America's Bank Quotes

“When the subject was money, central authority had always been taboo; it was a demon that terrified the people. Fear of this demon had kept the country without any effective organization of its finances for seventy-five years. Now, three-quarters of a century after Andrew Jackson, the ghost was slain.”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

“Over six feet tall, with a flowing handlebar mustache, he dressed in well-tailored suits and black bow ties and was a man of presence and intelligence. Rarely did he debate in public; the cloakroom, the back corridor, was where his work was done. A reporter with the New York Tribune noted the “side whiskers close cut” and the “brilliant dark eyes which he fastens closely upon the person with whom he is conversing.”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

“VARIOUS OTHER BANKERS—heirs to the Indianapolis convention—carried on the fight for reform. However, unlike Warburg, they favored establishing an asset currency, a decentralized scheme based on each individual bank’s loans.”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

“Warburg was shocked by the primitiveness of American finance. Whereas banks in Germany functioned with near-military cohesiveness, banking in America, he concluded, suffered from an ethos of extreme individualism.”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

“A chief attraction of the real bills theory was that it took decisions regarding the money supply out of human hands. John Carlisle, Treasury secretary under Cleveland, maintained that issuing notes “is not a proper function of the Treasury Department, or of any other department of the Government.” The task was just too difficult. Rather, Carlisle said, currency should be “regulated entirely by the business interests of the people and by the laws of trade.”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

“The moment was highly polarizing. Populists agitated for an income tax, tariff reform, regulation of railroads, and direct election of U.S. senators (who were chosen by the legislatures). Workers erupted in sometimes violent strikes—notably, the Pullman strike of 1894, which halted much of the nation’s rail traffic and led to rioting and acts of sabotage, and was ultimately suppressed by federal troops.”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

“For gold bugs, anti–Federal Reserve zealots, and flat-out cranks, the 1910 escapade would come to assume mythic significance. Over the decades, its suspicious character seemed only to grow larger. In 1952, Eustace Mullins, a Holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist nonpareil, described the “secret meetings of the international bankers” as a conclave of the Rothschild family linked backward in time to Hamilton and forward to Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin.”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

“America’s abandonment of the gold standard would have shocked the founders, who took for granted that money had to be more than mere paper. More than anything, going off gold (which occurred in stages, culminating under Nixon) expanded the Fed’s charter. It made the agency the supreme arbiter”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

“Regardless of how earnestly bankers trumpeted the virtues of laissez-faire, in times of unrest markets looked to Washington to provide stability.”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

“Three questions divided reformers: Who should issue the new currency? To what degree should the system be centralized? And should bankers or politicians be in control?”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

“Glass’s nature was to fret. He was intensely agitated by the pressure from bankers for a centralized scheme and worried that bankers had gotten to Wilson (a suspicion, of course, that was entirely correct).”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

“Warburg rifled off a congratulatory note to Owen. He revealed his true feelings about the Senate (including Owen) to a fellow European, to whom he groused, “It is a terribly tiring business to try to influence these hundred obstinate and ignorant men.”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

“Warburg hesitated before daring to reply. “Your bank is so big and so powerful, Mr. Stillman, that when the next panic comes, you will wish your responsibilities were smaller.”
― Roger Lowenstein, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve