Credit: Man's Confidence in Man

Behold the impressive golden frieze to the right. It's in a hallway at Harvard Business School. Even though it's from 1834, it has a message written just for today's crisis: it's titled "Credit: Man's Confidence in Man". Under a picture of two men shaking hands, you can read this quotation from Daniel Webster, from a speech he gave in the U.S. Senate, on March 18, 1834:

"Commercial credit is the creation of modern times and belongs in its highest perfection only to the most enlightened and best governed nations. Credit is the vital air of the system of modern commerce. It has done more -- a thousand times more -- to enrich nations than all the mines of the world."

I stumbled on this frieze just after giving a talk at Harvard Business School. I did an Internet search to find out more, and I discovered that this frieze has copies in some interesting places. A copy that used to be above the front entrance to 99 Church Street, no doubt seen by thousands more people than the one I saw at Harvard, is now in the new offices of Moody's Corporation at 7 World Trade Center (click here for a photo).

Do you agree? Are we at risk of gasping for air? And what should the government do to make sure there is plenty of this "vital air" to keep us all breathing?

Comments

[joebaggadonuts]

I like it, but I like the short one in the Biddle Law School better from Lord Coke:
"...the law is unknowne to him that knoweth not the reason thereof, and that the known certaintie of the law is the safetie of all."

We should have respect for the law if we want to breathe free air of commercial credit. That respect can form the foundation of the trust that Webster was talking about, or if disrespected, destroy it.

In looking this up, I stumbled upon one by Coke (http://www.commonlaw.com/Coke.html) that should apply to credit default swaps in today's economic pandemonium:

"HERE is rehearsed a maxime of the common law, that every warrantie doth descend upon him that is heire to him that made the warrantie, by the common law, as here it appeareth."

[kaski]

The Congress should overturn the 1913 Federal Reserve Act that gave total control of our central banking system to the Robber Baron families. The Federal Reserve is a privately owned commercial bank, owned by such families as the Rockeffellers, Morgans, Warburgs..., and is as much Federal as Federal Express is. This is not conspiracy theory but reality and the truth. They own America and it's citizens thru debt owed them, with interest, by our government. The private bankers have been trying to own our central banking system since our Revolutionary War with money given or barrowed to agents of the Rothschild's Bank of England. Alexander Hamilton believed that our central banking system should be privately owned by the rich elite, creating debt, so they could control America.
"Permit me to control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes it's laws." Mayer Rothschild
There were many Presidents that knew of our privately controlled central banking system and two that physically tried to rid our country of their strangle hold on America were Lincoln and JFK. Put two and two together.
"The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed it's inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating." Thomas Jefferson
"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance." James Madison
Learn and study.