presidency of the US upon the assassination of President McKinley, was re-elected in 1904 under the Progressive Party, and initiated the US welfare system.
Pg. 225. From at least Clinton Roosevelt in 1841, to FDR, the political power accumulated by the Roosevelt clan has been on the side of regulating business in the interest of restricting competition, encouraging monopoly, and therefore bleeding the consumer in the interest of a financial elite.
Chapter 3. FDR: International Speculator
Pg. 237. One of the most morale-damaging aspects of the inflation was the "sack of Germany" that occurred at the top of the 1923 inflation. Anyone who possessed dollars or sterling was king in Germany. A few American dollars would allow a man to live like a millionaire. Foreigners swarmed into the country, buying up family treasures, estates, jewelry and art works at unbelievably low prices.
Pg. 238. Hitler was the foster child of inflation. In brief, the General Electric–Morgan elements prominent in the Bolshevik Revolution were also prominent in the New Deal, were negotiators in the scheme regarded as one of the prime causes of World War 2, and incidentally a scheme in which these same financiers, as well as FDR, were to profit.
Pg. 239. It is also noteworthy that the businessmen on the German side of the negotiations were associated with the rise of National Socialism.
Pg. 240. The terrifying rise of inflation and the ultimate collapse of the German Mark in 1923 ruined the German middle class and benefited three groups: a few German big businessmen, a few foreign businessmen, and the rising Hitler movement. As President of United European Investors, Ltd., FDR was among those foreign investors who took advantage of Germany's misery for their own gain.
Chapter 6. Prelude to the New Deal
Pg. 284. Under President Woodrow Wilson in 1918 Bernard Baruch established the War Industries Board, the organizational forerunner of the 1933 National Recovery Administration. In 1922 Secretary of Commerce Hubert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt joined forces to promote trade organizations implementing Baruch’s postwar planning proposals.
Pg. 288. The genesis of Roosevelt's NRA was a system of compulsory adherence by small entrepreneurs to a plan devised by big business, long desired by Wall Street to control competition in the marketplace.
By March 1918 Baruch ran a centrally controlled industrial apparatus responsible for factories, raw materials, production, and transportation. His peacetime proposals included curbing antitrust laws, controlling prices, and protecting large industrial interests against competition.
Pg. 292. Paul Warburg and the creation of the Federal Reserve System. After the 1907 financial crisis Warburg promoted currency reform and was appointed to the first Federal Reserve Board in 1913. He later became president of the Board from 1924 to 1926.
Pg. 293. Warburg founded the International Acceptance Bank and became a director of the Council on Foreign Relations and trustee of the Brookings Institution. Acceptances were blamed for inflation leading to the 1929 crash, making the New Deal appear necessary.
Chapter 7. Roosevelt, Hoover, and the Trade Councils
Pg. 299. Roosevelt used police powers of the state to restrain trade, advance cooperation, and restrain competition. Trade councils like the American Construction Council sought regulation under the guise of consumer protection.
Chapter 8. Wall Street Buys the New Deal
Pg. 307. Hoover failed to support the National Recovery Act, causing Wall Street to shift allegiance to FDR in 1932. FDR accepted corporate-socialist plans.
Pg. 309–310. Bernard Baruch refined the NRA concept, proposing regulation of the boom-bust cycle, abolition of antitrust acts, and licensing of industry.
FDR’s speeches hinted at economic planning and culminated in his pledge to deliver a New Deal for the American people.
Chapter 9. The Swope Plan
Pg. 324. The NRA closely mirrored the Swope Plan of General Electric President Gerald Swope, itself similar to Walter Rathenau’s World War I plan in Germany. The plan removed antitrust laws and laid groundwork for a corporate state using welfare to defuse labor opposition.
Key NRA positions were taken by Wall Street men. Socialists opposed the plan because it placed control in private industry rather than government. Both planners distrusted free markets and individual initiative.
Chapter 10. FDR: Man on the White Horse
Pg. 342. In late 1934 a plot to install a dictator in the White House surfaced and was suppressed by Congress and the press.
Pg. 343. General Smedley Butler testified that Wall Street interests planned a fascist dictatorship backed by a private army of 500,000 men. Funding allegedly came from Morgan-controlled companies.
Pg. 346. The plan involved forcing Roosevelt aside and installing an assistant dictator. Butler refused.
Pg. 353. The incident was suppressed. Testimony involving Wall Street financiers was deleted and no academic study has ever examined the event.