Marriner Eccles | |
---|---|
Chair of the Federal Reserve | |
In office November 15, 1934 – February 3, 1948 |
|
President |
Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman |
Deputy |
John Thomas Ronald Ransom |
Preceded by | Eugene Black |
Succeeded by | Thomas McCabe |
Personal details | |
Born |
Logan, Utah, U.S. |
September 9, 1890
Died | December 18, 1977 Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. |
(aged 87)
Political party | Republican |
Marriner Stoddard Eccles (September 9, 1890 – December 18, 1977) was a U.S. banker, economist, and member and chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
Marriner Stoddard Eccles was known during his lifetime chiefly as having been the Chairman of the Federal Reserve under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He has been remembered for having even anticipated and certainly then having supported the theories of John Maynard Keynes relative to "inadequate aggregate spending" in the economy which appeared during his tenure. As Eccles wrote in his memoir Beckoning Frontiers (1951):
"As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth ... to provide men with buying power. ... Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. ... The other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped."
Born in Logan, Utah to David and Ellen (Stoddard) Eccles, he was educated at public schools of Baker, Oregon and attended Brigham Young College and served a Latter-day Saint mission to Scotland. After his mission, while working in a family enterprise in Blacksmith Fork Canyon, he learned of the untimely death of his father, David Eccles. With great skill and tenacity, he was able to reorganize and consolidate the assets of his father's industrial conglomerate and banking network. Eccles expanded the banking interests into a large western chain of banks called Eccles-Browning Affiliated Banks. He was a millionaire by age 22. The company withstood several bank runs during the Great Depression and, as a leading banker, Eccles became involved with the creation of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. After a brief stint at the Treasury Department and with the support of treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Eccles was appointed by President Roosevelt as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Eccles was reappointed chair in 1936, 1940, and 1944 and served until 1948. In February 1944, Roosevelt appointed Eccles for another 14-year term on the board and Eccles stayed on the board until 1951, when he resigned a few months after the 1951 Accord. Eccles had also participated in post-World War II Bretton Woods negotiations that created the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.