Marriner Stoddard Eccles (September 9, 1890 – December 18, 1977) was an American economist and banker who served as the 7th

chairman of the Federal Reserve The chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is the head of the Federal Reserve, and is the active executive officer of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The chairman presides at meetings of the Board. ...

from 1934 to 1948. After his term as chairman, Eccles continued to serve as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors until 1951. Eccles was known during his lifetime chiefly as having been the Chairman of the Federal Reserve under President

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

. He has been remembered for having anticipated and supporting the theories of

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist and philosopher whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originall ...

relative to "inadequate aggregate spending" in the economy which appeared during his tenure. Timberlake, Richard
"The Tale of Another Chairman:
... e legacy of W.M. Martin and Marriner Eccles, former Fed chairmen", ''The Region'' ( Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis magazine), June 1999. Retrieved March 29, 2012. 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 1929–1930 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.

Early life

Born in

Logan, Utah Logan is a city in Cache County, Utah, United States. The 2020 United States Census, 2020 census recorded the population at 52,778. Logan is the county seat of Cache County and the principal city of the Logan metropolitan area, which includes Ca ...

David David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Dam ...

and Ellen (Stoddard) Eccles, a Mormon

polygamist Polygamy (from Late Greek , "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marriage, marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, it is called polygyny. When a woman is married to more tha ...

family, on September 9, 1890. He was the eldest of the nine children by Ellen Stoddard, David Eccles' second wife. His family was extended by another twelve siblings from his father's first wife. Eccles was educated at the public schools of Baker, Oregon and attended

Brigham Young College Brigham Young College was a college and high school in Logan, Utah. It was founded by Brigham Young on 6 August 1877, 23 days before his death. He deeded several acres of land to a board of trustees for the development of a college. This was j ...

and served a

Latter-day Saint The Latter Day Saint movement (also called the LDS movement, LDS restorationist movement, or Smith–Rigdon movement) is the collection of independent church groups that trace their origins to a Christian Restorationist movement founded b ...

mission to

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

. After his mission, while working in a family enterprise in Blacksmith Fork Canyon, he learned of the untimely death of his father.

Career

He was subsequently 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 run A bank run or run on the bank occurs when many Client (business), clients withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe Bank failure, the bank may fail in the near future. In other words, it is when, in a fractional-reserve banking sys ...

s during the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

and, as a leading banker, Eccles became involved with the creation of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 and the

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is a State-owned enterprises of the United States, United States government corporation supplying deposit insurance to depositors in American commercial banks and savings banks. The FDIC was cr ...

. 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 The chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is the head of the Federal Reserve, and is the active executive officer of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The chairman presides at meetings of the Board. ...

. Eccles was reappointed chairman 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 World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Bretton Woods negotiations that created the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...

and

International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution funded by 191 member countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is regarded as the global lender of las ...

. Eccles retired to

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

in 1951 to run his companies and write his memoirs, titled ''Beckoning Frontiers: Public and Personal Recollections''. He further consolidated industrial and family assets, finally organizing a series of foundations representing assets that he had managed for various family members. These foundations have served Utah and the Intermountain West in support of educational, artistic, humanitarian, and scientific activities. He died in

Salt Lake City, Utah Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Salt ...

in 1977 and was entombed in the Larkin Sunset Lawn Mausoleum.

Personal life

In 1913, he married the former May Campbell Young. The couple did not have a happy marriage, caused partly by Eccles' lack of attention towards her, and although they were legally married 35 years until their divorce in 1948, they separated soon after the marriage and lived largely separate lives. His grand-niece, Hope Eccles, is married to former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Randal Quarles.

Legacy

Eccles was and is seen as an early proponent of demand stimulus projects to fend off the ravages of the

. Eccles was famously rebuked by Congresswoman Jessie Sumner ( R, IL) during a House of Representatives hearing on the increasingly liberal policies of the Roosevelt administration and the Federal Reserve, when she said, "''you'' just love socialism." He became known as a defender of

Keynesian Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named after British economist John Maynard Keynes) are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand (total spending in the economy) strongly influences economic output an ...

ideas, though his ideas predated Keynes' '' The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money'' (1936). In that respect, he is considered by some to have seen

monetary policy Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to affect monetary and other financial conditions to accomplish broader objectives like high employment and price stability (normally interpreted as a low and stable rat ...

having secondary importance and that as a result he allowed the Federal Reserve to be sublimated to the interests of the Treasury. In this view, the Federal Reserve after 1935 acquired new instruments to command monetary policy, but it did not change its behavior significantly. Further, his defense of the Federal Reserve-Treasury accord in 1951 is sometimes seen as a reversal of his previous policy stances. Marriner Eccles received the Golden Plate Award of the

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a nonprofit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest-achieving people in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet one ano ...

, alongside his brother George S. Eccles, at the 1972 Achievement Summit in Salt Lake City. The

Eccles Building The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building houses the main offices of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve#Board of Governors, Board of Governors of the United States' Federal Reserve System. It is located at the intersection ...

that houses the headquarters of the

Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of ...

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

was named after Eccles in 1982. The naming was a component of the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act lead-sponsored by Senator

Jake Garn Edwin Jacob "Jake" Garn (born October 12, 1932) is an American politician from the U.S. state of Utah. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as a member of the United States Senate from 1974 to 1993. Garn ...

(R, UT) and Congressman Fernand St. Germain ( D, RI).

References

External links