Talk:Reconstruction Finance Corporation

Links to espionage?
I was puzzled by the category links to VENONA and espionage. After perusing articles in those categories, I believe the only connection between them and this article is that there is a Rfc - "Request for comment" active on the VENONA article, and someone may have mistakenly linked this article on RFC to it. If there really is a connection between espionage and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, please make it clear in the RFC article. Thanks. Her Pegship 17:08, 1 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Nobs01 put the categories back in, but I still don't see any connection at all between RFC and espionage. Thanks for the link to the Havlik oral history interview, which mentions the RFC, but please, if you add the cats, please clarify on this page or my talk page why they are here. Thanks. Her Pegship 00:05, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

If we followed Nobs's example for assigning categories, the category system would become a uselessly broad game of Six Degrees of Separation. People looking for information about espionage will already find plenty of links to Currie, et al., which already mention their connections to the RFC and so on. If someone at Los Alamos or the Treasury or the Department of Motor Vehicles or whatever is accused of being a spy, or found to be a spy, that does not make the articles about those agencies into articles about espionage. I'm removing those category links. &#8592;Hob 20:03, 2 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Nobs's response to me, copied from my user talk page:
 * "When a federal agency is infiltrated with 6 to 24 agents in the service of a foreign government, and the head of the agency himself/herself is an agent of a foreign government; and documentation exists from investigations that a foreign government used the agency to shape policy, that agency then can be listed in the various espionage categories. Yes, more narative is needed in the article, and will be supplied upon review of all source material. Thank you."
 * To which I say: (a) When the article (rather than your own internal musings) explains the significance of the RFC in espionage, then we can talk about assigning categories. Note that espionage is defined as intelligence gathering, not "a foreign government [shaping] policy" (and you haven't explained how Soviet agents shaped policy through the RFC or hoped to). (b) More generally, you have a very frequent habit of inserting vague references into articles and, in response to complaints, saying things along the lines of "I'm in the process of research on this and will get back to you when I finish reviewing the material". That is not a good approach to Wikipedia editing. If you don't yet have your facts together and can't justify your interpretation clearly, do not make the edits.  &#8592;Hob 20:33, 2 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Half the problem is getting the name of the organization; for example, this language,
 * "The words “Export-Import Bank of the United States” are substituted for “Export-Import Bank of Washington” because of section 1(a) of the Act of March 13, 1968 (Pub. L. 90–267, 82 Stat. 47). The words “Petroleum Reserves Corporation” are omitted because the corporation was transferred to the Office of Economic Warfare, which was consolidated into the Foreign Economic Administration, which was transferred to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and changed to the War Assets Corporation. The War Assets Corporation was dissolved as soon as practicable after March 25, 1946. The words “Rubber Development Corporation” are omitted because the certificate of incorporation expired on June 30, 1947. The words “U. S. Commercial Company” are omitted because the company was liquidated after June 30, 1948."
 * is the actual text of the Law that disolved the Reconstruction Finance Corportation and merged its entities into other agencies. Then there is the problem of personal; the Senate Interlocking Subversion in Government investigation took many years to establish just exactly what agency a particular person may have actually worked for during the Roosevelt & Truman administration. Very often a person was drawing a salary from, say U.S. Department of Agriculture for example, yet worked in the U.S. Department of Treasury. (Incidently, the Senate SISS investigation has absolutely nothing to do with Joesph McCarthy).  Thanks again.  nobs 20:44, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
 * P.S. Policy subversion is perhaps the highest and most effective form of espionage. nobs 21:07, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Effectivness?
I'm a little unsure about some claims here. It says in the introduction that this was a very successful endeavor and all loans were repaid, it became central to the great depression, etc. but in the body it seems like the RFC didn't work until FDR integrated it into the New Deal. For all of the positive representation in the intro, it doesn't seem like the RFC worked very well on its own, especially since it was so bogged down in bureaucracy it wasn't able to lend to failing institutions as it was meant to. April.s (talk) 08:12, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Who led the RFC under what title when?
(Copied from Reference desk/Miscellaneous)

I got thoroughly snarled up last night in trying to adjust the succession boxes for Calvin Coolidge's Vice-President Charles G. Dawes, who was later briefly either chairman or president of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (ca. 1931-57), and then in adjusting the succession boxes for subsequent leaders of the RFC. When a government entity or a direct successor has lasted into the age of the World Wide Web, it's usually fairly easy to find a list of its previous principal officials, either at the organization's own site, or at a place like World Statesmen.org.

But the RFC is much murkier (as it was during its TARP-like origins as a bailout mechanism for banks after the international financial crisis of 1931). Apparently its first chairman was Eugene Meyer, also Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and its first president was Dawes. Dawes (whose terms is said to have begun with the RFC's formal establishment on February 2, 1932) had to resign suddenly on June 7, 1932, after questions about RFC loans to his own bank, and was succeeded by Atlee Pomerene — an Ohio Democratic politician who'd prosecuted the Teapot Dome defendants in 1924. But some sources say Pomerene was chairman and others president. (Pomerene himself had to resign the next year after similar questions about home-bank favoritism.) When Franklin D. Roosevelt became President of the U.S. on March 4, 1933, he chose the Texas financier and Democratic stalwart Jesse H. Jones (who became Secretary of Commerce in 1940) to headed the RFC, but under what title I'm not sure. Some sources say he led the RFC from 1933 to 1945. But my 1943 World Almanac and Book of Facts, which devotes pages 626-628 to the RFC and its subsidiaries including Fannie Mae (FNMA), lists Charles B. Henderson as chairman with four other directors, none of whom is Jones, but no president. (Wikipedia says Henderson served as chairman from 1941 to 1947.) —— Shakescene (talk) 21:11, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

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