A Financial History of the United States: From Christopher Columbus to the Robber Barons (1492-1900)

A Financial History of the United States: From Christopher Columbus to the Robber Barons (1492-1900)
Author: Jerry W. Markham
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2002
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780765607300

The first comprehensive financial history of the United States in more than thirty years. Accessible to undergraduate level readers, it focuses on the growth and expansion of banking, securities, and insurance from the colonial period right up to the incredible growth of the stock market during the 1990s and the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. The author traces the origins of American finance to the older societies of Europe and Northern Africa, and shows how English merchants transferred their financial systems to America. He explains how financial matters dominated the founding and development of the colonies, and how financial concerns incited the Revolution. And he shows how the Civil War began the transformation of America from a small economy largely dependent on foreign capital into a complex capitalist society. From the Civil War, the nation's financial history breaks down into periods of frenzied speculation, quiet growth, periodic panics, and furious periods of expansion, right up through the incredible growth of the stock market during the 1990s.

A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960

A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960
Author: Milton Friedman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 889
Release: 2008-09-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 140082933X

“Magisterial. . . . The direct and indirect influence of the Monetary History would be difficult to overstate.”—Ben S. Bernanke, Nobel Prize–winning economist and former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve From Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman and his celebrated colleague Anna Jacobson Schwartz, one of the most important economics books of the twentieth century—the landmark work that rewrote the story of the Great Depression and the understanding of monetary policy Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 is one of the most influential economics books of the twentieth century. A landmark achievement, it marshaled massive historical data and sharp analytics to argue that monetary policy—steady control of the money supply—matters profoundly in the management of the nation’s economy, especially in navigating serious economic fluctuations. One of the book’s most important chapters, “The Great Contraction, 1929–33” addressed the central economic event of the twentieth century, the Great Depression. Friedman and Schwartz argued that the Federal Reserve could have stemmed the severity of the Depression, but failed to exercise its role of managing the monetary system and countering banking panics. The book served as a clarion call to the monetarist school of thought by emphasizing the importance of the money supply in the functioning of the economy—an idea that has come to shape the actions of central banks worldwide.

Ages of American Capitalism

Ages of American Capitalism
Author: Jonathan Levy
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Total Pages: 945
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0812985184

A leading economic historian traces the evolution of American capitalism from the colonial era to the present—and argues that we’ve reached a turning point that will define the era ahead. “A monumental achievement, sure to become a classic.”—Zachary D. Carter, author of The Price of Peace In this ambitious single-volume history of the United States, economic historian Jonathan Levy reveals how capitalism in America has evolved through four distinct ages and how the country’s economic evolution is inseparable from the nature of American life itself. The Age of Commerce spans the colonial era through the outbreak of the Civil War, and the Age of Capital traces the lasting impact of the industrial revolution. The volatility of the Age of Capital ultimately led to the Great Depression, which sparked the Age of Control, during which the government took on a more active role in the economy, and finally, in the Age of Chaos, deregulation and the growth of the finance industry created a booming economy for some but also striking inequalities and a lack of oversight that led directly to the crash of 2008. In Ages of American Capitalism, Levy proves that capitalism in the United States has never been just one thing. Instead, it has morphed through the country’s history—and it’s likely changing again right now. “A stunning accomplishment . . . an indispensable guide to understanding American history—and what’s happening in today’s economy.”—Christian Science Monitor “The best one-volume history of American capitalism.”—Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton

A Financial History of the United States

A Financial History of the United States
Author: Jerry W Markham
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 881
Release: 2015-03-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317478134

Provides a comprehensive financial history of the United States which focuses on the growth and expansion of banking, securities, and insurance from the colonial period right up to the incredible growth of the stock market during the 1990s and the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

Land of Promise

Land of Promise
Author: Michael Lind
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 554
Release: 2012-04-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0062097725

"[An] ambitious economic history of the united States...rich with details." ?—David Leonhardt, New York Times Book Review How did a weak collection of former British colonies become an industrial, financial, and military colossus? From the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, the American economy has been transformed by wave after wave of emerging technology: the steam engine, electricity, the internal combustion engine, computer technology. Yet technology-driven change leads to growing misalignment between an innovative economy and anachronistic legal and political structures until the gap is closed by the modernization of America's institutions—often amid upheavals such as the Civil War and Reconstruction and the Great Depression and World War II. When the U.S. economy has flourished, government and business, labor and universities, have worked together in a never-ending project of economic nation building. As the United States struggles to emerge from the Great Recession, Michael Lind clearly demonstrates that Americans, since the earliest days of the republic, have reinvented the American economy - and have the power to do so again.

The Panic of 1819

The Panic of 1819
Author: Andrew H. Browning
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2019-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826274250

The Panic of 1819 tells the story of the first nationwide economic collapse to strike the United States. Much more than a banking crisis or real estate bubble, the Panic was the culmination of an economic wave that rolled through the United States, forming before the War of 1812, cresting with the land and cotton boom of 1818, and crashing just as the nation confronted the crisis over slavery in Missouri. The Panic introduced Americans to the new phenomenon of boom and bust, changed the country's attitudes towards wealth and poverty, spurred the political movement that became Jacksonian Democracy, and helped create the sectional divide that would lead to the Civil War. Although it stands as one of the turning points of American history, few Americans today have heard of the Panic of 1819, with the result that we continue to ignore its lessons—and repeat its mistakes.

Pivotal Decade

Pivotal Decade
Author: Judith Stein
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2010-05-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300163290

In this fascinating new history, Judith Stein argues that in order to understand our current economic crisis we need to look back to the 1970s and the end of the age of the factory--the era of postwar liberalism, created by the New Deal, whose practices, high wages, and regulated capital produced both robust economic growth and greater income equality. When high oil prices and economic competition from Japan and Germany battered the American economy, new policies--both international and domestic--became necessary. But war was waged against inflation, rather than against unemployment, and the government promoted a balanced budget instead of growth. This, says Stein, marked the beginning of the age of finance and subsequent deregulation, free trade, low taxation, and weak unions that has fostered inequality and now the worst recession in eighty years. Drawing on extensive archival research and covering the economic, intellectual, political, and labor history of the decade, Stein provides a wealth of information on the 1970s. She also shows that to restore prosperity today, America needs a new model: more factories and fewer financial houses. --Publisher's description.