Central Banks and Gold

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James Bytheway ◽  
Mark Metzler
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War I ◽  
Central Bank ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The World ◽  
The Moment

In recent decades, Tokyo, London, and New York have been the sites of credit bubbles of historically unprecedented magnitude. Central bankers have enjoyed almost unparalleled power and autonomy. They have cooperated to construct and preserve towering structures of debt, reshaping relations of power and ownership around the world. This book explores how this financialized form of globalism took shape a century ago, when Tokyo joined London and New York as a major financial center. This book shows that close cooperation between central banks began along an unexpected axis, between London and Tokyo, around the year 1900, with the Bank of England's secret use of large Bank of Japan funds to intervene in the London markets. Central-bank cooperation became multilateral during World War I—the moment when Japan first emerged as a creditor country. In 1919 and 1920, as Japan, Great Britain, and the United States adopted deflation policies, the results of cooperation were realized in the world's first globally coordinated program of monetary policy. It was also in 1920 that Wall Street bankers moved to establish closer ties with Tokyo. The text tells the story of how the first age of central-bank power and pride ended in the disaster of the Great Depression, when a rush for gold brought the system crashing down. In all of this, we see also the quiet but surprisingly central place of Japan. We see it again today, in the way that Japan has unwillingly led the world into a new age of post-bubble economics.

Private Networks and the Public Interest

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James Bytheway ◽  
Mark Metzler
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Central Bank ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
Capital City ◽  
World City ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Hierarchical Nature

This concluding chapter examines the hierarchical nature of the markets in capital, which constitute the peak markets of the world capitalist system. It also reconsiders the central-bank connections between Tokyo, London, and New York as vital inner links within a larger set of world-city geographies. In a century of violent changes, these “capital city” geographies have been remarkably persistent. The great Tokyo bubble of 1989–90 was the greatest yet of its kind, but it now seems relatively modest next to the New York and London bubbles of 2007–8. Each of these “capital city” bubbles showed a mix of classic and novel features. Each also revealed, again, the centrality of the central banks themselves.

Eleanor Roosevelt’s Remarkable Transition From the White House Into Widowhood, 1945–1946

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-70
Author(s):  
Harold Ivan Smith
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War I ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Financial Security ◽  
World War ◽  
Unexpected Death ◽  
First Lady ◽  
White House ◽  
The World

Eleanor Roosevelt experienced demanding challenges following the unexpected death of her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), the president of the United States, on April 12, 1945. That she was no longer first lady led to a series of secondary losses: the loss of status, the loss of staff, the loss of financial security, and, within a week, the loss of her primary residence, The White House. Her transition into “Widow Roosevelt” was complicated by her discovery that FDR had died in the presence of Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, with whom he had had an affair during World War I. As a condition for staying married and having a political career, he agreed never to see Lucy again. The circumstances of FDR’s betrayal and death were kept secret for nearly two decades. A week after FDR’s death, Eleanor answered a question about her future by a New York Times reporter, with a tense, “The story is over.” However, Harry Truman, FDR’s successor, had other ideas and appointed her as a delegate to the United Nations. Over the next 17 years, Eleanor evolved into “First Lady of the World” and had a significant role in world affairs and American politics.

Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies: A Study of Courts in Russia and Ukraine. By Maria Popova. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 210p. $99.00.

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-215
Author(s):  
Justin Crowe
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Judicial Independence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Emerging Democracies ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Law And Courts ◽  
The World

In the United States, the borderline obsessive academic focus with judicial independence as a political science concept would lead one to believe that judicial independence as an empirical political reality is persistently endangered. And yet, periodic partisan apoplexy about controversial Supreme Court decisions notwithstanding, it is anything but: Even with judicial potency in polities as disparate as Israel, India, and Germany, the American judiciary remains perhaps the most powerful and most stable in the world. But with all due respect to John Locke, all the world is emphatically not America. Elsewhere, of course, there are locales where the climate surrounding law and courts is rather different, where judicial independence is inconsistent, threatened, or downright fictitious. It is in the study of these nations that judicial independence deserves the central place in public law scholarship it already occupies in America. And with the publication of Maria Popova's Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies, students of at least two sets of those nations—post-Soviet states specifically and emerging democracies more generally—have both a clarion call for what they could be studying and a first-rate example of how they could be studying it.

NEW TYPE OF MONEY – CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY

2021 ◽  
pp. 187-197
Author(s):  
Sergei I. Belenchuk ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Central Bank ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
Bank Of China ◽  
Digital Currency ◽  
Speed Up ◽  
New Type ◽  
Conflicting Goals

Now, with all the acuteness, the question has arisen about what types of money can replace cash and non-cash money that are issued by central and commercial banks. The central place in the new system may be occupied by the CBDC, or “Central Bank Digital Currency”. The People’s Bank of China, which uses the formation of an almost entirely “cashless” economy as the basis for the transition to digital currency, was the first major central bank to test-run the issue of the CBDC. That forced central banks of leading developed countries, primarily the United States, to speed up the implementation of their own digital currencies, but as of the end of 2020, they have not yet come to a final opinion on how, within the framework of the chosen architecture of the CBDC, to achieve an accurate balance of sometimes conflicting goals

Reflections of American Science and Technology at the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1853

1983 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Post
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
American Science ◽  
The World ◽  
William Cullen ◽  
New Yorkers

The New York Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations was the first attempt to pursue the aims and imitate the success of the great London exhibition of 1851. The most remarkable thing about that event had been its setting, dubbed by Punch the “Crystal Palace.” Though a number of visitors from the United States had aired the notion of staging an American Crystal Palace exhibition, the first tangible plans were devised by Edward Riddle, who has served as U.S. Commissioner to the London Crystal Palace. Riddle was a Bostonian, but New York was clearly the place for such a venture, and early in 1852 the New York Board of Aldermen granted a concession on a tract just west of the Croton Reservoir (at Sixth Avenue between 40th and 42nd). Soon afterward, however, Riddle had to relinquish control of the enterprise to a new group of backers, all New Yorkers with close ties to Wall Street, Washington, and London. Included among them were August Belmont, Alexander Hamilton, Jr., William Cullen Bryant, Edward K. Collins, and members of such families as the Schuylers and the Livingstons. Their leader was Theodore Sedgwick, a well-connected lawyer with a reputation as an eminent student of judicial and political reform, and with ties to the world of letters through his friend Bryant and his aunt, the novelist Catherine Maria Sedgwick.

The Finance Film

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantin Parvulescu
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Stock Exchange ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Film Research ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Grapes Of Wrath ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Economic Boom

Cinematic representation of finance, financiers and financialization goes back to the early days of cinema in both Europe and the United States. Banks and stock markets, together with their growing power as well as the effects of speculation and securitization on everyday lives, have been the object of documentary and feature film reflection under all political regimes of the 20th and 21st centuries, including capitalist, Bolshevik, communist, socialist, and fascist. A staple of Soviet cinema montage is the intercutting between images of manual labor and speculation to suggest exploitation—as in Vsevolod Pudovkin’s The End of St. Petersburg (1927), which contrasts hectic activity on the stock market with the trench warfare fought by the Russian commoner during World War I. The German communist interwar documentary classic Kuhle Wampe (1932) with its indicative subtitle “To Whom Does the World Belong?” was made as a response to the 1929–1934 world economic crisis. Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda films feature evil bankers corrupting the honest way of life of gentiles. American capitalism’s Hollywood also reacted early. Buster Keaton’s first feature film lead role was of a blue-blood broker in The Saphead (1920), while D. W. Griffith presented stock exchange speculation in a one-reeler as early as 1909 (A Corner in Wheat). As the American film industry developed, several other such films were produced, marking landmark moments in humanity’s affair with capitalism in the 20th century. The Grapes of Wrath (1940) served as a paean to the Great Depression (1929–1939); It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) testified to the start of the postwar economic boom; Wall Street (1987) heralded the era of deregulation, while American Psycho (2000) marked the rise of the yuppie. After 2008, countless features and documentaries engaged in explaining the derivative and subprime mortgage scams that led to the crash and the subsequent Big Bailout of 2008, which engendered the Great Recession (2008–2014). With its roots in literature (the finance novel) and the visual arts, recent film production has put finance and financialization on the map of academic film research and legitimized the use of the concept of finance film and of its subdivision, the Wall Street film. The finance film has served scholars in their efforts to investigate the representation of finance-related economic and social situations on film and write its history as well as academics delving into the industry’s ethos, political influence, organization, emotional culture, and sustainability. This article is thus interdisciplinary. For reasons of space and relevance, however, it is limited to materials written in English that analyze European and North American productions.

‘The Fetishes of So-Called International Bankers’: Central Bank Co-operation for the World Economic Conference, 1932–3

1992 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Clavin
Keyword(s):  
Central Bank ◽  
Exchange Rates ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
Central Banking ◽  
International Economy ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Economic Conference ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The World ◽  
World Economic

With his sharp denunciation of the ‘old fetishes of so-called international bankers’ for fixed exchange rates on the gold-exchange standard, President Franklin D. Roosevelt allegedly consigned the World Economic and Monetary Conference to failure.1The conference had been convened in June 1933 to tackle the crippling levels of ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ economic policies which were strangling the international economy during the Great Depression; its brief was so appealing and its concerns so broad, that sixty-five nations came to London that summer. But from the outset of conference preparations, which began in the autumn of 1932, the issue of central banking co-operation was to highlight many of the difficulties which plagued not only co-operative central bank efforts to revive the international economy but also dilemmas which faced central banks in their relations with their domestic governments.

Book Reviews

2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-217
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
New York University ◽  
World War ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Rutgers University

Michael D. Bordo of Rutgers University and NBER reviews “When Washington Shut Down Wall Street: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 and the Origins of America’s Monetary Supremacy” by William L. Silber,. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins “Traces Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo’s triumph over a monetary crisis at the outbreak of World War I that threatened the United States with financial disaster. Explores how McAdoo responded to the twin threats of external gold drain to Europe and the internal drain of currency from banks that were triggered by the outbreak of war. Silber is Marcus Nadler Professor of Finance and Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University. Index.”

Bringing the Real World of Science to Children: A Partnership of the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony G Picciano ◽  
Robert V. Steiner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Compulsory Education ◽  
Development Program ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Museum ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Every child has a right to an education. In the United States, the issue is not necessarily about access to a school but access to a quality education. With strict compulsory education laws, more than 50 million students enrolled in primary and secondary schools, and billions of dollars spent annually on public and private education, American children surely have access to buildings and classrooms. However, because of a complex and competitive system of shared policymaking among national, state, and local governments, not all schools are created equal nor are equal education opportunities available for the poor, minorities, and underprivileged. One manifestation of this inequity is the lack of qualified teachers in many urban and rural schools to teach certain subjects such as science, mathematics, and technology. The purpose of this article is to describe a partnership model between two major institutions (The American Museum of Natural History and The City University of New York) and the program designed to improve the way teachers are trained and children are taught and introduced to the world of science. These two institutions have partnered on various projects over the years to expand educational opportunity especially in the teaching of science. One of the more successful projects is Seminars on Science (SoS), an online teacher education and professional development program, that connects teachers across the United States and around the world to cutting-edge research and provides them with powerful classroom resources. This article provides the institutional perspectives, the challenges and the strategies that fostered this partnership.

“Little Plants in the Country”: Henry Ford's Village Industries and the Beginning of Decentralized Technology in Modern America

Prospects ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 181-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard P. Segal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
New York ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physical Proximity ◽  
The World ◽  
Word Processors

“Technology Spurs Decentralization Across the Country.” So reads a 1984 New York Times article on real-estate trends in the United States. The contemporary revolution in information processing and transmittal now allows large businesses and other institutions to disperse their offices and other facilities across the country, even across the world, without loss of the policy- and decision-making abilities formerly requiring regular physical proximity. Thanks to computers, word processors, and the like, decentralization has become a fact of life in America and other highly technological societies.

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