Download or read book America s Bank written by Roger Lowenstein and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tour de force of historical reportage, America’s Bank illuminates the tumultuous era and remarkable personalities that spurred the unlikely birth of America’s modern central bank, the Federal Reserve. Today, the Fed is the bedrock of the financial landscape, yet the fight to create it was so protracted and divisive that it seems a small miracle that it was ever established. For nearly a century, America, alone among developed nations, refused to consider any central or organizing agency in its financial system. Americans’ mistrust of big government and of big banks—a legacy of the country’s Jeffersonian, small-government traditions—was so widespread that modernizing reform was deemed impossible. Each bank was left to stand on its own, with no central reserve or lender of last resort. The real-world consequences of this chaotic and provincial system were frequent financial panics, bank runs, money shortages, and depressions. By the first decade of the twentieth century, it had become plain that the outmoded banking system was ill equipped to finance America’s burgeoning industry. But political will for reform was lacking. It took an economic meltdown, a high-level tour of Europe, and—improbably—a conspiratorial effort by vilified captains of Wall Street to overcome popular resistance. Finally, in 1913, Congress conceived a federalist and quintessentially American solution to the conflict that had divided bankers, farmers, populists, and ordinary Americans, and enacted the landmark Federal Reserve Act. Roger Lowenstein—acclaimed financial journalist and bestselling author of When Genius Failed and The End of Wall Street—tells the drama-laden story of how America created the Federal Reserve, thereby taking its first steps onto the world stage as a global financial power. America’s Bank showcases Lowenstein at his very finest: illuminating complex financial and political issues with striking clarity, infusing the debates of our past with all the gripping immediacy of today, and painting unforgettable portraits of Gilded Age bankers, presidents, and politicians. Lowenstein focuses on the four men at the heart of the struggle to create the Federal Reserve. These were Paul Warburg, a refined, German-born financier, recently relocated to New York, who was horrified by the primitive condition of America’s finances; Rhode Island’s Nelson W. Aldrich, the reigning power broker in the U.S. Senate and an archetypal Gilded Age legislator; Carter Glass, the ambitious, if then little-known, Virginia congressman who chaired the House Banking Committee at a crucial moment of political transition; and President Woodrow Wilson, the academician-turned-progressive-politician who forced Glass to reconcile his deep-seated differences with bankers and accept the principle (anathema to southern Democrats) of federal control. Weaving together a raucous era in American politics with a storied financial crisis and intrigue at the highest levels of Washington and Wall Street, Lowenstein brings the beginnings of one of the country’s most crucial institutions to vivid and unforgettable life. Readers of this gripping historical narrative will wonder whether they’re reading about one hundred years ago or the still-seething conflicts that mark our discussions of banking and politics today.

Download or read book America s Bank written by Roger Lowenstein and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tour de force of historical reportage, America’s Bank illuminates the tumultuous era and remarkable personalities that spurred the unlikely birth of America’s modern central bank, the Federal Reserve. Today, the Fed is the bedrock of the financial landscape, yet the fight to create it was so protracted and divisive that it seems a small miracle that it was ever established. For nearly a century, America, alone among developed nations, refused to consider any central or organizing agency in its financial system. Americans’ mistrust of big government and of big banks—a legacy of the country’s Jeffersonian, small-government traditions—was so widespread that modernizing reform was deemed impossible. Each bank was left to stand on its own, with no central reserve or lender of last resort. The real-world consequences of this chaotic and provincial system were frequent financial panics, bank runs, money shortages, and depressions. By the first decade of the twentieth century, it had become plain that the outmoded banking system was ill equipped to finance America’s burgeoning industry. But political will for reform was lacking. It took an economic meltdown, a high-level tour of Europe, and—improbably—a conspiratorial effort by vilified captains of Wall Street to overcome popular resistance. Finally, in 1913, Congress conceived a federalist and quintessentially American solution to the conflict that had divided bankers, farmers, populists, and ordinary Americans, and enacted the landmark Federal Reserve Act. Roger Lowenstein—acclaimed financial journalist and bestselling author of When Genius Failed and The End of Wall Street—tells the drama-laden story of how America created the Federal Reserve, thereby taking its first steps onto the world stage as a global financial power. America’s Bank showcases Lowenstein at his very finest: illuminating complex financial and political issues with striking clarity, infusing the debates of our past with all the gripping immediacy of today, and painting unforgettable portraits of Gilded Age bankers, presidents, and politicians. Lowenstein focuses on the four men at the heart of the struggle to create the Federal Reserve. These were Paul Warburg, a refined, German-born financier, recently relocated to New York, who was horrified by the primitive condition of America’s finances; Rhode Island’s Nelson W. Aldrich, the reigning power broker in the U.S. Senate and an archetypal Gilded Age legislator; Carter Glass, the ambitious, if then little-known, Virginia congressman who chaired the House Banking Committee at a crucial moment of political transition; and President Woodrow Wilson, the academician-turned-progressive-politician who forced Glass to reconcile his deep-seated differences with bankers and accept the principle (anathema to southern Democrats) of federal control. Weaving together a raucous era in American politics with a storied financial crisis and intrigue at the highest levels of Washington and Wall Street, Lowenstein brings the beginnings of one of the country’s most crucial institutions to vivid and unforgettable life. Readers of this gripping historical narrative will wonder whether they’re reading about one hundred years ago or the still-seething conflicts that mark our discussions of banking and politics today.

Download or read book Let Us Put Our Money Together written by Tim Todd and published by . This book was released on 2019-05-31 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generally, books addressing the early history of African American banks have done so either within the larger construct of African American business history and economic development, or as a starting point to explore current issues related to financial services. Focused considerations of these early institutions and their founders have been relatively rare and somewhat scattered. This publication seeks to address this issue.

Download or read book A Great Moral and Social Force written by Tim Todd and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-03 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication offers a historical consideration of Black banking in the United States by focusing on some of the key individuals, banks and communities. While it is in no way a comprehensive history, it does include background that is essential to understanding each financial institution, its time, the events that led to its creation and the community of which it was not only a vital part, but very often a leader. Much of this history frames the world we find today.

Download or read book Crash of the Titans written by Greg Farrell and published by Currency. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intimate, fly-on-the wall tale of the decline and fall of an America icon With one notable exception, the firms that make up what we know as Wall Street have always been part of an inbred, insular culture that most people only vaguely understand. The exception was Merrill Lynch, a firm that revolutionized the stock market by bringing Wall Street to Main Street, setting up offices in far-flung cities and towns long ignored by the giants of finance. With its “thundering herd” of financial advisers, perhaps no other business, whether in financial services or elsewhere, so epitomized the American spirit. Merrill Lynch was not only “bullish on America,” it was a big reason why so many average Americans were able to grow wealthy by investing in the stock market. Merrill Lynch was an icon. Its sudden decline, collapse, and sale to Bank of America was a shock. How did it happen? Why did it happen? And what does this story of greed, hubris, and incompetence tell us about the culture of Wall Street that continues to this day even though it came close to destroying the American economy? A culture in which the CEO of a firm losing $28 billion pushes hard to be paid a $25 million bonus. A culture in which two Merrill Lynch executives are guaranteed bonuses of $30 million and $40 million for four months’ work, even while the firm is struggling to reduce its losses by firing thousands of employees. Based on unparalleled sources at both Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, Greg Farrell’s Crash of the Titans is a Shakespearean saga of three flawed masters of the universe. E. Stanley O’Neal, whose inspiring rise from the segregated South to the corner office of Merrill Lynch—where he engineered a successful turnaround—was undone by his belief that a smooth-talking salesman could handle one of the most difficult jobs on Wall Street. Because he enjoyed O’Neal’s support, this executive was allowed to build up an astonishing $30 billion position in CDOs on the firm’s balance sheet, at a time when all other Wall Street firms were desperately trying to exit the business. After O’Neal comes John Thain, the cerebral, MIT-educated technocrat whose rescue of the New York Stock Exchange earned him the nickname “Super Thain.” He was hired to save Merrill Lynch in late 2007, but his belief that the markets would rebound led him to underestimate the depth of Merrill’s problems. Finally, we meet Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, a street fighter raised barely above the poverty line in rural Georgia, whose “my way or the highway” management style suffers fools more easily than potential rivals, and who made a $50 billion commitment over a September weekend to buy a business he really didn’t understand, thus jeopardizing his own institution. The merger itself turns out to be a bizarre combination of cultures that blend like oil and water, where slick Wall Street bankers suddenly find themselves reporting to a cast of characters straight out of the Beverly Hillbillies. BofA’s inbred culture, which perceived New York banks its enemies, was based on loyalty and a good-ol’-boy network in which competence played second fiddle to blind obedience. Crash of the Titans is a financial thriller that puts you in the theater as the historic events of the financial crisis unfold and people responsible for billion of dollars of other people’s money gamble recklessly to enhance their power and their paychecks or to save their own skins. Its wealth of never-before-revealed information and focus on two icons of corporate America make it the book that puts together all the pieces of the Wall Street disaster.

Download or read book The Federal Reserve System Purposes and Functions written by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an in-depth overview of the Federal Reserve System, including information about monetary policy and the economy, the Federal Reserve in the international sphere, supervision and regulation, consumer and community affairs and services offered by Reserve Banks. Contains several appendixes, including a brief explanation of Federal Reserve regulations, a glossary of terms, and a list of additional publications.

Download or read book The Bank of the United States and the American Economy written by Edward Kaplan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1999-09-30 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the history, structure, and operation of the First and Second Banks of the United States, this study examines how the banks performed as national and central institutions, and what happened to the economy when the charter of the Second Bank was allowed to expire in 1836. Historians have paid little recent attention to the early history of central banking in the United States, and many Americans believe that the Federal Reserve, created in 1913, was our first central bank. The economic crisis during the American Revolution actually led to the founding of a national bank, called the Bank of North America, during the period of Confederation. Although it became a private bank before the Constitution was ratified in 1788, it proved to be such a success that in 1791 Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, was able to convince President Washington that a similar bank should be established. While the First Bank of the United States performed well during its tenure, its charter was allowed to lapse in 1811. A Second Bank of the United States was created five years later in 1816, and it prospered under the leadership of its third president, Nicholas Biddle, from 1823 to 1830, when central banking was practiced. This success ended with the 1828 election of Andrew Jackson, who refused to recharter the bank and withdrew the government's funds in 1833. Severely weakened, the Bank continued, but its charter finally expired in 1836, much to Biddle's dismay.

Download or read book The Lost Bank written by Kirsten Grind and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-07-16 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on reporting for which the author was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Gerald Loeb Award, this book traces the rise and spectacular fall of Washington Mutual.

Download or read book The Global Findex Database 2017 written by Asli Demirguc-Kunt and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2011 the World Bank—with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—launched the Global Findex database, the world's most comprehensive data set on how adults save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. Drawing on survey data collected in collaboration with Gallup, Inc., the Global Findex database covers more than 140 economies around the world. The initial survey round was followed by a second one in 2014 and by a third in 2017. Compiled using nationally representative surveys of more than 150,000 adults age 15 and above in over 140 economies, The Global Findex Database 2017: Measuring Financial Inclusion and the Fintech Revolution includes updated indicators on access to and use of formal and informal financial services. It has additional data on the use of financial technology (or fintech), including the use of mobile phones and the Internet to conduct financial transactions. The data reveal opportunities to expand access to financial services among people who do not have an account—the unbanked—as well as to promote greater use of digital financial services among those who do have an account. The Global Findex database has become a mainstay of global efforts to promote financial inclusion. In addition to being widely cited by scholars and development practitioners, Global Findex data are used to track progress toward the World Bank goal of Universal Financial Access by 2020 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The database, the full text of the report, and the underlying country-level data for all figures—along with the questionnaire, the survey methodology, and other relevant materials—are available at www.worldbank.org/globalfindex.

Download or read book Industrial Bank written by B. Doyle Jr Mitchell and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a bank holiday on March 5, 1933, closing banks across the country until they proved financial soundness. Meanwhile, as the United States crawled out of the Great Depression, Jesse H. Mitchell and a group of black businessmen accomplished the extraordinary--they started a black-owned bank on a street known as "Black Broadway" in the nation's capital. Mitchell, a Howard University-educated lawyer and realtor, and his friends sold $65,000 in stock, and in the sweltering heat on August 20, 1934, Industrial Bank of Washington opened for business. A range of black investors rallied around the effort, from individuals, churches, and service-oriented organizations to savvy business owners. The bank has carried on for three generations: Mitchell's son B. Doyle Mitchell Sr. succeeded him as president in 1953, who was then succeeded in 1993 by his grandson B. Doyle Mitchell Jr. as president and CEO and his granddaughter Patricia A. Mitchell as executive vice president.

Download or read book The Color of Money written by Mehrsa Baradaran and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-14 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Read this book. It explains so much about the moment...Beautiful, heartbreaking work.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates “A deep accounting of how America got to a point where a median white family has 13 times more wealth than the median black family.” —The Atlantic “Extraordinary...Baradaran focuses on a part of the American story that’s often ignored: the way African Americans were locked out of the financial engines that create wealth in America.” —Ezra Klein When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than 1 percent of the total wealth in America. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged. The Color of Money seeks to explain the stubborn persistence of this racial wealth gap by focusing on the generators of wealth in the black community: black banks. With the civil rights movement in full swing, President Nixon promoted “black capitalism,” a plan to support black banks and minority-owned businesses. But the catch-22 of black banking is that the very institutions needed to help communities escape the deep poverty caused by discrimination and segregation inevitably became victims of that same poverty. In this timely and eye-opening account, Baradaran challenges the long-standing belief that black communities could ever really hope to accumulate wealth in a segregated economy. “Black capitalism has not improved the economic lives of black people, and Baradaran deftly explains the reasons why.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “A must read for anyone interested in closing America’s racial wealth gap.” —Black Perspectives

Download or read book A Century of Banking in Latin America written by David Joslin and published by London ; Toronto : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1963 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Banking on the Body written by Kara W. Swanson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-19 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each year Americans supply blood, sperm, and breast milk to “banks” that store these products for use by strangers in medical procedures. Who gives, who receives, who profits? Kara Swanson traces body banks from the first experiments that discovered therapeutic uses for body products to current websites that facilitate a thriving global exchange.

Download or read book Finance and Enterprise in Early America written by Donald R. Adams, Jr. and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen Girard, the second richest American of his time after John Jacob Astor, was the last of the great merchant bankers and the first of the great investment bankers. This is a study not only of an influential man and the bank he operated in Philadelphia but also of the growing interdependence between the institutions of government and finance in early nineteenth-century America. In a period when precedents were being set in a new nation and large corporations were beginning to predominate in the business of banking, Girard, a man of undisputed business acumen, established in Philadelphia what was to become the largest private bank of its time and as such a monument to free enterprise. At the same time, along with Astor and other influential financiers, Girard was instrumental in financing the War of 1812 and in establishing the second Bank of the United States. His close association with the Madison administration and the Treasury Department made him a key figure in the evolving relationship between the federal government and the financial community. Applying modern statistical techniques to the comprehensive records of the old Girard Bank, Donald Adams has uncovered a great deal of information, hitherto largely unavailable to scholars, about banking practices in early America. In this book he analyzes day-to-day operations—the kinds of loans that were typical, the devices for maintaining liquidity, the organization of staff—as well as long-run investment decisions and their impact on the formation of American finance. While other studies have been made of the anatomy and influence of early chartered and corporate banks, Adams' is the first history of America's largest private bank. It provides a rare glimpse of the inner structure and strategy of an important financial institution and of the entrepreneurial and political activities of its founder.

Download or read book The History of Banking in America written by James William Gilbart and published by . This book was released on 1837 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Great American Bank Robbery written by Paul Sperry and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2011-01-17 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Crude Politics and Infiltration offers an analysis of public policy’s role in the 2008 financial crisis. You may not realize it, but you helped pay for a $10 million, fourteen-month government “investigation” of the housing collapse. Only your $10 million didn’t buy much, and it certainly didn’t buy truth; any hope of that went out the window on day one. The congressionally appointed panel—made up primarily of anti-market, historic revisionists—managed to shift the blame away from Washington and onto mortgage lenders and “greedy” Wall Street executives, while protecting the real culprits at the core of the crisis: POLITICIANS LIKE THEMSELVES. It’s not about Democrat or Republican, left or right, black or white. It’s about the usual suspects—money and power and the people who use government to manipulate them for private advantage. The Great American Bank Robbery maps out in detail exactly how Washington social engineers and their accomplices reshaped banking regulations and housing policies and gutted time-tested underwriting standards that led to the worst financial calamity since the 1930s, one that has robbed American households of $14 trillion in net worth. And they’re not done yet . . .

Download or read book The Bank of the United States and the American Economy written by Edward Kaplan and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1999-09-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the history, structure, and operation of the First and Second Banks of the United States, this study examines how the banks performed as national and central institutions, and what happened to the economy when the charter of the Second Bank was allowed to expire in 1836. Historians have paid little recent attention to the early history of central banking in the United States, and many Americans believe that the Federal Reserve, created in 1913, was our first central bank. The economic crisis during the American Revolution actually led to the founding of a national bank, called the Bank of North America, during the period of Confederation. Although it became a private bank before the Constitution was ratified in 1788, it proved to be such a success that in 1791 Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, was able to convince President Washington that a similar bank should be established. While the First Bank of the United States performed well during its tenure, its charter was allowed to lapse in 1811. A Second Bank of the United States was created five years later in 1816, and it prospered under the leadership of its third president, Nicholas Biddle, from 1823 to 1830, when central banking was practiced. This success ended with the 1828 election of Andrew Jackson, who refused to recharter the bank and withdrew the government's funds in 1833. Severely weakened, the Bank continued, but its charter finally expired in 1836, much to Biddle's dismay.