Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes
We require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.
The first of these safeguards was abandoned during the George W. Bush administration and the economic meltdown of 2008 resulted. The Obama administration in 2010 restored some regulation of banks and investment banks.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882-1945, 32nd President of the United States (Democrat, NY), First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The result was regulation of the banks and the creation of the SEC to regulate the stock market, However, over the years, the regulations were not able to keep up with the sophisticated development of new forms of investments and financial instruments and the financial industry were able to speculate with other people’s money in ways that FDR and his reformers never imagined. Finally, even the regulation that did exist was weakened by the policies of the George W. Bush administration and the combination brought about the Great Recession of 2008 where the profits from excess speculation were privatized and the losses, socialized with the taxpayer and the American worker bearing the brunt while most of the speculators were bailed out and made more money than ever. The Obama administration tried to reform the situation, but was unable to put an end to the legal speculation with other people’s money or of having institutions that were “too big to fail.”
Keynes was suggesting a small transfer tax on securities and other financial instruments. For investors, such a tax would not be a significant burden, but it would discourage pure speculation. Generally every one likes that idea except the speculators. They in turn, play off one nation or jurisdiction against the others by threatening to take their stock and bond markets to other nations which do not have such a tax. That has worked for almost a century in avoiding such a tax in the United States which is the center for both world investment and speculation.
At the time, it was generally felt that gambling was particularly harmful for poor and middle class people, than for wealthy aristocrats who could afford losses more easily. The solution was to make gambling casinos difficult and expensive to get to and so discourage their use by all except for the rich. Keynes, however, observed that the stock market was essentially a gambling system, and should socially and legally be treated the same as other gambling forms.
Born thought that her agency was responsible for regulating the new esoteric financial products—derivatives including credit default swaps—for otherwise there would be no regulation at all of financial products that could dwarf the stock and bond market. Summers persuaded her to back off. When the Meltdown of 2008 hit, the huge derivative exposure of the large banks and some insurance companies was so great that it was one of the major causes for the meltdown of the entire banking system. Summers, normally a great economist not only called this one wrong, but later, along with most other government and private economists ignored a very explicit warning—See {637168}, {637986}, and {620038}.
Iceland's economy collapsed in the Meltdown of 2008. Their largest banks failed completely as they had engaged in the same kind of risky investments as the American banks had. Their government however did not have the assets to bail their banks out. So they let the banks fail and protected the small depositors with their limited assets. They then devalued their currency drastically, making their fishing and other products a great bargain for other nations of the world and though humiliated the Islanders started getting jobs as demand for Islandic exports grew. Some Icelanders who owned companies were making a great deal of money. Taxes were raised for high income citizens. To prevent the money being taken out of the country and invested so that the jobs would not benefit Icelanders or the earnings were not as taxable in Iceland, the nation imposed Capital Controls—no money was allowed to be taken out of the country except small amounts for business travel expenses. Iceland recovered rapidly and by 2015, at which point the Minister of Finance felt that the country was losing more than it was gaining, so it was time to end the Capital Controls.
Attempting to defend charges that his bank and others were engaged in monopolistic practices:
President Hoover asked a group of prominent citizens to make recommendations to him regarding rumors of instability in the stock market. 10 days later was Black Tuesday where the stock market crashed and started the great depression.
There was a financial crisis in the country and the world when highly risky home mortgage loans defaulted leaving investors and speculators in mortgage-backed securities in a poor position. The investors had been reaping very high interest rates for their risky investments, but this was the first time that this form of risky investment had failed. The investors, of course were looking for a bailout from government. When the Bush administration failed to bail out investment bank, Lehman, there was a panic and the banking system of the country and much of the world froze up. Bush and his Secretary reversed their bailout of speculators policy and provided various assistants and bailouts to the very bankers and other investors who had caused the economic meltdown. The policy was continued by the Obama administration although the bailouts were just as distasteful to Obama as they were to Bush, but most economists agree that the two presidents very distasteful and unpopular bailout actions probably saved the nation from a massive depression. After being bailed out by the taxpayers, the Bankers then paid themselves exorbitant bonuses while the results of their management put 10 percent of the country out of work.
The last sentence echoes a quotation of Napoleon. See {630664} .
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A member of the Democratic Party, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt directed the federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, which defined modern liberalism in the United States throughout the middle third of the 20th century. His third and fourth terms were dominated by World War II, which ended shortly after he died in office.
