Books > Business & Economics > Business & management
|
Buy Now
Freaks of Fortune - The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Paperback)
Loot Price: R580
Discovery Miles 5 800
|
|
Freaks of Fortune - The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Paperback)
(sign in to rate)
Loot Price R580
Discovery Miles 5 800
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
|
Until the early nineteenth century, "risk" was a specialized term:
it was the commodity exchanged in a marine insurance contract.
Freaks of Fortune tells the story of how the modern concept of risk
emerged in the United States. Born on the high seas, risk migrated
inland and became essential to the financial management of an
inherently uncertain capitalist future. Focusing on the hopes and
anxieties of ordinary people, Jonathan Levy shows how risk
developed through the extraordinary growth of new financial
institutions-insurance corporations, savings banks, mortgage-backed
securities markets, commodities futures markets, and securities
markets-while posing inescapable moral questions. For at the heart
of risk's rise was a new vision of freedom. To be a free
individual, whether an emancipated slave, a plains farmer, or a
Wall Street financier, was to take, assume, and manage one's own
personal risk. Yet this often meant offloading that same risk onto
a series of new financial institutions, which together have only
recently acquired the name "financial services industry." Levy
traces the fate of a new vision of personal freedom, as it unfolded
in the new economic reality created by the American financial
system. Amid the nineteenth-century's waning faith in God's
providence, Americans increasingly confronted unanticipated
challenges to their independence and security in the boom and bust
chance-world of capitalism. Freaks of Fortuneis one of the first
books to excavate the historical origins of our own financialized
times and risk-defined lives.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.