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- We went into a Great Depression in 1893, which lasted up until 1896. Gold began flowing out of this country at an enormous rate. You could go down to the docks in Manhattan, and you could see chests of gold being put on ships and being taken to England and France.

People were making bets on when the Treasury would run out of gold. When it could no longer sustain the gold standard, it would have to go off the gold standard, which would have been a terrible blow in prestige.

JP Morgan saw what was happening, and he went down to Washington and called on President Cleveland, who was a sound money man. Morgan actually said, you know, I will guarantee the gold. I will get you the gold you need to prevent what was turning into a panic. And I will see that that gold stays where it belongs.

He borrowed it in Europe from the Rothschilds. And it was just Morgan's personality, his extraordinary personality, that allowed this to work. And that was one of the reasons we finally got a central bank again in 1913.

We realized that, while JP Morgan had the prestige and the power to act as a central bank, to be the de facto central bank, Morgan wasn't going to live forever. And the new central bank, the Federal Reserve, came into existence in 1913, the year JP Morgan died.