Everybody Ought to Be Rich

Everybody Ought to Be Rich PDF Author: David Farber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199908516
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Today, consumer credit, employee stock options, and citizen investment in the stock market are taken for granted--fundamental facts of American economic life. But few people realize that they were first widely promoted by John Jakob Raskob (1879-1950), the innovative financier and self-made businessman who built the Empire State building, made millions for DuPont and General Motors, and helped shape the contours of modern capitalism. David Farber's Everybody Ought to Be Rich is the first biography of Raskob, a man who shunned the limelight (he was the anti-Trump of his time) but whose impact on free market enterprise can hardly be overstated. A colorful figure, Raskob's life evokes the roaring twenties, the Catholic elite, the boardrooms of America's biggest corporations, and the rags-to-riches tale that is central to the American dream. Farber follows Raskob's remarkable trajectory from a teenage candy seller on the railway between Lockport and Buffalo to the pinnacles of wealth and power. With no formal education but possessed of a boundless energy and an unshakeable faith in individual initiative (his motto was "Go ahead and do something!"), Raskob partnered with great industrialists and financiers, buying up companies, leveraging investments, reorganizing corporations, funneling money into the political system, and creating new pools of credit for rich investors and middle class consumers alike--practices commonplace today but revolutionary at the time. His most famous innovation was mass consumer credit, which he offered to individual car buyers, enabling working and middle-class Americans to purchase GM's more expensive cars. Raskob desperately wanted to bridge class divides and to share the wealth American corporations were fast creating--so that everyone could be rich. Chronicling Raskob's short-comings as well as his successes, Everybody Ought to Be Rich illuminates a crucial but little-known figure in American capitalism whose influence can still be felt today.

Everybody Ought to Be Rich

Everybody Ought to Be Rich PDF Author: David Farber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199908516
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
Today, consumer credit, employee stock options, and citizen investment in the stock market are taken for granted--fundamental facts of American economic life. But few people realize that they were first widely promoted by John Jakob Raskob (1879-1950), the innovative financier and self-made businessman who built the Empire State building, made millions for DuPont and General Motors, and helped shape the contours of modern capitalism. David Farber's Everybody Ought to Be Rich is the first biography of Raskob, a man who shunned the limelight (he was the anti-Trump of his time) but whose impact on free market enterprise can hardly be overstated. A colorful figure, Raskob's life evokes the roaring twenties, the Catholic elite, the boardrooms of America's biggest corporations, and the rags-to-riches tale that is central to the American dream. Farber follows Raskob's remarkable trajectory from a teenage candy seller on the railway between Lockport and Buffalo to the pinnacles of wealth and power. With no formal education but possessed of a boundless energy and an unshakeable faith in individual initiative (his motto was "Go ahead and do something!"), Raskob partnered with great industrialists and financiers, buying up companies, leveraging investments, reorganizing corporations, funneling money into the political system, and creating new pools of credit for rich investors and middle class consumers alike--practices commonplace today but revolutionary at the time. His most famous innovation was mass consumer credit, which he offered to individual car buyers, enabling working and middle-class Americans to purchase GM's more expensive cars. Raskob desperately wanted to bridge class divides and to share the wealth American corporations were fast creating--so that everyone could be rich. Chronicling Raskob's short-comings as well as his successes, Everybody Ought to Be Rich illuminates a crucial but little-known figure in American capitalism whose influence can still be felt today.

Everybody Ought to Be Rich

Everybody Ought to Be Rich PDF Author: David Farber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199734577
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
The extraordinary life and times of a colorful capitalist who invented the idea of consumer credit.

Everybody Ought to be Rich

Everybody Ought to be Rich PDF Author: David R. Farber
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780190254360
Category : Capitalists and financiers
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
John Raskob is not a name that looms large but his greatest building casts a shadow on the people of New York every day. Financier of the Empire State Building, Raskob was a self-made businessman who worked for DuPont and for GM and famously invented the idea for consumer credit, which he first offered to individual car buyers (GMAC). His wide circle of business associates and personal acquaintances included Water Chrysler, the DuPonts, Alfred Sloane, Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Kennedy, Western miners, and the Pope.

Black Tuesday

Black Tuesday PDF Author: Robin S. Doak
Publisher: Capstone
ISBN: 9780756533274
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
An exploration of the causes and effects of the stock market crash of 1929.

The Great Crash 1929

The Great Crash 1929 PDF Author: John Kenneth Galbraith
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780547248165
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
The classic examination of the 1929 financial collapse, with an introduction by economist James K. Galbraith Of John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash 1929, the Atlantic Monthly said: "Economic writings are seldom notable for their entertainment value, but this book is. Galbraith's prose has grace and wit, and he distills a good deal of sardonic fun from the whopping errors of the nation's oracles and the wondrous antics of the financial community." Originally published in 1955, Galbraith's book became an instant bestseller, and in the years since its release it has become the unparalleled point of reference for readers looking to understand American financial history."

Crash!

Crash! PDF Author: Phillip G. Payne
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421418568
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
"Most measures of the American economy over the past two centuries or so produce a jagged sine wave--"irrationally exuberant" highs leading to painful lows. Bubbles lead to panics, over and over again. Payne has written a short book on the 1920s to demonstrate to undergraduates how this pattern emerges, especially how the highs get to be so high--specifically during the 1920s, which seem to offer instructive examples of the worst practices and circumstances. This "How Things Worked" volume explains market mechanisms, popular pressures, and the workings or failings of regulation. While every drop in the economy has its peculiar features, that of 1929 has the markings of a classic"--Provided by publisher.

To Make a Killing

To Make a Killing PDF Author: Robert Stephens
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228023491
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
One of the wildest, most spectacular decades in American history, the 1920s were a period of unprecedented growth and mass consumerism. In the New Era, people drank in speakeasies, danced to jazz, idolized gangsters, and bet their life savings on stocks. Born and raised in a small Canadian town, Arthur Cutten went to Chicago in 1890 with ninety dollars to his name. Through utter ruthlessness, he amassed a fortune trading in grain futures and stocks. Cutten was heralded as the modern Midas, and his every move was followed by the masses, who believed they could get rich quick. But everything changed after the crash of 1929. The heroes of prosperity became the villains of the Great Depression. Determined to crack down on the “banksters,” the Roosevelt administration launched an all-out attack on those it blamed for the collapse – and Cutten was at the top of the list. A US Senate committee probed how he manipulated stock prices. The Grain Futures Administration moved to bar him from trading. And the Bureau of Internal Revenue indicted him for income tax evasion. But the wily operator won on every count: he emerged from the Senate investigation unscathed, maintained his grain trading privileges after a victory in the Supreme Court, and left almost nothing for the tax collectors upon his death. To Make a Killing tells the tale of Cutten’s journey to fabulous wealth, the forces that propelled him, and the fascinating characters in his life.

Abdication of the Sovereign Self

Abdication of the Sovereign Self PDF Author: Andrew Spano
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527526623
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
Language and logic are inextricably commingled in our everyday speech. What we say, particularly in the form of statements, tends not only to mirror our world, but mold it into our own image. This book looks at how much of our verbal communication can be considered “valid” from the point of view of the rules of logic. Are we saying what we mean to say? Is what we hear from the media, our peers, our leaders, and those who determine the narrative “story” of our lives meaningful, rational, and logical? Even more important than the answers to these questions is the answer to whether we are the governors and rulers of our own lives. Have we abdicated this sovereign rule to forces that may not have our best interests and wellbeing in mind? Using works of Continental and analytic philosophy ancient and modern, psychology, linguistics, religion, and literature, this book supports the thesis that we have surrendered the only thing we could ever possibly own – ourselves – for unprecedented access to consumer goods, credit, and the hope for medical immortality. Further, the argument is made that the prevailing discourse of global modern culture consists of statements which are invalid because their inner semantic structure is inherently contradictory. The argument is aimed at those who want to learn more about what makes our everyday discourse and thinking rational or irrational. At the same time, it indicts the individual of the modern industrialized state for the crime of the voluntary abdication of his sovereignty and for forcing others who have little control over their lives to do the same. This book is a call for introspection in the hope that the reader will see something of the situation described reflected not only in himself, but in the society he inhabits.

Value Investing in Real Estate

Value Investing in Real Estate PDF Author: Gary W. Eldred
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 047121129X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Secure a Prosperous Future by Applying the Tried-and-True Techniques of Value Investing to Income Properties Value Investing in Real Estate outlines a safe and rewarding way to plan for your retirement and increase your income without the risks so common to the stock market. You'll learn how to buy real estate properties using Ben Graham's time-tested methods for evaluating investments. It's a proven way to build assets and income-a big payoff for relatively little time and effort. This book proves the advantages of value investing in real estate as compared to stocks in terms of stability, yield, growth, and equity appreciation. Value Investing in Real Estate also guides readers through important topics such as identifying geographical areas of growth, population patterns, land use, market indicators, condos, townhouses, fixer-uppers, and conversions. It covers what you need to know about both value investing and the real estate market-and how to combine the two for high returns-all backed with examples that illustrate each concept and technique. For the great majority of enterprising investors, value investing in real estate will prove superior to the stock market. Most importantly, you will gain far more income than the paltry dividends accruing from most stock portfolios. With this intelligent, highly readable book, you will see how the techniques of value investing in real estate can help you build the wealth and income you will need in the future.

The Lawless Decade

The Lawless Decade PDF Author: Paul Sann
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486130789
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
From the start of Prohibition to the Wall Street Crash, these lively vignettes portray the most noteworthy people and events of the 1920s. Hundreds of photographs depict gangsters, flappers, movie stars, other personalities.