I would like to enlarge on Norman Onstad's letter to the editor on Feb. 18, concerning the Federal Reserve and their connection with the Great Depression of 1929. Most Americans blame the Depression on President Hoover and give credit to President Roosevelt for ending it. The Federal Reserve caused the Depression and ended it.
How did they do it? All new money today comes from the Federal Reserve as it has since its creation in 1913. Prior to that, Congress was authorized to create money through the treasury and issue it to the lending institutions. That duty was taken away from Congress and given to a private corporation called the Federal Reserve Corp.
What they then did in 1929 was deny the lending institutions any money or credit. Then what happened was that the banks called in their loans. People who had stocks had to dump them to pay their obligations to the banks and this in turn broke the stock market. This caused the people to make a run on the banks, drawing out all the cash.
You talk to older people today and they tell you everybody lost everything. Somebody had to end up with a sizeable collection of property. The small lending institutions ended up with little despite the foreclosures. So I will give you to your imagination who got most of the choice property in the U.S.
Thomas Jefferson, writing to the formers of the Constitution, wrote, "If the American people ever allow the Central Bank (Federal) to control the issuance of their currency first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporation that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their forefathers occupied. The issuing power of many should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and to the people to whom it belongs."
ADVERTISEMENT
The framers of the Constitution did just that and Congress did control the issuance of credit until they gave it up to a private corporation in 1913. We need to get it back, very urgently.
