Honest financial journalism is indispensable to ethical financial markets. It is hard to imagine a clean financial industry in operation if the state of its trade press was unchanged from that of the middle of the 19th century, when financial journalism could be summarized as the propagation of rumors, often with nefarious ends. The professionalization…
The need for insurance becomes most apparent after a major disaster, so disasters tend to be nurturing of innovation in insurance. London’s Great Fire of 1666 was one such disaster. Not only did the destruction require the rebuilding of much of the city, it also prompted the development and proliferation of fire insurance, hitherto little…
In the absence of metal coins or modern banknotes, commodities have been used as money. The commodities most suitable are those held in high demand by traders and merchants. In colonial America, examples of these included beads, beaver belts, and tobacco. The latter is particularly interesting not only because of its particularly broad acceptance as…
It is easy to think of economic and financial crises that have had stunning political consequences. Sometimes this goes so far as to turn normally arcane fiscal and monetary questions into objects of fierce public debate. The reverse can also happen. Political events can and have changed the context of economic and financial decision-making with…
Trade is capital intensive, even more so when transit times are slower or the distances vaster. Products sitting in warehouses, ships, and ports are deadweight, tying up capital until they are finally sold and used. Merchant banks, as their name implies, serve merchants and for centuries that meant devising a solution to the financial problems…
Any influx of new money, if poorly managed, can prove as ruinous as it seemed alluring. Misdirected riches can be frittered away and, by enabling years or decades of dissipation, growing indebtedness, or both, can leave its former holders in far worse position than where they began. Spain was able to capture large amounts of…
What do matches and money have in common? Not much perhaps, except that one man seemed an especially powerful supplier of each. Ivar Kreuger is possibly the person whose fame has diminished the most in the last century of financial history. During the 1920s, he was one of the largest creditors, and borrowers, in the…
The economic disorders that succeeded the First World War, a failed restoration of the gold standard, a stock market bubble, the Great Crash of 1929, the Great Depression, and the Second World War all occurred in the span of twenty-five years. The Bank of England was led by one man for almost the entirety of…
Bankruptcy gives debtors a reprieve from their creditors by allowing an orderly liquidation of assets or a restructuring, often alongside a reduction or complete discharge of remaining debts. Usually a sign of financial defeat, it can be easy to forget that bankruptcy is a protection largely provided to the borrower and not the creditor. Before…
The world became more interconnected in the 19th century as railways and telegraph expanded the reach of business. By facilitating long-distance transactions, express shipping became vital to many industries, including finance. This softens any surprise accompanying the fact that two of the largest financial firms in the United States today, Wells Fargo and American Express,…
Far away from sources of foreign monies and lacking their own, early Australia was forced to improvise. Barter was especially impractical and attempts to create a local coinage were unsuccessful until the early 20th century. Banknotes provided the solution for some parts of the country but in remote areas far from any banks, makeshift systems…
Life insurance contracts, life annuities, and an array of transactions relating to estates and inheritances are contingent on lifespan. It would make sense that some method of valuing these life-contingent transactions would have been formulated long ago, even in the absence of good demographic data. As it happens, life annuities were common in ancient Rome…
