Lords of Finance: 1929, the Great Depression, and the Bankers Who Broke the World (43 page)

When Strong flippantly spoke to Rist of giving the stock market that
petit coup de whisky,
in his wildest imagination he could not have foreseen the extent of the drunken ride that was to come. In 1925, he had kept money easy to help sterling, betting successfully that the stock market would remain under control. He was now trying the same gamble a second time. This time he was badly wrong. In August, following the Fed cut in rates, the market immediately took off. By the end of the year, the Dow had risen over 20 percent, breaking 200. In January 1928, the Fed revealed that the volume of broker loans had risen to a record $4.4 billion from $3.3 billion the previous year.

By early 1928, the calls on the Fed to do something about the market had become a clamor. The United States had come out of its brief
recession, and for the first time since the war, gold was flowing into Europe. Even the pound seemed in better shape. In February 1928, Strong, recognizing that the cut might have been a mistake, bowed to pressure and agreed to reverse course. Over the next three months, the Fed raised its rates from 3.5 percent to 5 percent.

In 1931, Adolph Miller would testify before the Congress that the easing of credit in the middle of 1927 was “the greatest and boldest operation
⁴⁵⁷
ever undertaken by the Federal Reserve System, . . . [resulting] in one of the most costly errors committed by it or any other banking system in the last years.” Some historians, echoing the views of Hoover and Miller, see the meeting on Long Island as the pivotal moment, the turning point that set in train the fateful sequence of events that would eventually lead the world into depression. They argue that by artificially depressing interest rates in the United States to prop up the pound, the Fed helped fuel the stock bubble that subsequently led to the crash two years later.

It is hard to dismiss this view. Though the cut was small—only 0.5 percent off the level of interest rates—and short lived—reversed within six months—the fact that the market should begin the dizzying phase of its rally in the very same month, August 1927, that the easing took place has to be more than mere coincidence. The Fed’s move was the spark that lit the forest fire.

AS NORMAN TRAVELED
back to England, he had every reason to be satisfied with the outcome on Long Island. He had achieved his primary goal of getting the Federal Reserve to support the pound by easing credit. Nevertheless, he had an uneasy feeling. It was clear that Strong was increasingly sympathetic to the French. Sounding like a jealous suitor vying for the attentions of a popular girl, Norman lamented that Strong “takes great interest
⁴⁵⁸
in the Banque de France and has much personal liking and sympathy” for Charles Rist, which put Norman himself at “a disadvantage.” But it was not simply that the Banque de France was beginning to supplant the Bank of England in the affections of the New York Fed. More
important in Norman’s mind was the central bankers’ failure, as prices kept falling, to counter deflationary forces around the world. They had to find more permanent ways to keep “gold out of New York,” and redistribute reserves more efficiently.

The summer of 1927 would prove to be the high point of Norman’s influence. The modest Fed easing in August brought a temporary reprieve. Gold flowed into Britain. But he still faced the same old problems with France. In February 1928, Norman and Moreau clashed yet again. Romania, one of the last Central European economies to get its house in order, approached the club of central bankers for a loan. Norman assumed that the Bank of England would take charge of the operation, much as it had in the case of Austria and Hungary. But with French finances now strong, Moreau could see no reason why France should not resume its old position of authority in Central Europe. After all, before the war, Romania had been part of the traditional French sphere of influence. On February 6, 1928, as the power struggle over monetary leadership in Eastern Europe reached its head, he wrote in his diary,

I had an important conversation
⁴⁵⁹
with M. Poincaré over the issue of the Bank of England’s imperialism.

I explained to the Prime Minister that since England was the first European country to recover a stable and reliable currency after the war, it had used this advantage to build the foundation for a veritable financial domination of Europe. . . .

England has thus managed to install itself completely in Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Norway and Italy. It will implant itself next in Greece and Portugal. It is attempting to get a foothold in Yugoslavia and it is fighting us on the sly in Rumania.

We now possess powerful means of exerting pressure on the Bank of England. Would it not be in order to have a serious discussion with Mr. Norman and attempt to
divide Europe into two spheres of financial influence assigned respectively to France and England?

On February 21, Moreau, irritated by the British “intrigues to prevent France
⁴⁶⁰
from playing the dominant role” in Romania, arrived in London, declaring that he was going to “ask Norman to choose between peace and war.” Norman, who hated outright confrontations, feigned illness at the last minute and begged off the meeting, leaving his directors to deal with the now doubly irritated Frenchman.

The Romanian issue, exacerbated by pettiness on both sides, threatened to escalate into a major diplomatic incident between the two great banks. Strong initially tried to act as a mediator but eventually came down on the side of the Banque de France. He was especially irritated by reports in European banking and political circles that his friend Norman was trying “to establish some sort of dictatorship over the central banks of Europe” and that Strong “was collaborating with him in such a program and supporting him.” Norman had obviously taken advantage of their friendship to give everyone the impression that he had the Fed in his pocket.

By now, he had begun to regret his support for the doctrine that central banks be encouraged to hold pounds as a substitute for gold. The policy had allowed Britain to buoy its international position by using its status as a pivotal currency to postpone some hard choices. By avoiding an immediate crisis, the policy had set the stage for an even greater crisis in the future. As money continued to pour into France, the Banque had accumulated over a billion dollars worth of pounds, which at some point it would want to cash in for gold. Strong had some sympathy for its dilemma. The gold standard demanded that a central bank should allow all comers to switch their currency holdings freely into bullion. But unless Britain’s position was to improve, such a move would completely drain the Bank of England’s reserves and threaten the very viability of the gold standard.

He also began to realize that his policy of keeping U.S. interest rates low to bolster sterling had failed to solve the fundamental problem of the British economy—that its prices were too high and its currency
overvalued. Furthermore, he had unintentionally provided the impetus for the growing bubble on Wall Street. And it had exposed him to constant criticism at home over his excessive focus on international affairs. That summer the
Chicago Tribune
denounced him for creating “speculation on the stock market
⁴⁶¹
that was growing . . . like a snowball rolling down a hill” and called for his resignation.

He was by now exhausted and disillusioned, particularly with the quarrelsome Europeans. His doctors warned him that if he wished to live, he could not continue to work. His lungs were failing. He was hit by a bout of shingles that covered his face, temporarily blinding him in one eye and leaving only partial sight in the other. The virus brought on a severe case of neuritis and the massive doses of morphine that cut back the pain sufficiently for him to work had destroyed his digestive system. The tuberculosis had come back in his left lung and, once more, he developed bronchial pneumonia.

In May 1928, Strong sailed for Europe. He had already decided to submit his resignation. Ironically, he seemed on the verge of finding some personal happiness. In 1926, his ex-wife Katharine had written to him, regretting her past mistakes and asking for reconciliation. He wrote back to say that would not be feasible, citing his illness as the reason. By 1928, however, he had begun a relationship with a much younger woman, an opera singer whom he intended to marry.

Deliberately avoiding London, he arrived at Cherbourg in the third week of May. Norman rushed over to see him. That last meeting was a difficult one. Losing his temper, Strong tried to make Norman see that he was his own worst enemy. He reminded his friend, in the “most vehement language
⁴⁶²
” that Moreau’s hoard of sterling was a “sword of Damocles” over the Bank of England, making it “stupid beyond understanding” for Norman to pick a quarrel with the French when he was so “completely dependent upon the good will of the Bank of France.” They parted on bad terms. Though Strong did write a letter over the summer to make up, he still grumbled to friends about Norman’s obsessive scheming for power within Europe.

The strain of the quarrel with Strong and the tensions with the French had begun to tell on Norman’s nerves. As the stresses grew, he withdrew more and more into himself, refusing to take his colleagues into his confidence. At one point, several frustrated senior directors
⁴⁶³
of the Bank launched a campaign of noncooperation by pointedly refusing to speak at the weekly meetings of the Committee of the Treasury, the Court’s policymaking group. Everyone remarked on the increased volatility of the governor’s mood swings. “One moment he would be sunny
⁴⁶⁴
and all smiles, the next, for no apparent reason his face would be like a thundercloud,” recalled one colleague. He threw tantrums at the staff—in a fit of temper, he once flung an ink pot at Sir Ernest Harvey, the comptroller—and his bouts of “nervous exhaustion” seemed to become more frequent. In mid-February 1928, he collapsed and was bedridden for a few days. A week later, it happened again. In the middle of March he was forced to take three weeks off to recuperate in Madeira. A few weeks after that last difficult meeting at Cherbourg, he left for a three-month complete rest in South Africa and did not return to work until early September.

Strong spent a melancholy summer in France. After a few weeks in Paris, he went on to Evian and Grasse, in the south of France. In July, he wrote to Norman of his decision to resign. “How hard and how cruel
⁴⁶⁵
life is.” Norman wrote back, “But what a stage ours has been over these ten or twelve years. . . . Your early dreams set a goal before a world, which was then so distracted as to be blind and incredulous. Now your dreams have come true.”

After Strong returned to New York, on October 15, he underwent an operation to stem intestinal bleeding. The next day, he died in the hospital of a severe secondary hemorrhage. He was only fifty-five.

Norman took the blow very badly. “I am desolate and lonesome
⁴⁶⁶
at Ben’s sudden death,” he wrote to a friend. They had been close for barely seven years. But in that time the friendship had become central to each of their lives. He would soon discover that Strong’s death had not only robbed him of his best friend, but also of much of his power.

^fn1
The Banco d’Italia, which had stabilized the lira in December 1926, only six months after the franc, somehow got the impression that it, too, would be asked to attend, and was much disappointed when no invitation arrived.

^fn2
With his sister, Gladys Livingstone Mills Phipps and his polo-playing brother-in-law, Henry Carnegie Phipps, he owned the Wheatley Stable, which bred the legendary racehorse Seabiscuit.

^fn3
For most goods, when a shortage emerges and demand exceeds supply, the price rises. Because under the gold standard, the price of gold was fixed in dollar terms, the first symptom of a gold shortage was not a rise in its price—that by definition could not happen—but a fall in the price of all other commodities.