An interesting study comparison of the education background of heads of state around the globe reveals our problem. Most of the educated people in government in the USA seem to be lawyers. In Europe, they tend to be not idealists. China has leaders schooled in economics and business. Very curious comparison.

  Banking reemerged after the fall of Rome in Northern Italy. In the town of Lucca, merchant-bankers set up tables in the square to deal with money from exchange, taking deposits, and lending. On the wall of the church in the square you will find to this day the oath of the moneychangers – “no […]

Julius Caesar (100-44BC) The economic history of mankind has always been a story of boom and bust. Throughout time, we find crisis after crisis in the recorded pages of history. The slogans of revolution or revolt have far too often been merely a disguise for economic motives by the state, king, minister or emperor. The […]

The Financial Crisis of 1971 was the culmination of a series of events that began during the early 1960s. Politicians set the gold ratio to the dollar at $35 an ounce that was decided in 1934 by Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, politicians have a vest self-interest in always pretending they do a good job. Unfortunately, […]

  South Sea Bubble originated plan was that of the English statesman Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford. The scheme was a debt-for-equity swap in 1711, whereby the idea was to retire the floating national debt of Great Britain. Under the scheme, the debt was assumed by merchants to whom the government guaranteed for a […]

  The Panic of 1896 is perhaps best known for the fiery speech of William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) who was the Silver Democrat’s Presidential candidate that year. The major thrust down took place during the Panic of 1893. However, by 1896, the economic conditions had not improved very much. There was still a dramatic and […]

    The Panic of 1837 was one such incident involving an unstable currency and financial system resulting in a lack of confidence in both government and the banks. An independent treasury system emerged when President Andrew Jackson transferred in 1833 government funds from the Bank of the United States to state banks. The Bank […]

The Panic of 1893 was quite different from the US panics that had preceded. To a large extent, the Panic of 1893 came on the heels of American speculation in overseas investment which had kept up with the trend toward “global diversification” and opportunity much like that of the 1990s. The Panic of 1893 was […]

The Silver Democrats came to label this financial crisis the Crime of 1873. Of course, they understood nothing with respect to the global economy and merely assumed that the could do as they desired domestically without any regard to international trends of implications. Up until the year 1873, all the dollars in the world were […]

The prelude to the Panic of 1857 was indeed the building of tensions over slavery and states rights as they saw it in the South. Tensions began to build toward the Civil War with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which said any escaped slaves, upon capture in the North, must be returned […]