Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich

Robert E. Wright is a clinical Associate Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University. In addition to editing three series of primary source documents for Pickering & Chatto, History of Corporate Finance (2003), History of Corporate Governance (2004), and The US National Debt (2005), Wright has authored or co‐authored ten books, including Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich (2006) and One Nation Under Debt (2008). Though an historian by training, Wright has published numerous articles for economic and business journals like the American Economic Review, Barron's, and FT Banker. David J. Cowen is a Wall Street veteran and independent scholar in the New York metropolitan area. He is the author of The Origins and Economic Impact of the First Bank of the USA, 1791‐1797. Both collaborated to write a very interesting book about the hidden face of the Foundation of the USA as well as government system than economic system (and even, as a new form of society or civilisation).

When you think of the founding fathers, you think of men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin – exceptional minds and matchless statesmen who led the colonies to a seemingly impossible victory over the British and established the constitutional and legal framework for the development of democracy in North America. But the American revolution was about far more than freedom and liberty. It was about economics as well. Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen chronicle how a different group of founding fathers forged the wealth and institutions necessary to transform the American colonies from a diffuse alliance of contending business interests into one cohesive economic superpower. Wright and Cowen provide biographical information on nine founders of America's financial and economic systems, from Alexander Hamilton to Andrew Jackson and Nicholas Biddle.

After an introduce chapter, the book is made of seven chapters that are centred on one or two financial personalities. Some are famous (Alexander Hamilton or Robert Morris), some unknown (such as Tench Coxe), others misunderstood (Nicholas Biddle), but all are as USA (as society) Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich according to the two authors. The book is closed by two reflexive and conclusive chapters.

Globally, we can say that the two authors explore how the development of financial institutions (such as banks, life insurance companies) and big non‐financial enterprises (interconnected with financial institutions), affected government institutions and democratic principles. They argue that a key factor in American finance was the formation of capital markets in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that established the USA as a credit‐worthy nation, and supported economic growth through increased possibilities for large‐scale enterprises such as manufacturing. Such men were instrumental in creating and nurturing a financial system that drove economic growth in the nascent USA because they were quick to realize that wealth was as crucial as the constitution in securing the blessings of liberty and promoting the general welfare. The astonishing economic development made possible by the financial founding fathers was indispensable to the preservation of national unity and of support for a government that was then still a profoundly radical and delicate political experiment. However, it must be noticed that the book emphasizes biographical information with limited explanation of financial and economic arguments.

This book is useful for large public libraries so that general readers may understand formative economic ideas in American history. Grand in scope and vision, Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich is an entertaining and inspiring history of the men who made America rich and steered her toward greatness. Like the previous one, it can be also read as an introduction to the financial history.

Those two books shows how financial history can highlight the relations between society and enterprises since the financial institutions are also enterprises that can have, undoubtedly, a tremendous impact on society as the past and recent financial crisis have shown it. In fact, they shape democracy as far as a “regime” as a kind of society. In 1802, Thomas Jefferson said:

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties that standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake‐up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

This opinion could sound as a prophecy for the democracies.

The finance enterprises or institution are also concerned by the third book that is reviewed since we land the “state corporate crime (SCC),” a field that has not been treated yet in SBR. R.C Kramer, R. Michalowski and J.R Aulette can be considered as those who “invented,” between 1990 and 1993, the SCC concept that is, first, a criminology concept. But since the “society and business field” is a pluridisciplinary object, it seems pertinent to pay attention to SCC. It refers to crimes that result from the relationship between the policies of the state and the policies and practices of commercial corporations. It also refers to the devious connections that can exist between business, administrative, and political elites that can lead to scandals, corruption, fraud, technological catastrophes or environmental destruction. The SCC definition includes all “socially injurious acts” and not merely those that are defined by the local criminal jurisdiction as crime. SCC must be distinguishing from corporate crime, political crime, and state crime. Corporate crime refers to deviance or delinquency within the context of a corporation and by a corporation. Political crimes are crimes directed at the state. State crimes are those that are made by government organizations.