Richard Hildreth Quotes
Our respectable legislators will make a most alarming fuss about every bank that is chartered, while manufacturing companies shall pass muster by the dozen, without a single question being asked or answered. Those who strain at a gnat, are marvelously adroit at swallowing a camel.
This is the first major history of banks written in the United States.
Richard Hildreth, 1807-1865, Historian, The History of Banks: To Which Is Added a Demonstration of the Advantages and Necessity of Free Competition In the Business of Banking, 1837
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Alluding to Congress's common practice of exempting itself and its members from many laws they impose on everyone else:
Noting that Congress routinely exempts itself from civil rights, labor and handicapped-access legislation, the Senator introduced an amendment that would apply the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act to Congress and its buildings: For another view, see Wendell Ford, above
The President, like most Americans, was outraged at the immoral, insensitive, and incompetent behavior of the financial industry in the Meltdown of 2008. However, the President learned how dependent the economy of the entire country was dependent on having solvent banks and how vulnerable the entire nation was to major failures of the investment and regular banks. So he was faced with very poor options. The government could have nationalized the banks, but that would produce an economic system which in the long run would not be very sound. Of the banks could be allowed to fail or risk failure in which case the entire population would suffer. Or he could lend money to the banks to stabilize and strengthen them while the bank executives were paying themselves huge bonuses even though they performed so poorly. He chose the latter and Warren was typical of criticism he received from many of his supporters. Even though the banks had broken the law and forged documents and committed perjury in tens of thousands of mortgage foreclosures, the President, as a practical matter, could not even prosecute the bank officials who were responsible because there were thousands of bank and other company officials who had committed the same crime. The guilty included almost every senior officer of the major banks, and jailing all these people was deemed impractical. So, to recover the economy, justice and fairness suffered.
Richard Hildreth, was an American journalist, author and historian. He is best known for writing his six-volume History of the United States of America covering 1497–1821 and published 1840-1853. Historians consider it a highly accurate political history of the early Republic, but with a strong bias in favor of the Federalist Party and the abolition of slavery.
