Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Telegraph
September 16, 2008
One can date the onset of the Great Depression from December 1930 with the collapse of the Bank of the United States, a mid-size lender to the Jewish community in New York.
It is often alleged that the Anglo elites let the bank fail from motives of anti-semitic malice.
True or not, the consequences were dire for almost everybody. The failure set off a worldwide run on US gold deposits (ie, the dollar), and forced the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates into the slump. Some 4,000 lenders were ultimately driven to the wall.
We will find out soon enough whether the decision to throw Lehman Brothers to the wolves over the weekend was any wiser. Princeton economist Paul Krugman has accused the US Treasury and the Fed of playing "Russian roulette" with the financial system, warning that the shadow banking network could disintegrate within days.
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