William Harvey: People Profiled in Economics and Banking

Executive Summary

• William Harvey was an advisor to Williams Jennings Bryant who pressed him to question private banking interests.

Introduction

Harvey was an economic advisor to William Jennings Bryant, and opposed private banking interests. Harvey’s view on the dangers of private banking is found in the following quotation

“Harvey stressed that people who took out loans at banks were not actually borrowing money, they were borrowing debt and the commercial oligarchy, to whom it was owed would eventually end up running the country. The workers would live on credit and buy at the company store becoming wage slaves who own nothing of their own. Harvey considered money to be a direct representation of a man’s labor and usually in debt to be a scheme to put middlemen bankers between a man’s labor and his property. Even efficient farmers operating on the debt money model would eventually have some bad years and they would default on their loans. Every year there would be a certain number of foreclosures and the banks would get the land which would be sold to the larger farm owners, the country’s property would gradually become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The farms, factories, and businesses would wind up owned by a few individuals and corporations that were controlled by the bankers who control the money supply. At the heart of the problem said Harvey was the Federal Reserve System, which allowed banks to issue debt and pretend it was money. This sleight of hand was what ahead allowed the bankers to slowly foreclose on the country moving ownership to the Wall Street banks, brokerage houses, and insurance companies.”

Source: The Web of Debt

https://www.amazon.com/Web-Debt-Shocking-Truth-System/dp/0983330859