19 responses so far ↓

• 1 paulie cannoli // Dec 26, 2008 at 4:44 am

  Congrats to Jason.

  Didn’t know that about Wilson regretting the fed. What’s the source on that?

• 2 TheOriginalAndy // Dec 26, 2008 at 5:43 am

  “paulie cannoli // Dec 26, 2008 at 4:44 am

  Congrats to Jason.

  Didn’t know that about Wilson regretting the fed. What’s the source on that?”

  I don’t know what the source is, but I’ve seen it reference a bunch of places. Woodrow Wilson is said to have said that he wished that he hadn’t signed the Federal Reserve Act while he was lying in bed dying.

• 3 paulie cannoli // Dec 26, 2008 at 6:08 am

  I recall reading that Wilson was in a comotose or vegetatitive state, having suffered a mental breakdown or stroke of some sort, for the last year or so of his life. I’ll have to re-read his bio. Good thing we have wikipedia now

• 4 TheOriginalAndy // Dec 26, 2008 at 6:44 am

  “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by it’s system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world–no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.”

  –President Woodrow Wilson

• 5 paulie cannoli // Dec 26, 2008 at 6:56 am

  wikipedia:

  “After one of his final speeches to attempt to promote the League of Nations in Pueblo, Colorado, on September 25, 1919 he collapsed. On October 2, 1919, Wilson suffered a serious stroke that almost totally incapacitated him, leaving him paralyzed on his left side and blind in his left eye. For at least a few months, he was confined to a wheelchair. Afterwards, he could walk only with the assistance of a cane. The full extent of his disability was kept from the public until after his death on February 3, 1924.

  Wilson was purposely, with few exceptions, kept out of the presence of Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, his cabinet or Congressional visitors to the White House for the remainder of his presidential term. His first wife, Ellen, had died in 1914, so his second wife, Edith, served as his steward, selecting issues for his attention and delegating other issues to his cabinet heads. This was, as of 2008, the most serious case of presidential disability in American history and was later cited as a key example why ratification of the 25th Amendment was seen as important.”

  It doesn’t sound like he was as bad off (ie vegetative or comatose) as I remembered reading from years ago.

  So it is possible he said that. Where did you find the quote?

• 6 G.E. // Dec 26, 2008 at 8:48 am

  Andy – That quote has been shown to be bogus.

• 7 paulie cannoli // Dec 26, 2008 at 8:49 am

  OK, then; where was it shown to be bogus?

• 8 G.E. // Dec 26, 2008 at 8:52 am

  Here’s some debate about it:

  http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Woodrow_Wilson#Misattributed_Section_Change

• 9 G.E. // Dec 26, 2008 at 8:57 am

  Here’s an article about it:

  http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/12/21/woodrow_wilson_federal_reserve/

  There is so much disinfo about the Fed.

  Wilson was pure evil. This quote is repeated by statist right-wing anti-semites who think “the Fed controls the government.” These people would be a tremendous discredit to the anti-Fed movement, but they ARE the anti-Fed movement… At least 95% of it, by my estimation.

• 10 paulie cannoli // Dec 26, 2008 at 8:57 am

  Thanks!

• 11 paulie cannoli // Dec 26, 2008 at 9:01 am

  However, it really is true that Eleanor Roosevelt said “America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.” My ex-girlfriend’s uncle’s mother in law was shooting speed and having sex with her when she said that.

• 12 G.E. // Dec 26, 2008 at 9:11 am

  The people who put forth that quote (Aaron Russo, etc.) are the same statists who think Lincoln was great for printing greenbacks and showing those evil for-profit bankers the power of the PEOPLE’S STATE. They’re the same who think JFK and Reagan were great, etc. They’re the same who think the Constitution is awesome. In other words, they’re deluded statists.

• 13 paulie cannoli // Dec 26, 2008 at 9:14 am

  What are you, some kind of zionist agent of the shape-shifting illegal alien lizard people?

• 14 JimDavidson // Dec 26, 2008 at 3:26 pm

  It is an interesting controversy, and I shall have to study it further. I personally don’t think that the only solution Aaron Russo would have accepted would have been Lincoln’s green backs approach, though I do acknowledge that this solution is presented in the film he made.

  Wilson certainly said these things:

  “A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.”

  “We are at the parting of the ways. We have, not one or two or three, but many, established and formidable monopolies in the United States. We have, not one or two, but many, fields of endeavor into which it is difficult, if not impossible, for the independent man to enter. We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world — no longer a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.”

  These appear in a book published in 1913 which gives excerpts from his campaign speeches in 1911 while running for president.

  “Frequency of repetition doesn’t make for reliable sourcing” says Salon.com in their critique of the quote. However, that is just as true of the “Wilson never said anything like this statement” commentaries. (It is also something that Holtz seems to miss in his many commentaries on “You have to form a freedom party for one of these two reasons or I’ll pout.”)

  Like the John F. Kennedy speech at Columbia University which tour guides at the school can quote from memory but which is now regarded as “never happened,” I wonder. Evidently there is a monetary power in the world that owns a lot of media outlets and doesn’t want certain information to be perceived or regarded as credible. Like the magic bullet theory that Arlen Specter invented to explain the lone shooter theory for the Warren Commission, I think the pro-Federal Reserve faction’s account of history in the case of Wilson and Kennedy defies reason.

  I admit to a powerful urge to dwell in the primary source literature for many weeks.

• 15 JimDavidson // Dec 28, 2008 at 1:47 pm

  I don’t presently have access to primary source literature about Wilson. However, I did review the Wilson sections (from the index, possibly not all mentions of Wilson) in G. Edward Griffin’s thoroughly researched _The Creature from Jekyll Island_.

  I note that if Wilson had said such a thing, Griffin would have been all over it like smell on roses. Griffin does not mention the quote anywhere in his book, although he does quote the bit about a credit cartel in the discussion of the 1911-12 campaign season.

  So, if Griffin is regarded as an authority on Federal Reserve comments, and since Griffin would have been very excited to include such a quote from Wilson if there were one, I would say that Wilson probably did not say this thing.

• 16 paulie cannoli // Dec 28, 2008 at 1:53 pm

  As best I can tell from reading the links above, the quote consists of various lines he said in different speeches on completely other topics, pulled together (possibly with some other things he never said at all) in a book that purported to quote him.

  That is, if it is even in that book; I have not seen it, so I can’t be completely sure.

• 17 JimDavidson // Dec 28, 2008 at 2:26 pm

  That book being?

  National Economy and the Banking System, Senate Documents, Col. 3 No. 23 is a candidate.

• 18 JimDavidson // Dec 28, 2008 at 2:30 pm

  Here’s another interesting quote from Wilson.

  “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
  They know that America is not a place of which it can be said, as it used to be, that a man may choose his own calling and pursue it just as far as his abilities enable him to pursue it; because to-day, if he enters certain fields, there are organizations which will use means against him that will prevent his building up a business which they do not want to have built up; organizations that will see to it that the ground is cut from under him and the markets shut against him. For if he begins to sell to certain retail dealers, to any retail dealers, the monopoly will refuse to sell to those dealers, and those dealers, afraid, will not buy the new man’s wares.” The New Freedom (1913) See wikiquote for text.

• 19 JimDavidson // Dec 30, 2008 at 2:21 pm

  I have today updated the Bostontea.us News article.

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