LOUIS THOMAS MCFADDEN
(-Louis Thomas McFadden)
The Congressman was notorious for his extreme and unusual views of things. See {606976} for another of his extreme statements which turned out to be untrue. McFadden quotations are sometimes used to show that there is almost no limit to how absurd a view a politician in general, or a member of Congress in particular, might take and make public.
The Roosevelt he was insulting was the newly elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Congressman was a paranoid conspiracy theorist who believed that FDR had been put into office to become dictator of the United States by an imagined cabal of international bankers.
What Franklin Delano Roosevelt began, President Nixon would in 1971 complete by removing America from the gold standard entirely and ending fixed rates of exchange. There have been those in government who did not understand the modern economics of money and who believed that currency had to have a fixed rate of exchange for gold or silver otherwise it was worthless. Roosevelt had to deal with them as did Nixon later. Even into the 21st century when it had been amply demonstrated that the best currency in the world was the United States dollar precisely because it was backed up by the full faith and credit of the United States Government, there were those who complain that United States money is not sound currency and argue for the return of the gold standard.
The “Fed Note” was the term for a Federal Reserve Note. It was a then a new form of paper money issued by the Federal Reserve Banks instead of the Treasury department as the previous United States Notes had been. The United States was a guarantor of the Federal Reserve Notes in case the Federal Reserve defaulted and there were many who feared having the responsibility to back up the Federal Reserve notes which could be issued by the Federal Reserve Banks—not government entities and not under the control of the President or Congress.
McFadden and a few others were haters of private bankers in general and to them foreign bankers were the worst of all.
“They” refers to the Federal Reserve Banks which were (and are) private banks. The Congressman was one of those who distrusted private bankers who they thought would make money at the expense of ethics, morality, national honor, or American foreign policy.
Louis Thomas McFadden was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, serving from 1915 to 1935. A banker by trade, he was the chief sponsor of the 1927 McFadden Act, which rechartered the Federal Reserve System in perpetuity, liberalized branch banking for national banks and increased competition between member and non-member banks. He later became an opponent of the Federal Reserve System and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist.
