Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Wall Street
Speculators caused a stock market crash in 1792, forcing the federal government to bail out New York bankers— and the nation.
Wall Street’s first bubble swelled burst in the spring of 1792, exerting a profound effect on American politics and society. Nine years after the Treaty of Paris and the acknowledgement of the former colonies— independence, both Europe and America lay in turmoil.
The New York Stock Exchange plans to modernize by merging with a new competitor, just as it did in 1869.
Few periods in the history of this country can match the impact of the years between 1917 and 1941. In less than a generation, America experienced the first large-scale dispatch of U.S.
Growing up in a family with many members who earned their living on Wall Street, and with many ancestors and relatives who had done the same, I—as might be expected—very early heard stories of business that I found as fascinating as the tales of military action I was soaking up
Overrated For a hundred years the armor-plate scandal of the 1890s has been offered up as a definitive example of corporate greed. In fact it’s a better example of government incompetence.
When terrorists first struck New York’s financial district
If you go downtown in Manhattan to the offices of the old J. P. Morgan firm at the corner of Wall and Broad, you’ll see the pocked-marble scars of the first blow that terrorists struck at America’s financial heart, the Wall Street bombing of 1920.
How does one distill the millions of stories that are the history of Wall Street into a single book?
A couple of years ago, an editor at Scribner asked me to write a book covering the entire history of Wall Street. I was reluctant. I’d already written a book on the Wall Street of the Civil War era, and I have never liked writing about anything for a second time.
Statistics help us comprehend the world sometimes.
In one of the most famous metaphors in western thought, Plato wrote about a man chained in a cave. Unable to see outside, all he could know of the world beyond his prison was what he was able to deduce from the shadows that were projected on the wall by whatever passed by.
Will the current bull market die spectacularly, a la 1929, or—as in 1974—will it strangle in weird silence?
J.P. Morgan did not have much use for either the stock market or reporters. So, when one reporter importunately asked him what the market was going to do one day, he replied, with about equal parts contempt and truth, “It will fluctuate.”
Sometimes making a lot of money is a snap. And, sometimes, it’s a snare.
It is easy to make money in a bull market. Just look at the thousands of Wall Streeters who have done so in recent years, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average has broken through thousand mark after thousand mark.
The man who showed Warren Buffett and thousands of others how to get rich
Andrew Carnegie once offered some free advice on how to get rich: “Put all your eggs in one basket, and then WATCH THAT BASKET.” His friend, Mark Twain, borrowed the remark, but had a bad habit of not practicing what he preached, and he was often
How two bold sisters set up a business in the very citadel of masculine prerogative: 1870s Wall Street
Today, there are few areas of human activity where women are still absent. The nation’s most populous state has sent two to the United States Senate, where they sit with six others. The Supreme Court has two female justices.
Not only are the good ones surpassingly rare, but two of the best are outright fakes.
Great autobiographies are few and far between. Not many of us, after all, possess the requisite talent, self-awareness, and willingness to bare our souls to the world. Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that the best of them have so often come out of left field.
I came by my love of history naturally, for both my grandfathers were passionately fond of the subject and learned in it.
Imagine the media sensation that would result if, say, Donald Trump were to be gunned down in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel by a Rockefeller who had taken up with Maria Maples.
The more things change, the French are fond of saying, the more they stay the same. The French have never been exactly renowned for their respect for the free market, but nowhere is their famous proverb more true.
As long as there have been bankers and brokers, there have been people asking what would happen if they had to earn an honest living
On October 26, 1911, the old Life magazine published a cartoon entitled “When We All Get Wise.” The implication of the cartoon, of course, was that if the ordinary people of the country would “just say no,” this time to bankers, brokers, and capi
Arising spontaneously from the people, folktales are little windows into the collective human psyche. Most people think of them as stories concerning the long ago and the faraway. In fact, all times and places have produced them, and modern times are no exception.
Wherever opportunities for great wealth are concentrated, there will also be a concentration of men who make up in ambition, genius, and reckless courage what they sometimes lack in scruples.
In June 1984, I got an odd call from an editor at The Wall Street Journal. I had submitted an article that marked the 100th anniversary of the first publication of Charles Dow’s stock-market average.
A knowledgeable and passionate guide takes us for a walk down Wall Street, and we find the buildings there eloquent of the whole history of American finance
One of the pleasant burdens of friendship, and of living in a renowned and intimidating great city like New York, is that friends planning to visit will ask me to show them the sights of some quarter of town, most usually in the borough of Manhattan, county o
Until July 2, 1986, I felt comfortably detached from the current insider-trading scandal on Wall Street.
The most influential economist in the United States talks about prudence, productivity, and the pursuit of liquidity in the light of the past
TWENTY YEARS AGO , the American economy hummed like a well-oiled machine. We actually exported automobiles and oil.
Ever since 1792, bulls and bears together have tripped the light fantastic on Wall Street’s sidewalks—and sometimes just tripped
On a cold Saturday in December, 1865, the 350 members of the New York Stock Exchange gave a party to celebrate moving into a new building on Broad Street, near the corner of Wall—the first home of their own.
How J. P. Morgan, like a “one-man Federal Reserve,” calmed the bankers and helped ease the Panic of 1907
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