The Bretton Woods system ensured a quarter of a century of relative stability on the world's financial markets. The quarter of a century which has followed has brought financial chaos and excessive financial volatility. Exchange Rate Chaos: 25 Years of Financial and Consumer Democracy describes and compares US and British financial history during this period. It highlights: * similarites in financial developments between the two countries * consumer democracy: Have the wishes of consumers dominated exchange rate policy? * The decline of the small investor and the hegemony of financial institutions * How the floating exchange rates are manipulated to government advantage One of the few financial histories to deal with the postwar period, this book shows how financial developments have shaped contemporary society and politics.

A concise history of “just price,� from Aristotle to the present day   The question of what constitutes a fair price has been at the center of market interactions since the time of Aristotle. Should a seller sell to the highest bidder, or is there some other standard, such as a morally defined price, to be applied? Charles R. Geisst traces the ways that philosophers, religious leaders, and economists have sought to answer that question, from antiquity through the modern era.   Aristotle’s thinking on usury influenced the idea of pricing well into the Renaissance. In his view, money was barren and should not be used to beget more money. As trade became more extensive, the strictures placed on pricing by Aristotelian thinking began to fall away, replaced by Roman and common-law conceptions of value and interest. Geisst’s book follows the evolution of that thought—influenced along the way by figures such as Copernicus, Fibonacci, Adam Smith, Marx, Cassel, and Keynes—and charts parallel developments in European and Islamic notions of fair pricing.   Today, pricing is seen as an economic inevitability, dictated by the laws of supply and demand. But this has not always been the case. As Geisst argues, the idea of a just price was once a moral concept, long before it was an economic one.

The practice of charging interest on loans has been controversial since it was first mentioned in early recorded history. Lending is a powerful economic tool, vital to the development of society but it can also lead to disaster if left unregulated. Prohibitions against excessive interest, or usury, have been found in almost all societies since antiquity. Whether loans were made in kind or in cash, creditors often were accused of beggar-thy-neighbor exploitation when their lending terms put borrowers at risk of ruin. While the concept of usury reflects transcendent notions of fairness, its definition has varied over time and place: Roman law distinguished between simple and compound interest, the medieval church banned interest altogether, and even Adam Smith favored a ceiling on interest. But in spite of these limits, the advantages and temptations of lending prompted financial innovations from margin investing and adjustable-rate mortgages to credit cards and microlending. In Beggar Thy Neighbor, financial historian Charles R. Geisst tracks the changing perceptions of usury and debt from the time of Cicero to the most recent financial crises. This comprehensive economic history looks at humanity's attempts to curb the abuse of debt while reaping the benefits of credit. Beggar Thy Neighbor examines the major debt revolutions of the past, demonstrating that extensive leverage and debt were behind most financial market crashes from the Renaissance to the present day. Geisst argues that usury prohibitions, as part of the natural law tradition in Western and Islamic societies, continue to play a key role in banking regulation despite modern advances in finance. From the Roman Empire to the recent Dodd-Frank financial reforms, usury ceilings still occupy a central place in notions of free markets and economic justice.

An intriguing history of the futures market and speculation
From Jay Gould's attempt to corner the gold market in the 1860s to the Hunt brothers' scandalous efforts to control the silver market in the 1980s, Wheels of Fortune traces the rich, colorful history of the futures market on its quest for respectability and profit. This comprehensive account shows readers why the markets have been grabbing headlines for over 100 years as both respectable economic institutions and hotbeds of gambling activity and scandal. Charles Geisst brings the personalities and strategies behind the futures market and speculation in general to life, against a backdrop of American life that begins prior to the Civil War.

Predatory lending: A problem rooted in the past that continues today. Looking for an investment return that could exceed 500 percent annually; maybe even twice that much? Private, unregulated lending to high-risk borrowers is the answer, or at least it was in the United States for much of the period from the Civil War to the onset of the early decades of the twentieth century. Newspapers called the practice "loan sharking" because lenders employed the same ruthlessness as the great predators in the ocean. Slowly state and federal governments adopted laws and regulations curtailing the practice, but organized crime continued to operate much of the business. In the end, lending to high-margin investors contributed directly to the Wall Street crash of 1929. Loan Sharks is the first history of predatory lending in the United States. It traces the origins of modern consumer lending to such older practices as salary buying and hidden interest charges. Yet, as Geisst shows, no-holds barred loan sharking is not a thing of the past. Many current lending practices employed today by credit card companies, payday lenders, and providers of consumer loans would have been easily recognizable at the end of the nineteenth century. Geisst demonstrates the still prevalent custom of lenders charging high interest rates, especially to risky borrowers, despite attempts to control the practice by individual states. Usury and loan sharking have not disappeared a century and a half after the predatory practices first raised public concern.

This two-volume, A-to-Z encyclopedia provides detailed coverage of America's business history, from the Hudson fur trade to the Internet. More than 400 lively, informative entries profile corporate titans and tycoons, Wall Street wizards, industry leaders, and major events and institutions of American business - spanning the period after American independence to the present day. Each entry is accompanied by a short bibliography and is cross-referenced to related entries, enabling readers to pursue the topic further. An introduction offers a general account of the topic, and a chronology helps readers place events into historical context. Selected primary documents, a general bibliography, and an index round out this important reference. Entries include American Telephone & Telegraph; Warren Buffett; the computer industry; Walt Disney; Thomas Alva Edison; Henry Ford; General Electric Co.; Howard Hughes, Jr.; International Business Machines; Steven Jobs; Lehman Brothers; the motion picture industry; the New York Stock Exchange; office machines; Pan American Airlines; rail-roads; John D. Rockefeller; Sarbanes-Oxley Act; Sears, Roebuck & Co.; slavery; Martha Stewart; the telegraph; United Automobile Workers; Cornelius Vanderbilt; Eli Whitney; and more.

A critical look at over 80 years of conflict, collusion, and corruption between financiers and politicians
Undue Influence paints a vivid portrait of the dealings between "the few," in this case members of Congress, the banking community, and the Fed, and sheds light on how radical new deregulatory measures could be introduced by unelected officials and then foisted upon Congress in the name of progress. In the process, the background of the new financial elite is examined-because they are markedly different than their predecessors of the 1920s and 1930s. Undue Influence also brings readers up to speed on other important issues, including how the financial elite has been able to perpetuate itself, how the markets lend themselves to these special interest groups, and how it is possible that after 80 years of financial regulation and regulatory bodies the same problems of financial malfeasance and fraud still plague the markets.
Charles R. Geisst (Oradell, NJ) is the author of 15 books, including Wheels of Fortune (0-471-47973-X), Deals of the Century (0-471-26397-4) and the bestsellers Wall Street: A History and 100 Years of Wall Street. Geisst has taught both political science and finance, worked in banking and finance on Wall Street and in London, as well as consulted. His articles have been published in the International Herald Tribune, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, Newsday, Wall Street Journal, and Euromoney.

This is the first history on the subject of foreign investment in the United States since 1920. It shows how the United States changed from a debtor nation to a supplier of capital to the rest of the world, and then details the structural shifts to this creditor position after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in 1972. Geisst demonstrates that the United States has always been a magnet for foreign portfolio and direct investment. Traditionally, this has come from northern European or Canadian sources, but in the 1970s the Japanese became a major force. Currently, both types of investment in the United States are at historically high levels, but Geisst asserts that this foreign interest exerts a positive rather than a negative impact on the economic climate.

This study is a counterpart to the author's earlier examination of domestic investment in the United States, "Visionary Capitalism: Financial Markets and the American Dream in the Twentieth Century." It will be of interest to scholars and professionals in finance and investments, business history, and American history.

This groundbreaking new work presents the first financial history of the United States in the 20th century from the commercial and investment banking perspective. The author traces the development of both industries from the 1920s through the conditions of the present marketplace and looks at the simultaneous development of the federal regulatory agencies that grew up around the financial markets. Arguing that the ideal of an American Dream finds its best tangible expression in the ways in which the financial markets have been used to foster and protect the ideals of quality housing, higher education, and agricultural production, the author analyzes the successes and failures of the markets in producing a high standard of living and well-being over the past 70 years.

Geisst begins by describing the manner in which the financial system and its regulators responded to the developments leading up to the crash of 1929, demonstrating that this period saw the first recognition that government agencies could effectively intervene in capital markets in times of financial crisis. He then reviews, in separate chapters, capital markets since the crash and the commercial banking industry as it evolved after 1934. Turning to a more specific focus on the markets' impact on individuals, Geisst assesses American capitalisM's ability to fulfill the goals of universal home ownership, widened access to higher education, and liberal farm credit. He then addresses the financial innovations of the past two decades, evaluating their effects in furthering the general acquisition of wealth. Finally, Geisst looks at the relationships between Republicans and Democrats and the markets. Throughout, Geisst seeks to determine how the complex interactions between the markets themselves and the agencies that oversee and regulate them have fostered and protected the ideals of the American Dream. Ideal as a supplemental text for courses in business and economic history, this book will also be of significant interest to professionals and executives in the commercial and investment banking fields.