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Statement on Signing the Foreign Debt Moratorium Resolution.

December 23, 1931

THE PRESIDENT said:

"I have signed the act authorizing the foreign debt postponement for one year. I am gratified at the support it received in the Congress as indicated by the approval--including those absent yet who expressed their views--of 79 Senators as against 15 opposed, and the approval of 317 Members of the House of Representatives as against 100 opposed. It is further gratifying that both political parties strongly supported this proposal.

"The suggestion of our Government for the year's postponement of intergovernmental debts among all principal nations of which ours is only a part, averted a catastrophe, the effects of which would have reached to the United States and would have caused the American people a loss of many times the amount involved. No part of the debt owing to us has been cancelled or reduced; the postponed amounts are repayable over a period of about 10 years with interest at 4 percent.

"In saving the collapse of Germany by the year's postponement the American people have done something greater than the dollars and cents gained from the maintenance of our agricultural markets, the prevention of panic and unlimited losses. They have contributed to maintain courage and hope in the German nation, to give opportunity for the other European countries to work out their problems."

Note: As enacted, House Joint Resolution 147 is Public Resolution No. 5 (47 Stat. 3).

Herbert Hoover, Statement on Signing the Foreign Debt Moratorium Resolution. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/207142

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