Book: FDR and Wall Street by Antony C. Sutton.
Dive into the meticulously documented findings of Antony C. Sutton, the renowned British-born American economist and revisionist historian, who profoundly challenges the heroic portrayal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR). This explainer video, based on Sutton’s landmark work, Wall Street and FDR, reveals how FDR was not a champion fighting big business, but a politician “deeply intertwined with corporate interests”.
FDR’s Deep Financial Entanglement
Sutton exposes how FDR’s career was rooted in high finance, benefiting from the long-standing ties of the Roosevelt and Delano families to New York banking and railroad development. Prior to his presidency, FDR held numerous corporate directorships, demonstrating his immersion in the business world. A critical connection highlighted is FDR’s tenure from 1921 to 1928 as Vice President of the Fidelity & Deposit Company. Sutton details how FDR’s role was to leverage his political connections to secure the bonding business, illustrating the fundamental “fusion of business and politics”. Furthermore, the sources reveal FDR’s opportunistic side, including his organization and presidency of United European Investors, Ltd., a speculative venture designed to capitalize on the devastating German hyperinflation of the early 1920s.
The New Deal Transaction: From Hoover to NIRA
Discover the political transaction that secured FDR’s 1932 election victory. Sutton documents that Wall Street financiers strategically shifted their backing from Herbert Hoover to FDR. This crucial pivot occurred because Hoover refused to adopt the Swope Plan, developed by Gerard Swope (President of General Electric). FDR’s acceptance of this plan—which became the cornerstone of the New Deal, the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)—guaranteed him the necessary financial support.
Sutton defines the beneficiaries of this system as “corporate socialists”: powerful businessmen who supported government intervention and regulation primarily to secure their own entrenched interests, rather than dismantle them. Sutton argues that the New Deal policies ultimately favored large corporations and financial elites. Even FDR’s uncle, Frederic Adrian Delano, who served on the Federal Reserve Board and later chaired the National Resources Planning Board, is highlighted as exemplifying this duality, being “simultaneously both capitalist and planner“.
The Truth Behind the Rhetoric
This video presents Sutton’s powerful critique against biographers like Schlesinger and Freidel who have overlooked or downplayed these connections. It underscores the stark contrast between FDR’s public image as a reformer and his private actions, which aligned with financial elites. The video closes with FDR’s own sobering assessment from 1933, cited by Sutton: “The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson...”.
Watch to understand Sutton’s core thesis: that political ideology often serves as a mask for the consolidation of financial control.
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