FDR talks to Americans about banking crisis
Dave Drebes over at the Arch City Chonicle post an audio recording of FDR’s first Fireside chat — addressing the Banking crisis.
Definitely worth a listen. (You can read a transcript, too.)
Here he is on the public’s role:
We have had a bad banking situation. Some of our bankers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people’s funds. They had used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans. This was, of course, not true in the vast majority of our banks, but it was true in enough of them to shock the people of the United States, for a time, into a sense of insecurity and to put them into a frame of mind where they did not differentiate, but seemed to assume that the acts of a comparative few had tainted them all. And so it became the Government’s job to straighten out this situation and do it as quickly as possible. …
(T)here is an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people themselves. Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. You people must have faith; you must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. Let us unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system, and it is up to you to support and make it work.
It is your problem, my friends, your problem no less than it is mine.
Together we cannot fail.
Eddie Roth writes about education, social justice, public safety, transportation, legal affairs and historic preservation. He joined the Post-Dispatch editorial page in 2008 after six years as an editorial writer with the Dayton Daily News. But he is not new to St. Louis. Eddie grew up in Webster Groves and south St. Louis County. He's a lawyer who for many years practiced with a downtown firm, and was active in civic affairs, including serving a term on the St. Louis Police Board. He and his wife, Jeanne, and their three daughters, Emily, Julia and Alice, live in the Shaw Neighborhood.
When it comes to community organizing, he endorses Quentin Crisp's advice: Rather than keeping up with the Joneses, it's better to pull them down to your level. 
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
We let liberals fool us about the causes of the depression back in the 30’s and it resulted in turning an ordinary depression into a great one. We’ll have learned nothing if we allow today’s “progressives” to do it again.
My dear Americans, we have had a failing in our financial institutions recently that is a result of many poor policies over the last few decades. There is plenty of blame to go around and I can spend hours listing the reasons, leaders, and political parties that failed you. However, now is not the time to get into the blame game but to correct the problems we have today.
There is a knee-jerk reaction to use government money to correct the markets. Ladies and Gentlemen, I believe that the be the biggest threat to our way of life than terrorism and illegal immigration. For our country was founded on the principles of freedom and the pursuit of happiness WITHOUT government intervention. You folks who are listening are a result of generations before you that lived, worked, failed AND succeeded in their lives, giving your family the foundation to continue to be successful. How can one measure success without first experiencing failure? There is not a rich man, great athlete, Nobel Prize winner, that hasn’t failed sometime in their life….and became greater for it. There is not one Nobel Prize winner that is successful because he/she was given everything and worked at nothing.
I believe that in order to be successful and thrive, there must be failure. There must be hard work to overcome this failure. America didn’t become great because our government gave our people their homes, their land, their food, their freedom. America became great because our ancestors had to work for these things.
It is because of America’s greatness and it’s “can do” spirit that I do not support a bailout of any kind nor do I support putting money into banks, buying up mortgages, stopping foreclosures, or giving handouts to those that failed. Companies that made bad decisions must live by them. Those that signed for homes they couldn’t buy, may lose them. America does not owe its citizens free homes or even low-cost homes…America owes its citizens the chance to succeed..but guarantees nothing.
I am doubling the budget of the FBI to go after those companies that failed in their job and the leaders in Congress that failed in their responsibility because they prevented America from giving many of its citizens the chance be to be successful..and will prosecute them to the full extent of the law.
My fellow Americans, live free and work hard.
Thank you,
The President
I remember this speech. I watched it on my color t.v. I would have recorded it but was out of DVD-R discs.
RRR
Gee, Eddie, I was surprised that you failed to report that Sarah Palin is related to FDR (and Princess Di).
Nor did you mention that BO wants to raise taxes and opposes free trade - two acts Hoover (not FDR as Biden thinks) did during an economic slowdown and turbulent financial markets which caused the Great Depression. Hoover, signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930. Personally, I think the fact that Obama is going to win is causing the markets to plummit and his proposed new socialist programs.