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Author: Sharon Ann Murphy Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN: 1421421755 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 207
Book Description
How the contentious world of nineteenth-century banking shaped the United States. Pieces of paper that claimed to be good for two dollars upon redemption at a distant bank. Foreign coins that fluctuated in value from town to town. Stock certificates issued by turnpike or canal companies—worth something . . . or perhaps nothing. IOUs from farmers or tradesmen, passed around by people who could not know the person who first issued them. Money and banking in antebellum America offered a glaring example of free-market capitalism run amok—unregulated, exuberant, and heading pell-mell toward the next “panic” of burst bubbles and hard times. In Other People’s Money, Sharon Ann Murphy explains how banking and money worked before the federal government, spurred by the chaos of the Civil War, created the national system of US paper currency. Murphy traces the evolution of banking in America from the founding of the nation, when politicians debated the constitutionality of chartering a national bank, to Andrew Jackson’s role in the Bank War of the early 1830s, to the problems of financing a large-scale war. She reveals how, ultimately, the monetary and banking structures that emerged from the Civil War also provided the basis for our modern financial system, from its formation under the Federal Reserve in 1913 to the present. Touching on the significant role that numerous historical figures played in shaping American banking—including Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Louis Brandeis—Other People’s Money is an engaging guide to the heated political fights that surrounded banking in early America as well as to the economic causes and consequences of the financial system that emerged from the turmoil. By helping readers understand the financial history of this period and the way banking shaped the society in which ordinary Americans lived and worked, this book broadens and deepens our knowledge of the Early American Republic.
Author: Joshua R. Greenberg Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 0812252241 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
The colorful history of paper money before the Civil War Before Civil War greenbacks and a national bank network established a uniform federal currency in the United States, the proliferation of loosely regulated banks saturated the early American republic with upwards of 10,000 unique and legal bank notes. This number does not even include the plethora of counterfeit bills and the countless shinplasters of questionable legality issued by unregulated merchants, firms, and municipalities. Adding to the chaos was the idiosyncratic method for negotiating their value, an often manipulative face-to-face discussion consciously separated from any haggling over the price of the work, goods, or services for sale. In Bank Notes and Shinplasters, Joshua R. Greenberg shows how ordinary Americans accumulated and wielded the financial knowledge required to navigate interpersonal bank note transactions. Locating evidence of Americans grappling with their money in fiction, correspondence, newspapers, printed ephemera, government documents, legal cases, and even on the money itself, Greenberg argues Americans, by necessity, developed the ability to analyze the value of paper financial instruments, assess the strength of banking institutions, and even track legislative changes that might alter the rules of currency circulation. In his examination of the doodles, calculations, political screeds, and commercial stamps that ended up on bank bills, he connects the material culture of cash to financial, political, and intellectual history. The book demonstrates that the shift from state-regulated banks and private shinplaster producers to federally authorized paper money in the Civil War era led to the erasure of the skill, knowledge, and lived experience with banking that informed debates over economic policy. The end result, Greenberg writes, has been a diminished public understanding of how currency and the financial sector operate in our contemporary era, from the 2008 recession to the rise of Bitcoin.
Author: Jill M. Hendrickson Publisher: Springer ISBN: 0230295134 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 313
Book Description
The historical response to bank crises has always been more regulation. A pattern emerges that some may find surprising: regulation often contributes to bank instability. It suppresses competition and effective response to market changes and encourages bankers to take on additional risk. This book offers a valuable history lesson for policy makers.
Author: Steven H. Jaffe Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231169108 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
From Revolutionary-era bank notes and stock and bond trading during the Civil War to the invention of modern mortgages and the 2008 financial collapse, Capital of Capital explores how New York City gave rise to a banking industry that in turn made the American and worldÕs economy. In addition to exploring the frequently contentious evolution of the banking industry, the book examines the role of banks in making New York City an international economic center and its influence on AmericaÕs economy, politics, society, and culture. Based on a major exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, Capital of Capital profiles the key leaders and critics of banking, such as Alexander Hamilton, the Rockefellers, and the Occupy Wall Street protesters. The book also covers the key events and controversies that have shaped the history of banking and includes a fascinating array of primary materials ranging from speeches and political documents to advertisements and journalistic accounts. Lavishly illustrated, Capital of Capital provides a multifaceted, original understanding of the profound impact of banking on the life of New York City and the worldÕs economy.
Author: Sharon Ann Murphy Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM ISBN: 0801899478 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 411
Book Description
A study of the early years of the life insurance industry in 19th century America. Investing in Life considers the creation and expansion of the American life insurance industry from its early origins in the 1810s through the 1860s and examines how its growth paralleled and influenced the emergence of the middle class. Using the economic instability of the period as her backdrop, Sharon Ann Murphy also analyzes changing roles for women; the attempts to adapt slavery to an urban, industrialized setting; the rise of statistical thinking; and efforts to regulate the business environment. Her research directly challenges the conclusions of previous scholars who have dismissed the importance of the earliest industry innovators while exaggerating clerical opposition to life insurance. Murphy examines insurance as both a business and a social phenomenon. She looks at how insurance companies positioned themselves within the marketplace, calculated risks associated with disease, intemperance, occupational hazard, and war, and battled fraud, murder, and suicide. She also discusses the role of consumers?their reasons for purchasing life insurance, their perceptions of the industry, and how their desires and demands shaped the ultimate product. Winner, Hagley Prize in Business History, Hagley Museum and Library and the Business History Conference Praise for Investing in Life “A well-written, well-argued book that makes a number of important contributions to the history of business and capitalism in antebellum America.” —Sean H. Vanatta, Common Place “An intriguing, instructive history of the establishment and development of the life insurance industry that reveals a good deal about changing social and commercial conditions in antebellum America . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice
Author: Stephen Mihm Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674041011 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 470
Book Description
Prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation. Their success, Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by freewheeling capitalism and little government control. Mihm shows how eventually the older monetary system was dismantled, along with the counterfeit economy it sustained.
Author: Peter James Hudson Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022645925X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 370
Book Description
From the end of the nineteenth century until the onset of the Great Depression, Wall Street embarked on a stunning, unprecedented, and often bloody period of international expansion in the Caribbean. A host of financial entities sought to control banking, trade, and finance in the region. In the process, they not only trampled local sovereignty, grappled with domestic banking regulation, and backed US imperialism—but they also set the model for bad behavior by banks, visible still today. In Bankers and Empire, Peter James Hudson tells the provocative story of this period, taking a close look at both the institutions and individuals who defined this era of American capitalism in the West Indies. Whether in Wall Street minstrel shows or in dubious practices across the Caribbean, the behavior of the banks was deeply conditioned by bankers’ racial views and prejudices. Drawing deeply on a broad range of sources, Hudson reveals that the banks’ experimental practices and projects in the Caribbean often led to embarrassing failure, and, eventually, literal erasure from the archives.
Author: Shennette Garrett-Scott Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231545215 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 197
Book Description
Between 1888 and 1930, African Americans opened more than a hundred banks and thousands of other financial institutions. In Banking on Freedom, Shennette Garrett-Scott explores this rich period of black financial innovation and its transformative impact on U.S. capitalism through the story of the St. Luke Bank in Richmond, Virginia: the first and only bank run by black women. Banking on Freedom offers an unparalleled account of how black women carved out economic, social, and political power in contexts shaped by sexism, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation. Garrett-Scott chronicles both the bank’s success and the challenges this success wrought, including extralegal violence and aggressive oversight from state actors who saw black economic autonomy as a threat to both democratic capitalism and the social order. The teller cage and boardroom became sites of activism and resistance as the leadership of president Maggie Lena Walker and other women board members kept the bank grounded in meeting the needs of working-class black women. The first book to center black women’s engagement with the elite sectors of banking, finance, and insurance, Banking on Freedom reveals the ways gender, race, and class shaped the meanings of wealth and risk in U.S. capitalism and society.
Author: Edward L. Glaeser Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226299597 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 397
Book Description
Despite recent corporate scandals, the United States is among the world’s least corrupt nations. But in the nineteenth century, the degree of fraud and corruption in America approached that of today’s most corrupt developing nations, as municipal governments and robber barons alike found new ways to steal from taxpayers and swindle investors. In Corruption and Reform, contributors explore this shadowy period of United States history in search of better methods to fight corruption worldwide today. Contributors to this volume address the measurement and consequences of fraud and corruption and the forces that ultimately led to their decline within the United States. They show that various approaches to reducing corruption have met with success, such as deregulation, particularly “free banking,” in the 1830s. In the 1930s, corruption was kept in check when new federal bureaucracies replaced local administrations in doling out relief. Another deterrent to corruption was the independent press, which kept a watchful eye over government and business. These and other facets of American history analyzed in this volume make it indispensable as background for anyone interested in corruption today.
Author: Howard Bodenhorn
Author: Howard Bodenhorn
Author: Sharon Ann Murphy
Author: Joshua R. Greenberg
Author: Jill M. Hendrickson
Author: Steven H. Jaffe
Author: Sharon Ann Murphy
Author: Stephen Mihm
Author: Peter James Hudson
Author: Shennette Garrett-Scott
Author: Edward L. Glaeser