The Stock Market Game in Post-war Britain

2021 ◽  
pp. 59-96
Author(s):  
Kieran Heinemann
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Stock Market ◽  
Demand Management ◽  
Retirement Planning ◽  
Insurance Companies ◽  
Market Game ◽  
World War ◽  
Back Seat ◽  
Post War ◽  
Financial Securities

After World War II, the financial sector took a back seat in Britain’s political economy and Labour’s nationalization programme initially wiped out significant areas of investment. In the post-war decades it was common for politicians of all parties to attack stock market operators as harmful gamblers. This anti-finance rhetoric has obscured our view of retail investment in those years in the way that it became almost invisible from public debate—and a historiography—that was dominated by nationalized industries, Keynesian demand management, and the welfare state. If anything, contemporaries were and scholars have been preoccupied with the ‘Cult of Equity’, the rapid growth of institutional investment at that time. While more private individuals ventured into the stock market—there were approximately 3 million direct shareholders by the early 1960s—their share of listed equity was declining. Hence, the small investor’s comeback went unnoticed in comparison with the shift of pension funds and life insurance companies from bonds into equities once markets had recovered by the mid-1950s. Investors small and large made and lost fortunes in two unprecedented boom markets while the burgeoning climate of affluence and permissiveness loosened traditional reservation against financial securities. More and more middle-class Britons not only invested in equities as a means of retirement planning, but also discovered the stock market as a hobby that offered thrills of risk and reward similar to gambling.

Stylized features of economic growth after World War II

2019 ◽  
pp. 162-179
Author(s):  
Kazimierz Łaski
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Demand Management ◽  
World War ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
Post War ◽  
Economic Growth Rates

Following the World War II, the advanced capitalist world, in Europe and North America, has evolved through three stages of development. The 1950s and 1960s saw unprecedented economic growth rates that can only partially be explained by post-war recovery, but was principally the result of demand management and a redistributive approach to fiscal policy that kept employment high and tended to equalize incomes. However, in the second stage, economic development slowed down to varying degrees in different countries as policies of demand management and redistribution were abandoned in favor of the market liberalization especially in the labor market. This led to high unemployment, growing economic inequality, and economic stagnation, eventually giving rise to growing indebtedness, culminating in the financial crisis of 2008. The third stage began with the financial crisis in 2008. In Europe, governments were forced to abandon counter-cyclical policies in favor of fiscal and trade balance.

Playing the Market

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kieran Heinemann
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Stock Market ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
British Society ◽  
World War ◽  
Market Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Financial Securities

At the dawn of World War I (WWI), the British stock market was the preserve of a wealthy elite, and most people in finance and politics agreed that it should stay this way. By the end of the century, Britain had more individual shareholders than trade union members. This book explores the financial, political, and cultural forces that brought about this dramatic change in British society. By capturing the voices and experiences of everyday investors, this study brings to life the history of Britain’s vibrant stock market culture: from the mass investment in war bonds during WWI, through the expansion of the financial press in the post-war decades, to the ‘popular capitalism’ of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party during the 1980s. Throughout the century, the stock market came to play an ever larger role in people’s lives through pension funds and life insurances. But as financial securities lost their age-old stigma of being either immoral or suitable only for the upper classes, the markets also became a popular pastime for millions of Britons who were seeking higher than average returns and a similar thrill of risk and reward to that of gambling on horses or the football pools. Playing the Market forcefully reminds us that gambling is not—as many financial professionals would have us believe—a parasitical element to the otherwise rational and prudent sphere of modern finance. Instead, it is one of its constituent features and explains why until this day, the stock market is either criticized or celebrated as a casino.

Anti-Jewish Incidents in the Lublin Region in the Early Years after World War II

2008 ◽  
pp. 177-205
Author(s):  
Adam Kopciowski
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Early Years ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Condition ◽  
Ritual Murder ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Post War ◽  
Anti Jewish

In the early years following World War II, the Lublin region was one of the most important centres of Jewish life. At the same time, during 1944-1946 it was the scene of anti-Jewish incidents: from anti-Semitic propaganda, accusation of ritual murder, economic boycott, to cases of individual or collective murder. The wave of anti-Jewish that lasted until autumn of 1946 resulted in a lengthy and, no doubt incomplete, list of 118 murdered Jews. Escalating anti-Jewish violence in the immediate post-war years was one of the main factors, albeit not the only one, to affect the demography (mass emigration) and the socio-political condition of the Jewish population in the Lublin region

The Unassailable Self: Freud's Image Among Post-war American Intellectuals

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
External Force ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Human Being ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

This paper explores the way American intellectuals depicted Sigmund Freud during the peak of popularity and prestige of psychoanalysis in the US, roughly the decade and a half following World War II. These intellectuals insisted upon the unassailability of Freud's mind and personality. He was depicted as unsusceptible to any external force or influence, a trait which was thought to account for Freud's admirable comportment as a scientist, colleague and human being. This post-war image of Freud was shaped in part by the Cold War anxiety that modern individuality was imperilled by totalitarian forces, which could only be resisted by the most rugged of selves. It was also shaped by the unique situation of the intellectuals themselves, who were eager to position themselves, like the Freud they imagined, as steadfastly independent and critical thinkers who would, through the very clarity of their thought, lead America to a more robust democracy.

Metamorphoses of memory of the the Russian-Serbian Brotherhood of War in Modern Serbia

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Timofeev
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Party System ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Second World

The article considers the perception of World War II in modern Serbian society. Despite the stability of Serbian-Russian shared historical memory, the attitudes of both countries towards World wars differ. There is a huge contrast in the perception of the First and Second World War in Russian and Serbian societies. For the Serbs the events of World War II are obscured by the memories of the Civil War, which broke out in the country immediately after the occupation in 1941 and continued several years after 1945. Over 70% of Yugoslavs killed during the Second World War were slaughtered by the citizens of former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The terror unleashed by Tito in the first postwar decade in 1944-1954 was proportionally bloodier than Stalin repressions in the postwar USSR. The number of emigrants from Yugoslavia after the establishment of the Tito's dictatorship was proportionally equal to the number of refugees from Russia after the Civil War (1,5-2% of prewar population). In the post-war years, open manipulations with the obvious facts of World War II took place in Tito's Yugoslavia. In the 1990s the memories repressed during the communist years were set free and publicly debated. After the fall of the one-party system the memory of World War II was devalued. The memory of the Russian-Serbian military fraternity forged during the World War II began to revive in Serbia due to the foreign policy changes in 2008. In October 2008 the President of Russia paid a visit to Serbia which began the process of (re) construction of World War II in Serbian historical memory. According to the public opinion surveys, a positive attitude towards Russia and Russians in Serbia strengthens the memories on general resistance to Nazism with memories of fratricide during the civil conflict events of 1941-1945 still dominating in Serbian society.

Charles de Gaulle and European Community

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-3) ◽  
pp. 70-81
Author(s):  
David Ramiro Troitino ◽  
Tanel Kerikmae ◽  
Olga Shumilo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
European Community ◽  
World War ◽  
Charles De Gaulle ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post War ◽  
De Gaulle

This article highlights the role of Charles de Gaulle in the history of united post-war Europe, his approaches to the internal and foreign French policies, also vetoing the membership of the United Kingdom in the European Community. The authors describe the emergence of De Gaulle as a politician, his uneasy relationship with Roosevelt and Churchill during World War II, also the roots of developing a “nationalistic” approach to regional policy after the end of the war. The article also considers the emergence of the Common Agricultural Policy (hereinafter - CAP), one of Charles de Gaulle’s biggest achievements in foreign policy, and the reasons for the Fouchet Plan defeat.

The Social Identity of Hosts and Patrons

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christel Lane
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Organizational Identity ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Segregation ◽  
Social Mixing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Post War ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter analyses inns, taverns, and public houses in their social context, exploring their organizational identity and the social positions of their owners/tenants. It examines how patrons express their class, gender, and national identity by participation in different kinds of sociality. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century hostelries afforded more opportunities for cross-class sociability than in later centuries. Social mixing was facilitated because the venues fulfilled multiple economic, social, and political functions, thereby providing room for social interaction apart from communal drinking and eating. Yet, even in these earlier centuries, each type of hostelry already had a distinctive class character, shaping its organizational identity. Division along lines of class hardened, and social segregation increased in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, up to World War II. In the post-War era, increased democratization of society at large became reflected in easier social mixing in pubs. Despite this democratization, during the late twentieth century the dominant image of pubs as a working-class institution persisted.

scholarly journals Debates about the Polish eastern border after World War II in the Polish immigrant circle

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-71
Author(s):  
Tetiana Yelova
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Editorial Staff ◽  
World War ◽  
Annual Basis ◽  
The World ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Eastern Border ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Post War

The new geopolitical realities after the World War II saw the revival of the Polish state in a new form. The Republic of Poland appeared on the map of Central Europe, with about half of its territory being the so-called Recovered Territories, while the state borders moved west. The new eastern border of the post-war Poland ran along the Curzon line. The new post-war eastern border of Poland was being negotiated and agreed upon by the Soviet and the Polish authorities starting from 1944 on an annual basis, up to 1948. The last exchange of territories took place in 1951. The debates about the political map of Europe and the new eastern border of Poland, which became a new reality after the World War II, were held both at politicians’ offices and in various media outlets. The most prominent debate about the new Polish eastern border could be found on the pages of the Kultura immigrant periodical. The Polish immigrant public intellectuals Jerzy Giedroyc, Juliusz Mieroszewski, Josef Czapski and other members of the Kultura periodical editorial board were adamant about the need to recognize the Polish borders drawn after the World War II. Such a stance was unacceptable for the Polish Governmentin-Exile based in London and some immigrant circles in the USA. Starting from 1952, the Kultura editorial staff is consistent in its efforts to defend the principle of inviolability of borders drawn after the World War II, urging the Poles to give up on the so-called Polish Kresy (Kresy Wschodnie) and to reconcile with the neighbours on the other side of the new eastern border.

scholarly journals Polityka oświatowa władz w procesie instalowania nowego ładu społecznego (1944–1948)

2019 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Edyta Kahl
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Educational System ◽  
The Political ◽  
School Structure ◽  
World War ◽  
Massive Scale ◽  
Post War ◽  
Administrative Structures ◽  
Teachers Training ◽  
Social Debate

The problems discussed in the article concern the educational policy in Poland in the first years after World War II (1944-1948). The article presents the educational concepts and postulates of different political fractions and teachers’ circles, which already before the end of the War had formulated their own educational programmes. The discussions about the shape of the post-war educational system, particularly the organization of schools, the school structure, the ideological foundations, the syllabus, school handbooks and teachers’ training, were carried out, among others, between the representatives of the National Democrats, Christian-national groups, political parties, teachers’ organizations and school administration. Their attitudes to many problems varied considerably, and thus, the situation required social debate and confrontation of opinions. The quality of those discussions, the style in which the educational problems were solved as well as the direction of the structural and ideological transformations in the post-war educational system, were significantly influenced by the geopolitical post-war conditions and a strong position of the Left, consolidated by the Soviets, in the policy of the Polish state. In the expansive struggle for the political leadership in Poland, the Left used different forms of pressure and terror in order to eliminate the opposition. To achieve social legitimization for its pseudo-democratic activities, the Left undertook attempts to encourage other groups to co-operate. Particularly, the communists tried to attract cultural elites, including teachers, who they wanted to use to start the process of rebuilding social consciousness according to the rules of the ideology of Marxism and Leninism. These monopolistic ambitions, in the first years after World War II, were reflected in the destruction of the underground state and the development of administrative structures of the totalitarian system. As far as the educational system is concerned, the policy of the Left was manifested in more and more apparent actions taken to subordinate school to the communists’ interests, thus including education into the process of the transformation of the political system. All those activities, were part of the phenomenon of structural Sovietization, formed the foundations for the ideological offensive, planned by the communists and conducted on a massive scale after the formation, in 1948, of the monopolistic Stalinian party - PZPR (Polish United Workers’ Party).

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