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The Logic and Legitimacy of Bank Supervision: The Case of the Bank Holiday of 1933

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2021

Peter Conti-Brown  and
Sean H. Vanatta
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Abstract

The U.S. banking holiday of March 1933 was a pivotal event in twentieth-century political and economic history. After closing the nation's banks for nine days, the administration of newly inaugurated president Franklin D. Roosevelt restarted the banking system as the first step toward national recovery from the global Great Depression. In the conventional narrative, the holiday succeeded because Roosevelt used his political talents to restore public confidence in the nation's banks. However, such accounts say virtually nothing about what happened during the holiday itself. We reinterpret the banking crises of the 1930s and the 1933 holiday through the lens of bank supervision, the continuous oversight of commercial banks by government officials. Through the 1930s banking crises, federal supervisors identified troubled banks but could not act to close them. Roosevelt empowered supervisors to act decisively during the holiday. By closing some banks, supervisors made credible Roosevelt's claims that banks that reopened were sound. Thus, the union of FDR's political skills with the technical judgment of bank supervisors was the key to solving the banking crisis. Neither could stand alone, and both together were the vital precondition for further economic reforms—including devaluing the dollar—and, with them, Roosevelt's New Deal.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 95 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 87 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2021

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Footnotes

The authors would like to thank the following friends and colleagues for their helpful comments: Dan Awrey, Ben Bernanke, Katlyn Carter, Brian Feinstein, Dick Herring, Eric Hilt, Harold James, Kate Judge, Mike Klausner, Kevin Kruse, Yair Listokin, Jon Macey, Paul Mahoney, Eric Monnet, John Morley, Eric Rauchway, George Selgin, David Zaring, and Julian Zelizer. We would like to give special thanks to Judge Glock, whose insights and source recommendations proved especially useful, and the journal's anonymous reviewers for their critical insights.

References

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2 Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat.”

3 Eric Rauchway argues that these actions were simultaneous and that devaluation took precedence. Rauchway, The Money Makers: How Roosevelt and Keynes Ended the Depression, Defeated Fascism, and Secured a Prosperous Peace (New York, 2015), 19–72. Many economic historians disagree, arguing that the devaluation stands alone in its impact on recovery. See Temin, Peter and Wigmore, Barrie A., “The End of One Big Deflation,” Explorations in Economic History 27 (1990): 483–502CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Scott Sumner, The Midas Paradox: Financial Markets, Government Policy Shocks, and the Great Depression (New York, 2015).

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15 Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency (1930), 79–83; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency (1922), 5; A. Barton Hepburn, Examination Books, 1889–1891, box 6, A. Barton Hepburn Collection, Columbia University; Paulger, “Policy and Procedure,” 219–27.

16 Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency (1934), 3–4; Leo T. Crowley to Marriner S. Eccles, 9 Feb. 1938, Morgenthau Diaries, book 120, 289, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/morg/md0158.pdf; Walter A. Morton, “Liquidity and Solvency,” American Economic Review 29, no. 2 (1939): 279.

17 Federal Reserve, Committee on Branch, Chain, and Group Banking, “225 Bank Suspensions: Case Histories from Examiners' Reports,” [May 1933], 15, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/797 (The Federal Reserve lists this report as ca. 1932, but the final version was completed in 1933 [see Appendix]); Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Department of Treasury, “Correspondence between Comptroller of Currency and First National Bank of Canton, Pa., May 9, 1904 to Oct. 16, 1918; on Government examinations and responses of bank, including data on excessive loans, losses on notes, and delinquent accounts for specific individuals and firms,” 1 Jan. 1919, Proquest Accession no. T12.2-16.1, https://congressional.proquest.com/congressional/docview/t66.d71.t12.2-16.1; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency (1931), 11–12.

18 Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency (1915), 63; Frank A. Vanderlip, “What About the Banks,” 5 Nov. 1932, 9, Pamphlet Collection, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, DE.

19 Federal Reserve, Committee on Branch, Chain, and Group Banking, “225 Bank Suspensions,” 17; Stock Exchange Practices, Part 12, 73rd Cong. 5846 (1934) (statement of Francis G. Awalt, Deputy Comptroller of the Currency).

20 Westerfield, Ray B., “Marginal Collateral to Discounts at the Federal Reserve Banks,” American Economic Review 22, no. 1 (1932): 42–43Google Scholar; Caroline Whitney, Experiments in Credit Control: The Federal Reserve System (New York, 1934), 41–42. For a good historical overview of the real bills doctrine and the Great Depression, see Glock, Judge, “The ‘Reifler-Keynes’ Doctrine and Federal Reserve Policy in the Great Depression,” History of Political Economy 51, no. 2 (2019): 297–327CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the influence of the doctrine, see Judge, Kathryn, “The Federal Reserve: A Study in Soft Constraints,” Law and Contemporary Problems 78 (2015): 64–96Google Scholar.

21 Emanuel A. Goldenweiser, American Monetary Policy (New York, 1951), 165.

22 “John W. Pole,” Federal Reserve History, accessed 19 Jan. 2021, https://www.federalreservehistory.org/people/john_w_pole; Francis Gloyd Awalt, “Recollections of the Banking Crisis in 1933,” Business History Review 43, no. 3 (1969): 347; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency (1929), 3–4.

23 John Berry McFerrin, Caldwell & Company (Chapel Hill, 1939), 24–36, 127–28, 176; Elmus Wicker, The Banking Panics of the Great Depression (New York, 1996), 24–36; Operation of the National and Federal Reserve Banking Systems, Part 5, 71st Cong. 632 (1931) (statement of J. W. Pole, Comptroller of the Currency).

24 McFerrin, Caldwell & Company, 129; Operation of the National and Federal Reserve Banking Systems, Part 5 (statement of Pole); Richardson, Gary, “The Check Is in the Mail: Correspondent Clearing and the Banking Panics of the Great Depression,” Journal of Economic History 67, no. 3 (2007): 659–61Google Scholar; Richardson, Gary and Troost, William, “Monetary Intervention Mitigated Banking Panics during the Great Depression: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Federal Reserve District Border, 1929–1933,” Journal of Political Economy 117, no. 6 (2009): 1031–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Eugene Meyer to Francis G. Awalt, 13 Aug. 1931, quoted in Stock Exchange Practices, Part 12, 5832 (statement of Awalt); James Pole to Chief National Bank Examiners, 6 Aug. 1931, telegram, quoted in Stock Exchange Practices, Part 12, 5835–36 (statement of Awalt).

26 Stock Exchange Practices, Part 10, 73rd Cong. 4702, 4704 (1933) (statement of Alfred P. Leyburn, Chief National Bank Examiner, Fourth Federal Reserve District); Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz, Monetary History of the United States, 1867– 1960 (Princeton, 1963), 312–17; Allan H. Meltzer, A History of the Federal Reserve, vol. 1, 1913–1951 (Chicago, 2003), 336–37, 412–13; Wicker, Banking Panics, 85–86; Federal Reserve Board, “Meeting Minutes,” 11 Aug. 1931 (11:30 a.m.), 7–8, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/821#31944; Eugene M. Lokey, “Along the Highways of Finance,” New York Times, 20 Sept. 1931, N11; Walter Ferguson to F. G. Awalt, 9 Nov. 1931, folder 10, box 3, F. G. Awalt Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, Ames, IA (hereafter Awalt Papers); J. W. Pole to National Bank Examiners, 18 Dec. 1931, memo, quoted in Stock Exchange Practices, Part 10, 4644 (statement of Leyburn); “Banking Situation in the Second District,” 8 Dec. 1931, folder 3, box 117, Eugene Meyer Papers, FRASER. This argument contrasts in particular with that of Friedman and Schwartz, who argue that “by reducing the market value of the bond portfolios of banks, declines in bond prices in turn reduced the margin of capital as evaluated by bank examiners, and in this way contributed to subsequent bank failures.” Friedman and Schwartz, Monetary History, 312.

27 Pole to National Bank Examiners memo, quoted in Stock Exchange Practices, Part 10, 4644 (statement of Leyburn); Diamond, Douglas W. and Dybvig, Philip H., “Bank Runs, Deposit Insurance, and Liquidity,” Journal of Political Economy 91, no. 3 (1983): 410Google Scholar; Stock Exchange Practices, Part 12, 5774–75, 5845 (statement of Alfred P. Leyburn; statement of Awalt).

28 Richardson, “Categories and Causes,” 606; Operation of the National and Federal Reserve Banking Systems, Part 2, 72nd Cong. 435 (1932) (statement of J. W. Pole, Comptroller of the Currency).

29 Stock Exchange Practices, Part 10, 4646 (statement of Leyburn).

30 Francis G. Awalt to Ogden Mills, 12 Nov. 1932, folder 1, box 4; Francis G. Awalt, Memorandum for Files, 15 Nov. 1932, folder 10, box 3, both in Awalt Papers.

31 John T. Flynn, “Michigan Magic,” Harper's Magazine 168 (Dec. 1932): 5; Lumley, Darwyn H., Breaking the Banks in the Motor City: The Auto Industry, the 1933 Detroit Banking Crisis and the Start of the New Deal (Jefferson, NC, 2009), 38Google Scholar; Stock Exchange Practices, Part 12, 5762 (statement of Leyburn); Alfred Leyburn to the Comptroller of the Currency, 14 June 1932, quoted in Stock Exchange Practices, Part 10, 4638 (statement of Leyburn); Awalt, “Recollections,” 349–56, 359–60; Kennedy, Banking Crisis, 77–95, 134; Rockoff, “Meaning of Money,” 37; Calomiris, Charles W. and Mason, Joseph R., “Fundamentals, Panics, and Bank Distress during the Great Depression,” American Economic Review 93, no. 5 (2003): 1615–47Google Scholar; Wigmore, “Bank Holiday,” 739–56.

32 Kennedy, Banking Crisis, 131–35; Robert Lynn Fuller, “Phantom of Fear”: The Banking Panic of 1933 (Jefferson, NC, 2012), 158–61; Ballantine, Arthur A., “When All the Banks Closed,” Harvard Business Review 26, no. 2 (1948): 133–38Google Scholar; Schlesinger, Coming of the New Deal, 3; George W. Norris, Ended Episodes (Philadelphia, 1937), 220–30.

33 Eric Rauchway, Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash over the New Deal (New York, 2018), 205–9, 222; Emanuel A. Goldenweiser, contemporaneous notes, 3 Mar. 1933, folder 11, box 1, Awalt Papers.

34 Kenneth Whyte, Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times (New York, 2017), 521–23; Schlesinger, Coming of the New Deal, 4; Goldenweiser, contemporaneous notes, 3 Mar. 1933.

35 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Inaugural Address,” 4 Mar. 1933, American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/inaugural-address-8.

36 Will Rogers, “Will Rogers Remarks,” Los Angeles Times, 6 Mar. 1933, 1; Franklyn Waltman Jr., “Roosevelt Proclaims National Bank Holiday to Last until Friday,” Baltimore Sun, 6 Mar. 1933, 1.

37 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Proclamation 2039—Declaring Bank Holiday,” 6 Mar. 1933, American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-2039-declaring-bank-holiday; Ogden Mills to William Woodin, 4 Mar. 1933, folder 7, box 1, Awalt Papers.

38 Francis G. Awalt, [“Personal Account of F. G. Awalt”], Mar. 1933, folder 11, box 1, Awalt Papers; Goldenweiser, contemporaneous notes, 3 Mar. 1933; Mills to Woodin, 4 Mar. 1933.

39 Kennedy, Banking Crisis, 168–74; Marcus Nadler and Jules I. Bogen, The Banking Crisis: The End of an Epoch (New York, 1933), 162–65; Federal Reserve Board, “Meeting Minutes,” 8 Mar 1933, 3, vol. 20, part 1, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/821#31067; Awalt, “Recollections,” 366; Awalt, [“Personal Account”].

40 Federal Reserve Board, “Meeting Minutes,” 9 Mar. 1933, 7, vol. 20, part 1, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/821#28365; Awalt, “Recollections,” 368n5; Kennedy, Banking Crisis, 183–84; Federal Reserve Board, “Meeting Minutes,” 11 Mar. 1933, 3–4, vol. 20, part 1, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/821#31477.

41 Kennedy, Banking Crisis, 175; Awalt, [“Personal Account”]; 77 Cong. Rec. 58 (1933) (statement of Sen. Glass).

42 77 Cong. Rec. 62 (1933) (statement of Sen. Vandenberg); Kennedy, Banking Crisis, 176–77.

43 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Executive Order 6073—Reopening Banks,” American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-6073-reopening-banks; O'Connor, J. F. T., The Banking Crisis and Recovery under the Roosevelt Administration (Chicago, 1938), 19Google Scholar; Federal Reserve Board, “Meeting Minutes,” 11 Mar. 1933, 15.

44 Committee on the History of the Federal Reserve System, “Interviews with Mr. J. Herbert Case,” 26 Feb. 1954, folder 1, box 2, Committee on the History of the Federal Reserve System, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/archival/1342/item/458291; George Seay to David R. Coker, quoted in Fuller, “Phantom of Fear,” 198; Awalt, “Recollections,” 369n6; Ernest K. Lindsey, quoted in Kennedy, Banking Crisis, 237; Norris, Ended Episodes, 232–33.

45 Grace Tully, FDR: My Boss (New York, 1949), 88, quoted in Geoffrey Storm, “FDR and WGY: The Origins of the Fireside Chats,” New York History 88, no. 2 (2007): 178; Amos Kiewe, FDR's First Fireside Chat: Public Confidence and the Banking Crisis (College Station, TX, 2007), 76–82; Awalt, ““Recollections,” 370; Eugene M. Stephens to Eugene R. Black, 2 June 1933, folder 2, box 2165, Records of the Federal Reserve System, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/archival/1344/item/469284.

46 Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat.”

47 “City Recovers Confidence as 34 Banks Reopen,” Chicago Tribune, 14 Mar. 1933; S. A. Hayes, “Local Bank Rides Financial Storm,” Philadelphia Tribune, 16 Mar. 1933; Kennedy, Banking Crisis, 187; “Bank Openings by States,” New York Times, 17 Mar. 1933, 4; Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (1933), 7.

48 “Hoarders of Gold Will Be Identified,” Washington Post, 9 Mar. 1933, 1; “Hoarders in Fright Turn In $30,000,000,” New York Times, 10 Mar. 1933, 1; “Gold Inflow Brings in $20,000,000 in Day,” New York Times, 11 Mar. 1933, 1; “Confidence Increasing as More Banks Reopen,” Wall Street Journal, 15 Mar. 1933, 10; Federal Reserve System, Annual Report (1933), 14.

49 Federal Reserve System, Annual Report (1933), 22; Federal Reserve System, Annual Report (1935), 176; Kennedy, Banking Crisis, 188–89 (Awalt quote, 189); Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat.”

50 Jones, Jesse H., Fifty Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC, 1932–1945 (New York, 1951), 26Google Scholar; Schlesinger, Coming of the New Deal, 428–30; Annual Report of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (1934), 14–16; “Expansionists at Hyde Park,” Wall Street Journal, 10 Sept. 1934, 1; “Roosevelt Backs Charges Examiners Balk Good Loans,” Wall Street Journal, 13 Sept. 1934, 1; Weiss, Stuart L., The President's Man: Leo Crowley and Franklin Roosevelt in Peace and War (Carbondale, IL, 1996), 42Google Scholar.We examine desupervision in our forthcoming history of federal bank supervision (Peter Conti-Brown and Sean H. Vanatta, The Banker's Thumb: A History of Bank Supervision in America [Cambridge, MA, forthcoming]).

51 Thomas J. Sargent, Rational Expectations and Inflation (New York, 1986).

52 The rise of supervision only continued through the advent of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a kind of institutionalization of the holiday ethos that fundamentally altered the practice of supervision. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, The First Fifty Years: A History of the FDIC, 1933–1983 (Washington, DC, 1984).

53 Randal K. Quarles, “Spontaneity and Order: Transparency, Accountability, and Fairness in Bank Supervision” (speech at the American Bar Association Banking Law Committee Meeting 2020, Washington, DC, 17 Jan. 2020), https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/quarles20200117a.htm. Importantly, Quarles has also issued a plea for more scholarly attention on supervision as a field of study. Quarles, “Law and Macroeconomics: The Global Evolution of Macroprudential Regulation” (speech at Law and Macroeconomics conference, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC, 27 Sept. 2019), https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/quarles20190927a.htm.

54 This view is shared by Ben Bernanke, who describes the mechanics of the SCAP in detail. See Bernanke, The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath (New York, 2016), 394–98.

55 Federal Reserve, Committee on Branch, Chain, and Group Banking, “225 Bank Suspensions,” 254–57; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency (1925), 237; Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Committee on Branch, Group, and Chain Banking, Summary of Reports Prepared for the Information of the Federal Reserve System, 1933, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/813; Carter Glass to Eugene Meyer, 15 Apr. 1933; E. A. Goldenweiser to L. R. Rounds, 27 Apr. 1933; E. A. Goldenweiser to Carter Glass, 25 May 1933, Committee on Branch, Group & Chain Banking (1933–1954): Branch Banks, folder 4, box 1797, Records of the Federal Reserve System, RG 82, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/archival/1344/item/593326.

56 Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency (1923), 9. The National Archives hold examination reports in several collections, most notably the Comptroller of the Currency (RG 101, bulk of reports span 1863–1917) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (RG 34, examination summaries for 1934–1970).