Bankruptcy Quotes
He did indeed kill the Bank of the United States by exercising the Presidential Veto on the legislation renewing the Bank’s government charter. The Bank was privately owned but handled all the fiscal functions for the Government and holding the United States deposits. The Bank owners and executives were not supports of Jackson and opposed him on many issues. Jackson thought it outrageous that a private bank, not under the control of the people or the representatives of the people, should have a monopoly on the banking functions of the United States. Vetoes were very unusual then. All the presidents before Jackson together vetoed only 12 laws. Jackson himself vetoed 13 including the Bank of America.
Essentially Mellon told the President to let the entire economy crash. With huge numbers of people out of work, labor would be more humble and not only settle for lower wages, but will work harder, and without "excess" income beyond their basic needs, they would not drink and engage in other immoral activities. President Hoover, a wealthy man himself, did not go along with Mellon's idea of making the situation worse, but his conservative philosophy of government would not allow the Government to "interfere" with the private economy or give any direct assistance to the citizens.
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.
Leveraged means that the company is not investing all its own money and has borrowed some or much in a highly leveraged situation. He, and most corporate executives, used to be very wary of corporations being highly leveraged. However towards the end of the 20th century the CEO’s—ironically especially in banks and financial companies who should have known better, tended to get away from this worry, and led their companies to very highly leveraged situations. When the Meltdown of 2008 hit, most were so highly leveraged that they became insolvent very quickly and the Great Recession followed.
This warning was a decade before the Meltdown of 2008, but was not heeded by any of the politicians. As a result a number of the companies that made all those risky decisions assumed that if something went terribly wrong the government would not let them fail. Unfortunately, they were right and the taxpayers spent billions to prevent companies from failing. After the meltdown all the politicians vowed to end the too big to fail concept, but while some improvements were made, the Congress could not come to agreement, and the markets and a number of companies think that they are still too big to fail. This is particularly true for Defense Contractors where the government has and probably will in the future, protect irresponsible companies from failure if they are the only company that makes needed weapons and other equipment.
The only previous source of light in America had been whale oil or candles—both very expensive. Oil was discovered in Pennsylvania and refinery techniques developed to produce Kerosene. (Gasoline was too explosive and dangerous for home use.) Everyone’s standard of living depended on Kerosene at the time and John D. Rockefeller controlled the price everywhere except New York. There were no monopoly or antitrust laws when he gobbled up his competitors and he rapidly became the richest man in America and one of the most hated. His abuse of the system at the time led to the government regulation of monopolies and the antitrust laws. It was very courageous for the Atlantic Monthly to publish this article, as Rockefeller’s power extended all over the nation—but less in New York where the magazine was published.
