There you have the bankers' debt dollar in its naked setting. There you have a crime laid at its door, an ugly sin. If the Treasury must pay with such a cheap dollar; if the best borrowers have to pay with a 16-cent dollar; then try to imagine what the husband who must borrow on 30 days must pay for $100, he must have if his children eat. The astounding thing about Mr. Patman is the fact that he ferrets out and makes public these astounding crimes of banking, yet he insists that we have the greatest banking system on earth. He even admits, asserts that the banks pay nothing for these Treasury bills, the notes and mortgages of the people. He asks, "What do they pay for those notes? They do not pay anything. This is one of the powers we (Congress) have granted to them, the power to create money, and they use that money to buy our government bonds.
They hold the bonds and continue to draw interest on "them!" Then he laments, "That is the reason we have let the Federal Reserve System get away from Congress. The Federal Reserve System does not come back to Congress for an appropriation every year. It is the only agency of the Government that we have in our country that does not depend or rely upon Congress for anything. We have delegated to them enough power and credit where they buy our Government bonds, hold the bonds," collect interest running into the billions a year. Why should the people submit to this criminal thing? Why should we turn over the nation's credit, its power to coin money, to private corporations, then turn around and borrow that credit at a cost of billions a year in interest, in addition to giving them the principal in U.S. Bonds? Think of a Congressman who has been there years, lamenting that the Government has no control over the banks. That the Government must borrow money on short 90-day time. Then, who is master of the Nation? Congress? Certainly not. The bankers have a death grip on our throats, and we ignorantly don't know whose hand is there. Think of a 1939 dollar being worth only 7 mills today when Uncle Sam pays interest to these money thieves. In 1943 Mr. Patman said: "Federal Reserve Banks