Ellen Brown said that there is evidence that Benjamin Strong met with Montagu Norman in February of 1929. But Strong died in 1928. She now tries to escape this gaffe. You can judge how successful she is.
25. Benjamin Strong (d. 1928) plotted with Montagu Norman in 1929.You write:
Ellen Brown's Web of Debt is filled with bogus quotations. She likes to make things up. She thinks something really ought to have happened, so she writes that it did happen.The meetings between Norman and Strong were very secretive, but the evidence suggests that in February 1929, they concluded that a collapse in the market was inevitable and that the best course was to let it correct "naturally" (naturally, that is, with a little help from the Fed). They sent advisory warnings to lists of preferred customers, including wealthy industrialists, politicians, and high foreign officials, telling them to get out of the market. Then the Fed began selling government securities in the open market, reducing the money supply by reducing the reserves available for backing loans. The bank loan rate was also increased, causing rates on brokers' loans to jump to 20 percent. [Web of Debt, p. 143]Your point that "She likes to make things up" is simply not true. I start with research --- an overwhelming amount of research --- and I try to knit it into a consistent, readable, understandable book. I see I did misquote my source in one place, and I will correct it in my next revision; but it was not an intentional error. My error was in assuming that "Bank of England" and "Federal Reserve" meant their heads, Montague and Norman. Other than that, I track my source, G. Edward Griffin, pretty much word for word. Griffin says:
There is circumstantial evidence that the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve had concluded, at a secret meeting in February of 1929, that a collapse in the market was inevitable and that the best action was to let nature take its course. (p 503)The rest of the story you quote is drawn from my sources quite accurately. The sources are these: 5. G. E. Griffin, "The Creature from Jekyll Island," pages 423-26, 502-03; S. Zarlenga, "The Lost Science of Money," pages 546-48.
Fact: she said Strong was in a secret meeting in 1929. Fact: he died in 1928. She should have said, "I was wrong," and let it go at that. But, no, she feels compelled to dig herself deeper into a hole. She refuses to honor the old rule: When you are in a hole, stop digging.
This error is the most obvious howler in her book. Dead men do not hold secret meetings. She obviously did not know that he had died. Reading my critique was the first time she learned about this. I caught her in a huge gaffe -- one from which there is no escape except to admit that she did not know he had died.
Here is what I did not go into in my original critique. Anyone with any knowledge of the American stock market crash of 1929 knows that Strong died in 1928. Standard monograph accounts of the Federal Reserve's tight-money policies in 1929 always discuss Strong's death in 1928. His absence is generally regarded as the reason why FED monetary policy turned tight. His successors were afraid of the stock market bubble that his loose-money policy had created. Ellen Brown is completely unaware of this history and this long historiography. In short, she does not know what she is talking about. She is faking expertise where she has none.
She wrote that "the evidence suggests" that there was such a meeting at which he attended. Now she says that there really was such a meeting, but Strong was not there. What kind of defense is this?
She now says there is "circumstantial evidence" for such a meeting. This is a major retreat. She did not use the word "circumstantial" in her book.
There is no primary source-based evidence that this meeting took place. Griffin admitted that the evidence of the meeting is circumstantial (p. 503). He offered no evidence , circumstantial or otherwise, that it ever took place. There is no footnote.
In her book, she dropped his word: "circumstantial." She was not being fair to Griffin. She was misusing his assessment, making the case for this alleged meeting appear stronger than what he had claimed. She was not putting a word in his mouth, the way she did with Murray Rothbard. She was taking a key word out of his mouth.
Once again, she was putting the shuck on her readers.
Once again, she failed to verify a source. She quoted source after source in her book, as if each were true, not bothering to verify them. I have caught her repeatedly.
I did not originally press this point, namely, that her unfamiliarity with the fact of Strong's death indicates that she is unaware of the long academic discussion of the importance of Strong in setting policy -- a policy that was reversed in 1929. Now she has given me an opportunity to let readers know just how big a gaffe this was. It was not just a gaffe about a date. It was a gaffe about not knowing the history of the subject she was writing about.
The woman just won't stop digging herself deeper into a hole.
She has refused to verify her facts -- facts that are easy to verify. Her methodology does not include verifying facts.
That this methodologically ill-equipped woman is the spokesman for the Greenback movement today provides evidence that these poor souls are easily fooled. I hope you are not one of them.
© 2022 GaryNorth.com, Inc., 2005-2021 All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission prohibited.