Greed is universal and timeless. And until everyone gets that through their thick heads, we will continue to see corruption on the grandest scales ruining every facet of our lives, our futures, and our children's futures.
Book Review at NPR.
Excerpt: 'Wall Street: America's Dream Palace'
by Steve FraserWall Street: America's Dream Palace
By Steve Fraser
Hardcover, 208 pages
Doubleday
List Price: $22.00
The AristocratWilliam Duer was running for his life. An enraged mob was chasing him through the streets of New York. If they caught up with him they would beat him to a pulp ... or worse. Luckily for Duer the sheriff got there first. While his pursuers cried, "We will have Mr. Duer, he has gotten our money," he was hauled off to jail, where he would spend his few remaining years. Once a man of distinction and wealth, William Duer was now ruined, left to contemplate what might have been.
The year was 1792, and Wall Street had just experienced its first crash, for which William Duer and a secret circle of New York grandees were mainly to blame. They had conspired to speculate on the bonds just issued by the newly created federal government. Soon they found themselves deeply overcommitted and forced to liquidate their holdings, causing the fledgling market to collapse and its manipulators to flee-in Duer's case to debtors' prison; for the more fortunate among them to safer havens out of state. Even though there was no formal or even informal stock exchange in those days; even though the local economy went about its business largely unaffected by the mysterious machinations of financiers, there were still plenty of ordinarypeople who suffered. Real estate prices collapsed, credit dried up, house building stopped. The general distress spread from businessmen to "shopkeepers, Widows, orphans, Butchers, Cartmen, Gardeners, market women and even the noted Bawd, Mrs. McCarty."
Read the whole excerpt here.
