US Presidency
1932

During the past few weeks the Democratic candidate has had a great deal to say in endeavoring to establish the idea in the minds of the American people that I am personally responsible for the bad loans by American bankers and investors to numerous foreign countries. He says: This is an unsavory chapter in American finance. I agree with part of that. These bonds are in large part the fruit of the distressing policies pursued by the present administration in Washington. None other, if you please, than the ability of lending to backward and crippled countries. That is the end of the quotation from him. The Governor does not inform the American people that there is no Federal law regulating the sale of securities and that there is doubtful constitutional authority for such a law. And he fails to state that most of these bonds are issued from the State of New York, which sovereignty has such an authority, and where the government has done nothing of a reform to that evil, if it be one.