What is the source of the following polemic against Wall Street?
1) Russian media article shown at a U.S. Congressional hearing into alleged Russian interference in U.S. presidential election.
2) 2011 Occupation of Wall Street Movement
3) A Fringe Anarchist website.
4) A socialist fire brand addressing a few students.
5) Someone or something else.
” …a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment… Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated.
“Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money (to them by the government).
“Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
“The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.”
Answer: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the U.S.,spoke these words as part of his inaugural address as president in 1933. You can see and hear the powerful full actual speech here.
Roosevelt was a capitalist politician but he represented a governing class – and a section of the U.S. capitalist class – not yet completely controlled by Wall Street and prepared to compromise with the American workers and their desperate needs brought on by the great depression. How times have changed!
