Download or read book New York City Mutual Savings Banks 1819 1861 written by Alan L. Olmstead and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2018-07-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These institutions were founded ostensibly for philanthropic purposes--to encourage and reward thrift on the part of society's lower classes. For purposes of analysis, Olmstead formulates an alternative hypothesis. Men organized mutuals for the same reason that impelled their other business ventures--the hope of profit. The author focuses on the internal operations of several banks and the important role they played in financing antebellum development. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Download or read book Freaks of Fortune written by Jonathan Levy and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-29 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the early nineteenth century, “risk” was a specialized term: it was the commodity exchanged in a marine insurance contract. Freaks of Fortune tells the story of how the modern concept of risk emerged in the United States. Born on the high seas, risk migrated inland and became essential to the financial management of an inherently uncertain capitalist future. Focusing on the hopes and anxieties of ordinary people, Jonathan Levy shows how risk developed through the extraordinary growth of new financial institutions—insurance corporations, savings banks, mortgage-backed securities markets, commodities futures markets, and securities markets—while posing inescapable moral questions. For at the heart of risk’s rise was a new vision of freedom. To be a free individual, whether an emancipated slave, a plains farmer, or a Wall Street financier, was to take, assume, and manage one’s own personal risk. Yet this often meant offloading that same risk onto a series of new financial institutions, which together have only recently acquired the name “financial services industry.” Levy traces the fate of a new vision of personal freedom, as it unfolded in the new economic reality created by the American financial system. Amid the nineteenth-century’s waning faith in God’s providence, Americans increasingly confronted unanticipated challenges to their independence and security in the boom and bust chance-world of capitalism. Freaks of Fortune is one of the first books to excavate the historical origins of our own financialized times and risk-defined lives.

Download or read book The Encyclopedia of New York City written by Kenneth T. Jackson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 4282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering an exhaustive range of information about the five boroughs, the first edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City was a success by every measure, earning worldwide acclaim and several awards for reference excellence, and selling out its first printing before it was officially published. But much has changed since the volume first appeared in 1995: the World Trade Center no longer dominates the skyline, a billionaire businessman has become an unlikely three-term mayor, and urban regeneration—Chelsea Piers, the High Line, DUMBO, Williamsburg, the South Bronx, the Lower East Side—has become commonplace. To reflect such innovation and change, this definitive, one-volume resource on the city has been completely revised and expanded. The revised edition includes 800 new entries that help complete the story of New York: from Air Train to E-ZPass, from September 11 to public order. The new material includes broader coverage of subject areas previously underserved as well as new maps and illustrations. Virtually all existing entries—spanning architecture, politics, business, sports, the arts, and more—have been updated to reflect the impact of the past two decades. The more than 5,000 alphabetical entries and 700 illustrations of the second edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City convey the richness and diversity of its subject in great breadth and detail, and will continue to serve as an indispensable tool for everyone who has even a passing interest in the American metropolis.

Download or read book Evolving Financial Markets and International Capital Flows written by Lance E. Davis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-05-07 with total page 1002 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the impact of British capital flows on the evolution of capital markets in four countries - Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the United States - over the years 1870 to 1914. In substantive chapters on each country it offers parallel histories of the evolution of their financial infrastructures - commercial banks, non-bank intermediaries, primary security markets, formal secondary security markets, and the institutions that provide the international financial links connecting the frontier country with the British capital market. At one level, the work constitutes a quantitative history of the development of the capital markets of five countries in the late nineteenth century. At a second level, it provides the basis for a useable taxonomy for the study of institutional invention and innovation. At a third, it suggests some lessons from the past about modern policy issues.

Download or read book Thrift and Thriving in America written by Joshua Yates and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thrift is a powerful and evolving moral ideal, disposition, and practice that has indelibly marked the character of American life since its earliest days. Its surprisingly multifaceted character opens a number of expansive vistas for analysis, not only in the American past, but also in its present. Thrift remains, if perhaps in unexpected and counter-intuitive ways, intensely relevant to the complex issues of contemporary moral and economic life. Thrift and Thriving in America is a collection of groundbreaking essays from leading scholars on the seminal importance of thrift to American culture and history. From a rich diversity of disciplinary perspectives, the volume shows that far from the narrow and attenuated rendering of thrift as a synonym of saving and scrimping, thrift possess an astonishing capaciousness and dynamism, and that the idiom of thrift has, in one form or another, served as the primary language for articulating the normative dimensions of economic life throughout much of American history. The essays put thrift in a more expansive light, revealing its compelling etymology-its sense of "thriving." This deeper meaning has always operated as the subtext of thrift and at times has even been invoked to critique its more restricted notions. So understood, thrift moves beyond the instrumentalities of "more or less" and begs the question: what does it mean and take to thrive? Thoroughly examining how Americans have answered this question, Thrift and Thriving in America provides fascinating insight into evolving meanings of material wellbeing, and of the good life and the good society more generally, and will serve as a perennial resource on a notion that has and will continue to shape and define American life.

Download or read book The New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance written by John Eatwell and published by Springer. This book was released on 1992-10-14 with total page 869 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first reference work ever to be awarded the Eccles Prize for Excellence in Economic Writing from Columbia Business School. Continuing in the tradition of The New Palgrave , this 3-volume set provides an unparalleled guide to modern money, banking and finance. In over 1,000 substantial essays by leading academic and professional authorities, it provides the most comprehensive analysis available of contemporary theory and the fast-evolving global monetary and financial framework. In its scope and depth of coverage, it is indispensable for the academic and practitioner alike.

Download or read book The Unbounded Community written by Kenneth A. Scherzer and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stick ball, stoop sitting, pickle barrel colloquys: The neighborhood occupies a warm place in our cultural memory—a place that Kenneth A. Scherzer contends may have more to do with ideology and nostalgia than with historical accuracy. In this remarkably detailed analysis of neighborhood life in New York City between 1830 and 1875, Scherzer gives the neighborhood its due as a complex, richly textured social phenomenon and helps to clarify its role in the evolution of cities. After a critical examination of recent historical renderings of neighborhood life, Scherzer focuses on the ecological, symbolic, and social aspects of nineteenth-century community life in New York City. Employing a wide array of sources, from census reports and church records to police blotters and brothel guides, he documents the complex composition of neighborhoods that defy simple categorization by class or ethnicity. From his account, the New York City neighborhood emerges as a community in flux, born out of the chaos of May Day, the traditional moving day. The fluid geography and heterogeneity of these neighborhoods kept most city residents from developing strong local attachments. Scherzer shows how such weak spatial consciousness, along with the fast pace of residential change, diminished the community function of the neighborhood. New Yorkers, he suggests, relied instead upon the "unbounded community," a collection of friends and social relations that extended throughout the city. With pointed argument and weighty evidence, The Unbounded Community replaces the neighborhood of nostalgia with a broader, multifaceted conception of community life. Depicting the neighborhood in its full scope and diversity, the book will enhance future forays into urban history.

Download or read book Handbook of Finance and Development written by Thorsten Beck and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07-27 with total page 615 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the relationship between financial and real sector development. The different chapters, written by leading contributors in the field, survey research on the importance of financial development for economic growth, the causes and consequences of financial fragility, the historic development of financial systems in several major economies and regions of the world, and the regulatory and supervisory underpinnings of financial sector development.

Download or read book The First Wall Street written by Robert E. Wright and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Americans think of investment and finance, they think of Wall Street—though this was not always the case. During the dawn of the Republic, Philadelphia was the center of American finance. The first stock exchange in the nation was founded there in 1790, and around it the bustling thoroughfare known as Chestnut Street was home to the nation's most powerful financial institutions. The First Wall Street recounts the fascinating history of Chestnut Street and its forgotten role in the birth of American finance. According to Robert E. Wright, Philadelphia, known for its cultivation of liberty and freedom, blossomed into a financial epicenter during the nation's colonial period. The continent's most prodigious minds and talented financiers flocked to Philly in droves, and by the eve of the Revolution, the Quaker City was the most financially sophisticated region in North America. The First Wall Street reveals how the city played a leading role in the financing of the American Revolution and emerged from that titanic struggle with not just the wealth it forged in the crucible of war, but an invaluable amount of human capital as well. This capital helped make Philadelphia home to the Bank of the United States, the U.S. Mint, an active securities exchange, and several banks and insurance companies—all clustered in or around Chestnut Street. But as the decades passed, financial institutions were lured to New York, and by the late 1820s only the powerful Second Bank of the United States upheld Philadelphia's financial stature. But when Andrew Jackson vetoed its charter, he sealed the fate of Chestnut Street forever—and of Wall Street too. Finely nuanced and elegantly written, The First Wall Street will appeal to anyone interested in the history of the United States and the origins of its unrivaled economy.

Download or read book American Creed written by Kathleen D. McCarthy and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the dawn of the republic, faith in social equality, religious freedom, and the right to engage in civic activism have constituted our national creed. In this bracing history, Kathleen D. McCarthy traces the evolution of these ideals, exploring the impact of philanthropy and volunteerism on America from 1700 to 1865. What results is a vital reevaluation of public life during the pivotal decades leading up to the Civil War. The market revolution, participatory democracy, and voluntary associations have all been closely linked since the birth of the United States. American Creed explores the relationships among these three institutions, showing how charities and reform associations forged partnerships with government, provided important safety valves for popular discontent, and sparked much-needed economic development. McCarthy also demonstrates how the idea of philanthropy became crucially wedded to social activism during the Jacksonian era. She explores how acts of volunteerism and charity became involved with the abolitionist movement, educational patronage, the struggle against racism, and female social justice campaigns. What resulted, she contends, were heated political battles over the extent to which women and African Americans would occupy the public stage. Tracing, then, the evolution of civil society and the pivotal role of philanthropy in the search for and exercise of political and economic power, this book will prove essential to anyone interested in American history and government.

Download or read book Capital of Capital written by Steven H. Jaffe and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Revolutionary Era bank notes to 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 world economies. Capital of Capital also examines the frequently contentious evolution of the banking business, its role in making New York City an international economic center, and its influence on America's politics, society, and culture. Based on a major exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, Capital of Capital features the key leaders of banking, including Alexander Hamilton and J. P. Morgan, as well as its critics, such as Louis Brandeis and the Occupy Wall Street protesters. The book also covers the major events and controversies that have shaped the history of banking and includes a fascinating array of primary materials ranging from antebellum bank notes and ledgers to early credit cards and advertisements. 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 world's economy.

Download or read book The Investment Frontier written by John Denis Haeger and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1981-06-30 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American West did not grow in isolation from the East. On the contrary, New York financiers and other eastern entrepreneurs were crucial to America's western economic development, providing the necessary capital and expertise to transform the West into a productive part of the nation's economy. This thesis is powerfully demonstrated by John Denis Haeger in this study concerning the "Old Northwest" (the present-day states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin) during the years 1815-1840. The result of years of research in manuscript collections and government documents, the book provides a comprehensive picture of early land speculators, examining their investments in farm lands, town lots, banks and transportation improvements, as well as their influence on western businessmen and institutions. It also explores their political and economic affairs on the East Coast, since these matters dramatically affected the scope of their western investments. Historians' generalizations about nonresident investors or eastern speculators have previously assumed a common type and business method when, in fact, easterners possessed varying economic goals and utilized different business strategies. To demonstrate this, Haeger compares and contrasts the promoter Charles Butler and the conservative speculators Isaac and Arthur Bronson, key figures among New York's financial elite, whose careers and strategies are for the first time described in detail. The activities of these investment pioneers, whose "every move was calculated to return profits," challenge the traditional images of westward expansion as a largely unplanned and spontaneous movement of people and capital.

Download or read book Investing for Middle America written by K. Lipartito and published by Springer. This book was released on 2001-09-14 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1892, John Elliott Tappan, a twenty-four year old Minneapolis lawyer, was worried how people saved their money. Out of these concerns, Investors Syndicate was born, one of the first of a new type of financial institution designed to meet the savings needs of the average person. Here is the story of this financial pioneer, whose innovation has today grown into one of the nation's largest financial services companies, American Express Financial Advisors. The book draws on Tappan's diaries, business correspondence, and various family oral histories. Tappan's life, work and ideas chronicle the changes in spending and savings, work and leisure, the culture of politics and money, that have given rise to our modern notions of consumer finance.

Download or read book The Black Abolitionist Papers written by C. Peter Ripley and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This five-volume documentary collection--culled from an international archival search that turned up over 14,000 letters, speeches, pamphlets, essays, and newspaper editorials--reveals how black abolitionists represented the core of the antislavery movement. While the first two volumes consider black abolitionists in the British Isles and Canada (the home of some 60,000 black Americans on the eve of the Civil War), the remaining volumes examine the activities and opinions of black abolitionists in the United States from 1830 until the end of the Civil War. In particular, these volumes focus on their reactions to African colonization and the idea of gradual emancipation, the Fugitive Slave Law, and the promise brought by emancipation during the war.

Download or read book Spreading the Word written by Peter J. Wosh and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civil war, the completion of transcontinental railroads, rapid urbanization and industrialization, the rise of managerial capitalism, and new entanglements abroad rent the fabric of life in nineteenth-century America. Through all the turmoil, the American Bible Society thrived. This engaging book tells how a modest antebellum reform agency responded to cataclysmic social change and grew to be a nonprofit corporate bureaucracy that managed, among other projects, what was one of the largest publishing houses in the United States.

Download or read book Fubarnomics written by Robert E. Wright and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2010-12 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this witty, informative overview of contemporary economic ills, Wright takes a fresh approach to public policy by finding fault with both the government and the market, and with both Democrats and Republicans, and offers practical solutions.

Download or read book The 100 Most Important American Financial Crises written by Quentin R. Skrabec Jr. and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-12-09 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering events such as banking crises, economic bubbles, natural disasters, trade embargoes, and depressions, this single-volume encyclopedia of major U.S. financial downturns provides readers with an event-driven understanding of the evolution of the American economy. The United States has fairly recently experienced the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. But crippling financial crises are hardly unusual: economic emergencies have occurred throughout American history and can be seen as a cyclical and "normal" (if undesirable) aspect of an economic system. This encyclopedia supplies objective, accessible, and interesting entries on 100 major U.S. financial crises from the Colonial era to today that have had tremendous domestic impact—and in many cases, global impact as well. The entries explore the history and impact of major economic events, including banking crises, economic shortages, recessions, national strikes and labor upheavals, natural resource shortages, panics, real estate bubbles, social upheavals, and the collapse of specific American industries such as rubber and steel production. Students will find this book an essential ready-reference on key events in American economic history that documents how and why these events led to significant financial and economic problems throughout the United States and around the globe.