The
Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks have been international bankers from the beginning, with the United States Government as their enforced banker and supplier of currency. But it is none the less extraordinary to see those twelve private credit monopolies buying the debts of foreigners against foreigners in all parts of the world and asking the Government of the United States for new issues of Federal Reserve notes in exchange for them.

I see no reason why the American taxpayers should be hewers of wood and drawers of water for the European and Asiatic customers of the Federal Reserve banks. I see no reason why a worthless acceptance drawn by a foreign swindler as a means of getting gold out of this country should receive the lowest and choicest rate from the Federal Reserve Board and be treated as better security than the note of an American farmer living on American land.

The magnitude of the acceptance racket, as it has been developed by the Federal Reserve banks, their foreign correspondents, and the predatory European-born bankers who set up the Federal Reserve institution here and taught our own brand of pirates how to loot the people -- I say the magnitude of this racket is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $9,000,000,000 a year. In the past ten years it is said to have amounted to $90,000,000,000. In my opinion, it has amounted to several times as much. Coupled with this you have, to the extent of billions of dollars, the gambling in the United States securities, which takes place in the same open discount market -- a gambling upon which the Federal Reserve Board is now spending $100,000,000 per week.

Federal Reserve notes are taken from the United States Government in unlimited quantities. Is it strange that the burden of supplying these immense sums of money to the gambling fraternity has at last proved too heavy for the American people to endure? Would it not be a national calamity if the
Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks should again bind this burden down on the backs of the American people and, by means of the long rawhide whips of the credit masters, compel them to enter another seventeen years of slavery? They are trying to do that now. They are taking $100,000,000 of the public credit of the United States Government every week in addition to all their other seizures, and they are spending that money in the nefarious open market in New York City in a desperate gamble to reestablish their graft as a going concern.

They are putting the United States Government in debt to the extent of $100,000,000 a week, and with the money they are buying up our Government securities for themselves and their foreign principals. Our people are disgusted with the experiments of the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve Board is not producing a loaf of bread, a yard of cloth, a bushel of corn, or a pile of cordwood by its check-kiting operations in the money market.

A fortnight or so ago great aid and comfort was given to Japan by the firm of A. Gerli & Sons, of New York, an importing firm, which bought $16,000,000 worth of raw silk from the Japanese Government. Federal Reserve notes will be issued to pay that amount to the Japanese Government, and these notes will be secured by money belonging to our national-bank depositors.

Why should United States currency be issued on this debt? Why should United States currency be issued to pay the debt of Gerli & Sons to the Japanese Government? The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks think more of the silkworms of Japan than they do of American citizens. We do not need $16,000,000 work of silk in this country at the present time, not even to furnish work to dyers and finishers. We need to wear home-grown and American-made clothes and to use our own money for our own goods and staples. We could spend $16,000,000 in the United States of America on American children and that would be a better investment for us than Japanese silk purchased on the public credit of the United States Government.

Mr. Speaker, on the 13th of January of this year I addressed the House on the subject of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. In the course of my remarks I made the following statement:

In 1928 the member banks of the Federal Reserve system borrowed $60,598,690,000 from the Federal Reserve banks on their fifteen-day promissory notes. Think of it! Sixty billion dollars payable upon demand in gold in the course of one single year. The actual payment of such obligations calls for six times as much monetary gold as there is in the entire world. Such transactions represent a grant in the course of one single year of about $7,000,000 to every member bank of the Federal Reserve system. Is it any wonder that there is a depression in this country? Is it any wonder that American labor, which ultimately pays the cost of all banking operations of this country, has at last proved unequal to the task of supplying this huge total of cash and credit for the benefit of the stock-market manipulators and foreign swindlers?

Mr. Chairman, some of my colleagues have asked for more specific information concerning this stupendous graft, this frightful burden which has been placed on the wage earners and taxpayers of the United States for the benefit of the
Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. They were surprised to learn that member banks of the Federal Reserve system had received the enormous sum of $60,598,690,000 from the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks on their promissory notes in the course of one single year, namely, 1928. Another Member of this House, Mr. Beedy, the honorable gentleman from Maine, has questioned the accuracy of my statement and has informed me that the Federal Reserve Board denies absolutely that these figures are correct. This Member has said to me that the thing is unthinkable, that it can not be, that it is beyond all reason to think that the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks should have so subsidized and endowed their favorite banks of the Federal Reserve system. This Member is horrified at the thought of a graft so great, a bounty so detrimental to the public welfare as sixty and a half billion dollars a year and more shoveled out to favored banks of the Federal Reserve system.

In 1930, while the speculating banks were getting out of the stock market at the expense of the general public, the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks advanced them $13,022,782,000. This shows that when the banks were gambling on the public credit of the United States Government as represented by the Federal Reserve currency, they were subsidized to any amount they required by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. When the swindle began to fall, the bankers knew it in advance and withdrew from the market. They got out with whole skins and left the people of the United States to pay the piper.

On November 2, 1931, I addressed a letter to the Federal Reserve Board asking for the aggregate total of member bank borrowing in the years 1928, 1929, 1930. In due course, I received a reply from the Federal Reserve Board, dated November 9, 1931, the pertinent part of which reads as follows:

My Dear Congressman:

In reply to your letter of November 2, you are advised that the aggregate amount of fifteen-day promissory notes of member banks during each of the past three calender years has been as follows:

1928 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$60,598,690,000

1929 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58,046,697,000

1930 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13,022,782,000

This will show the gentleman from Maine the accuracy of my statement. As for the denial of these facts made to him by the Federal Reserve Board, I can only say that it must have been prompted by fright, since hanging is too good for a Government board which permitted such a misuse of Government funds and credit.

My friend from Kansas, Mr. McGugin, has stated that he thought the

Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks lent money by rediscounting. So they do, but they lend comparatively little that way. The real rediscounting that they do has been called a mere penny in the slot business. It is too slow for genuine high flyers. They discourage it. They prefer to subsidize their favorite banks by making these $60,000,000,000 advances, and they prefer to acquire acceptances in the notorious open discount market in New York, where they can use them to control the prices of stocks and bonds on the exchanges. For every dollar they advanced on rediscounts in 1928 they lent $33 to their favorite banks for gambling purposes. In other words, their rediscounts in 1928 amounted to $1,814,271,000, while their loans to member banks amounted to $60,598,690,000. As for their open-market operations, these are on a stupendous scale, and no tax is paid on the acceptances they handle; and their foreign principals, for whom they do a business of several billion dollars every year, pay no income tax on their profits to the United States Government.

International Swindlers

This is the John Law swindle all over again. The theft of Teapot Dome was trifling compared to it. What king ever robbed his subjects to such an extent as the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks have robbed us? Is it any wonder that there have lately been ninety cases of starvation in one of the New York hospitals? Is there any wonder that the children of this country are being dispersed and abandoned?

The Government and the people of the United States have been swindled by swindlers deluxe to whom the acquisition of American gold or a parcel of Federal Reserve notes presented no more difficulty than the drawing up of a worthless acceptance in a country not subject to the laws of the United States, by sharpers not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States courts, sharpers with a strong banking "fence" on this side of the water -- a "fence" acting as a receiver of the worthless paper coming from abroad, endorsing it and getting the currency out of the Federal Reserve banks for it as quickly as possible, exchanging that currency for gold, and in turn transmitting the gold to its foreign confederates.

Such were the exploits of
Ivar Kreuger, Mr.

Hoover's friend, and his hidden Wall Street backers. Every dollar of the billions Kreuger and his gang drew out of this country on acceptances was drawn from the Government and the people of the United States through the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. The credit of the United States Government was peddled to him by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks for their own private gain. That is what the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks have been doing for many years. They have been peddling the credit of this Government and the signature of this Government to the swindlers and speculators of all nations. That is what happens when a country forsakes its Constitution and gives its sovereignty over the public currency to private interests. Give them the flag and they will sell it.

The nature of
Kreuger's organized swindle and the bankrupt condition of Kreuger's combine was known here last June when
Hoover sought to exempt Kreuger's loan to Germany of $125,000,000 from the operation of the Hoover moratorium. The bankrupt condition of Kreuger's swindle was known here last summer when $30,000,000 was taken from the American taxpayers by certain bankers in New York for the ostensible purpose of permitting Kreuger to make a loan to Colombia. Colombia never saw that money. The nature of Kreuger's swindle and the bankrupt condition of Kreuger was known here in January when he visited his friend, Mr. Hoover, at the White House. It was known here in March before he went to Paris and committed suicide there.

Mr. Chairman, I think the people of the United States are entitled to know how many billions of dollars were placed at the disposal of
Kreuger and his gigantic combine by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks and to know how much of our Government currency was issued and lost in the financing of that great swindle in the years during which the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks took care of Kreuger's requirements.

Mr. Chairman, I believe there should be a congressional investigation of the operations of Kreuger and Toll in the United States and that Swedish Match, International Match, the Swedish-American Investment Corporation, and all related enterprises, including the subsidiary companies of Kreuger and Toll, should be investigated and that the issuance of United States currency in connection with those enterprises and the use of our national-bank depositors' money for Kreuger's benefit should be made known to the general public. I am referring, not only to the securities which were floated and sold in this country, but also to the commercial loans to Kreuger's enterprises and the mass financing of Kreuger's companies by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks and the predatory institutions which the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks shield and harbor.

A few days ago, the President of the United States, with a white face and shaking hands, went before the Senate on behalf of the moneyed interests and asked the Senate to levy a tax on the people so that foreigners might know that the United States would pay its debt to them. Most Americans thought it was the other way around. What do the United States owe to foreigners? When and by whom was the debt incurred? It was incurred by the

Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks when they peddled the signature of this Government to foreigners for a price. It is what the United States Government has to pay to redeem the obligations of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. Are you going to let those thieves get off scot free? Is there one law for the looter who drives up to the door of the United States Treasury in his limousine and another for the United States veterans who are sleeping on the floor of a dilapidated house on the outskirts of Washington?

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is here asking for a large loan from the people and the wage earners and the taxpayers of the United States. It is begging for a hand-out from the Government. It is standing, cap in hand, at the door of the
Reconstruction Finance Corporation, where all the other jackals have gathered to the feast. It is asking for money that was raised from the people by taxation, and wants this money of the poor for the benefit of
Kuhn, Loeb & Co., the German international bankers. Is there one law for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and another for the needy veterans it threw off its freight cars the other day? Is there one law for sleek and prosperous swindlers who call themselves bankers and another law for the soldiers who defended the United States flag?

Mr. Chairman, some people are horrified because the collateral behind Kreuger and Toll debentures was removed and worthless collateral substituted for it. What is this but what is being done daily by the Federal Reserve banks? When the Federal Reserve act was passed, the Federal Reserve banks were allowed to substitute "other like collateral" for collateral behind Federal Reserve notes but by an amendment obtained at the request of the corrupt and dishonest

Federal Reserve Board, the act was changed so that the word "like" was stricken out. All that immense trouble was taken here in Congress so that the law would permit the Federal Reserve banks to switch collateral. At the present time behind the scenes in the Federal Reserve banks there is a night-and-day movement of collateral.

A visiting Englishman, leaving the United States a few weeks ago, said that things would look better here after "they cleaned up the mess at Washington." Cleaning up the mess consists in fooling the people and making them pay a second time for the bad foreign investments of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. It consists in moving that heavy load of dubious and worthless foreign paper -- the bills of wigmakers, brewers, distillers, narcotic-drug vendors, munition makers, illegal finance drafts, and worthless foreign securities, out of the banks and putting it on the back of American labor.

That is what the
Federal Reserve Board is doing now. They talk about loans to banks and railroads but they say very little about that other business of theirs which consists in relieving the swindlers who promoted investment trusts in this country and dumped worthless foreign securities into them and then resold that mess of pottage to American investors under cover of their own corporate titles. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation is taking over those worthless securities from those investment trusts with United States Treasury money at the expense of the American taxpayer and the wage earner.

It will take us twenty years to redeem our Government. Twenty years of penal servitude to pay off the gambling debts of the traitorous
Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks and to earn again that vast flood of American wages and savings, bank deposits, and United States Government credit which the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks exported out of this country to their foreign principals.

The Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks lately conducted an anti-hoarding campaign here. Then they took that extra money which they had persuaded the American people to put into the banks and they sent it to Europe along with the rest. In the last several months, they have sent $1,300,000,000 in gold to their foreign employers, their foreign masters, and every dollar of that gold belonged to the people of the United States and was unlawfully taken from them.

Is not it high time that we had an audit of the
Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks and an examination of all our Government bonds and securities and public moneys instead of allowing the corrupt and dishonest Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks to speculate with those securities and this cash in the notorious open discount market of New York City? [The Fed has never been audited yet --ed]

Fiat Money

Mr. Chairman, within the limits of the time allowed me, I can not enter into a particularized discussion of the
Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. I have singled out the Federal Reserve currency for a few remarks because there has lately been some talk here of "fiat money." What kind of money is being pumped into the open discount market and through it into foreign channels and stock exchanges? Mr. Mills of the Treasury has spoken here of his horror of the printing presses and his horror of dishonest money. He has no horror of dishonest money. If he had, he would be no party to the present gambling of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks in the nefarious open discount market of New York, a market in which the sellers are represented by ten great discount dealer corporations owned and organized by the very banks which own and control the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. Fiat money, indeed!

After the several raids on the Treasury Mr. Mills borrows the speech of those who protested against those raids and speaks now with pretended horror of a raid on the Treasury. Where was Mr. Mills last October when the United States Treasury needed $598,000,000 of the taxpayers' money which was supposed to be in the safe-keeping of [Treasury Secretary]
Andrew W. Mellon in the designated depositories of Treasury funds, and which was not in those depositories when the Treasury needed it? Mr. Mills was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury then, and he was at Washington throughout October, with the exception of a very significant week he spent at White Sulphur Springs closeted with international bankers, while the Italian minister, Signor Grandi, was being entertained -- and bargained with -- at Washington.

What Mr. Mills is fighting for is the preservation whole and entire of the banker's monopoly of all the currency of the United States Government. What Mr.
Patman proposes is that the Government shall exercise its sovereignty to the extent of issuing some currency for itself. This conflict of opinion between Mr. Mills as the spokesman of the bankers and Mr. Patman as the spokesman of the people brings the currency situation here into the open. Mr. Patman and the veterans are confronted by a stone wall -- the wall that fences in the bankers with their special privileges. Thus, the issue is joined between the host of democracy, of which the veterans are a part, and the men of the king's bank, the would-be aristocrats, who deflated American agriculture and robbed this country for the benefit of their foreign principals.

Mr. Chairman, last December, I introduced a resolution here asking for an examination and an 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 destinies 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 the 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 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 that they amount to upwards 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 which 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 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 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.

The International Superstate

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 Macao. They did not perceive that the United States were to be lowered to the position of a coolie country which has nothing but raw materials and heavy goods for export; that Russia [and China --ed] was destined to supply the man power 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 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 the 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 coal yards and grain elevators are full, but the warehouses and coal yards and grain elevators are padlocked and the great banks and corporations hold the keys. The sack of the United States by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks is the greatest crime in history.

Mr. Chairman, a serious situation confronts the House of Representatives to-day. We are 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 and see what crimes against the public welfare have 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 the 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 the international bankers and acceptance bankers and discount dealers can not 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, and betrayed as they are in their own land, will rise in their wrath and send a President here who will sweep the money changers out of the temple.

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