America's First Great Depression

America's First Great Depression PDF Author: Alasdair Roberts
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801464676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
For a while, it seemed impossible to lose money on real estate. But then the bubble burst. The financial sector was paralyzed and the economy contracted. State and federal governments struggled to pay their domestic and foreign creditors. Washington was incapable of decisive action. The country seethed with political and social unrest. In America's First Great Depression, Alasdair Roberts describes how the United States dealt with the economic and political crisis that followed the Panic of 1837. As Roberts shows, the two decades that preceded the Panic had marked a democratic surge in the United States. However, the nation’s commitment to democracy was tested severely during this crisis. Foreign lenders questioned whether American politicians could make the unpopular decisions needed on spending and taxing. State and local officials struggled to put down riots and rebellion. A few wondered whether this was the end of America’s democratic experiment. Roberts explains how the country’s woes were complicated by its dependence on foreign trade and investment, particularly with Britain. Aware of the contemporary relevance of this story, Roberts examines how the country responded to the political and cultural aftershocks of 1837, transforming its political institutions to strike a new balance between liberty and social order, and uneasily coming to terms with its place in the global economy.

America's First Great Depression

America's First Great Depression PDF Author: Alasdair Roberts
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801464676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
For a while, it seemed impossible to lose money on real estate. But then the bubble burst. The financial sector was paralyzed and the economy contracted. State and federal governments struggled to pay their domestic and foreign creditors. Washington was incapable of decisive action. The country seethed with political and social unrest. In America's First Great Depression, Alasdair Roberts describes how the United States dealt with the economic and political crisis that followed the Panic of 1837. As Roberts shows, the two decades that preceded the Panic had marked a democratic surge in the United States. However, the nation’s commitment to democracy was tested severely during this crisis. Foreign lenders questioned whether American politicians could make the unpopular decisions needed on spending and taxing. State and local officials struggled to put down riots and rebellion. A few wondered whether this was the end of America’s democratic experiment. Roberts explains how the country’s woes were complicated by its dependence on foreign trade and investment, particularly with Britain. Aware of the contemporary relevance of this story, Roberts examines how the country responded to the political and cultural aftershocks of 1837, transforming its political institutions to strike a new balance between liberty and social order, and uneasily coming to terms with its place in the global economy.

The Many Panics of 1837

The Many Panics of 1837 PDF Author: Jessica M. Lepler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521116538
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
Reveals how people transformed their experiences of financial crisis into a single event that would serve as a turning point in American history.

The Market Revolution in America

The Market Revolution in America PDF Author: John Lauritz Larson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139483420
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The mass industrial democracy that is the modern United States bears little resemblance to the simple agrarian republic that gave it birth. The market revolution is the reason for this dramatic - and ironic - metamorphosis. The resulting tangled frameworks of democracy and capitalism still dominate the world as it responds to the panic of 2008. Early Americans experienced what we now call 'modernization'. The exhilaration - and pain - they endured have been repeated in nearly every part of the globe. Born of freedom and ambition, the market revolution in America fed on democracy and individualism even while it generated inequality, dependency, and unimagined wealth and power. In this book, John Lauritz Larson explores the lure of market capitalism and the beginnings of industrialization in the United States. His research combines an appreciation for enterprise and innovation with recognition of negative and unanticipated consequences of the transition to capitalism and relates economic change directly to American freedom and self-determination, links that remain entirely relevant today.

A Brief History of Panics and Their Periodical Occurrence in the United States

A Brief History of Panics and Their Periodical Occurrence in the United States PDF Author: Clément Juglar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business cycles
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description


Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies, The

Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies, The PDF Author: Murray Newton Rothbard
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
ISBN: 1610163702
Category : Depressions
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description


Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren PDF Author: Edward L. Widmer
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805069224
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The first president born after America's independence ushers in a new era of no-holds-barred democracy The first "professional politician" to become president, the slick and dandyish Martin Van Buren was to all appearances the opposite of his predecessor, the rugged general and Democratic champion Andrew Jackson. Van Buren, a native Dutch speaker, was America's first ethnic president as well as the first New Yorker to hold the office, at a time when Manhattan was bursting with new arrivals. A sharp and adroit political operator, he established himself as a powerhouse in New York, becoming a U.S. senator, secretary of state, and vice president under Jackson, whose election he managed. His ascendancy to the Oval Office was virtually a foregone conclusion. Once he had the reins of power, however, Van Buren found the road quite a bit rougher. His attempts to find a middle ground on the most pressing issues of his day-such as the growing regional conflict over slavery-eroded his effectiveness. But it was his inability to prevent the great banking panic of 1837, and the ensuing depression, that all but ensured his fall from grace and made him the third president to be denied a second term. His many years of outfoxing his opponents finally caught up with him. Ted Widmer, a veteran of the Clinton White House, vividly brings to life the chaos and contention that plagued Van Buren's presidency-and ultimately offered an early lesson in the power of democracy.

The Panic of 1837

The Panic of 1837 PDF Author: Reginald Charles McGrane
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Depressions
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description


The Jacksonian Economy

The Jacksonian Economy PDF Author: Peter Temin
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393098419
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
A critical examination of the economic depression of the 1830's, arguing, that forces beyond Jackson's control were responsible for the crises

A Nation of Deadbeats

A Nation of Deadbeats PDF Author: Scott Reynolds Nelson
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307474321
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Pundits will argue that the 2008 financial crisis was the first crash in American history driven by consumer debt. But in this spirited, highly engaging account, Scott Reynolds Nelson demonstrates that consumer debt has underpinned almost every major financial panic in the nation’s history. From William Duer’s attempts to profit off the country’s post-Revolutionary War debt to an 1815 plan to sell English coats to Americans on credit, to the debt-fueled railroad expansion that precipitated the 1857 crash: in each case, the chain of banks, brokers, moneylenders, and insurance companies that separated borrowers and lenders made it impossible to distinguish good loans from bad. Bound up in this history are stories of national banks funded by smugglers, fistfights in Congress over the gold standard, America’s early dependence on British bankers, and how presidential campaigns were forged in controversies over private debt. An irreverent, wholly accessible, eye-opening book.

Capitalism Takes Command

Capitalism Takes Command PDF Author: Michael Zakim
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226451097
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Most scholarship on nineteenth-century America’s transformation into a market society has focused on consumption, romanticized visions of workers, and analysis of firms and factories. Building on but moving past these studies, Capitalism Takes Command presents a history of family farming, general incorporation laws, mortgage payments, inheritance practices, office systems, and risk management—an inventory of the means by which capitalism became America’s new revolutionary tradition. This multidisciplinary collection of essays argues not only that capitalism reached far beyond the purview of the economy, but also that the revolution was not confined to the destruction of an agrarian past. As business ceaselessly revised its own practices, a new demographic of private bankers, insurance brokers, investors in securities, and start-up manufacturers, among many others, assumed center stage, displacing older elites and forms of property. Explaining how capital became an “ism” and how business became a political philosophy, Capitalism Takes Command brings the economy back into American social and cultural history.