Other People's Money

How Banking Worked in the Early American Republic
Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4214-2175-9
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 208 Seiten, Format (B × H): 149 mm x 228 mm, Gewicht: 290 g

Reihe: How Things Worked

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Murphy, Sharon Ann

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Finanzsektor & Finanzdienstleistungen Bankwirtschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Geschichte der VWL
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Prologue. How the Bank War Worked
1. How Money Worked
2. How Banks Worked
3. How Panics Worked
4. Experiments in Money and Banking
5. How Civil War Finance Worked
Conclusion. Andrew Jackson, Other People's Money, and the Creation of the Federal Reserve
Epilogue. Why Is Andrew Jackson Harriet Tubman on the $20 Bill?
Notes
Suggested Further Reading
Index

Leseproben

Time.com Excerpt

Über Autor(innen)

Murphy, Sharon Ann
Sharon Ann Murphy is an associate professor of history at Providence College.

Sharon Ann Murphy is a professor of history at Providence College. She is the author of Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America.