Financial Context

In part 2 of this episode Nate and Dan discuss how the John Rockefeller's oil juggernaut came under attack not by competitors but by the public and politicians. 

The first truly global corporation began to take shape in the 1970's when the Standard Oil trust was formed. It would eventually control close to 90% of American oil refining. In this month's episode of Financial Context, Nate and Dan talk about how John Rockefeller and co. supplied kerosene for a nation before the advent of electricity and the somewhat suspect business practices they used along t...

Only about a decade after the California Gold rush another speculative boom occurred in the US. This time the epicenter would be in western Pennsylvania as the first oil wells were first successfully drilled for. 

After the Great Depression and the Civil War, no event transformed the United States quite like the California Gold Rush. It ushered in a time of economic, geographical and cultural expansion. In this episode we revisit an event that most children learn about in school. 

For more than 150 years the "beacon of free markets", the New York Stock Exchange operated as a cartel and fixed prices that its members could charge. Only in 1975 under the pressure from the Department of Justice and the Securities Exchange Commission did the "Big Board" eventually change its fixed commission regime. 

In the 1970's Chuck Schwab founded what would become the third largest asset manager in the world. But like any business, when it started it relied on perseverance and luck. 

Warren Buffet once said it is only when the tide goes out that you see whos been swimming naked. When the proverbial tide did go out on the economy and stock market in 1929 a mysterious man from Scandinavia definitely won the prize as the most naked swimmer. 

Capitalism didn't invent the marketplace. At some point in history governments started to protect the rights of individuals participating in that marketplace and that was really the birth of capitalism. In this episode we explore the events that lead to Adam Smith's famous economic manifesto "The Wealth of Nations" and how the global economy went from being a static, zero-sum-game to an one base o...

Most people know Mark Twain as the prolific writer that he was. What most don't know is that he was also one of the worst investors whos life shows that making money and managing it are often two totally different things. 

Charlie Merrill was one of the few people sounding the alarm about the stock market in 1929. After spending the Great Depression out of the securities business, he came back to Merrill Lynch in the 1940's with a whole new approach towards the industry: marketing directly to small investors. 

In September of 1958 Bank of America mailed 60,000 fully functional credit cards to residents in Fresno, California. While the consumer credit card is ubiquitous today, at that time it was met with resistance and was anything by profitable for the bank at first. 

Before there was the Federal Reserve there was JP Morgan. Born in 1837, he would become the United State's most powerful banker. From organizing the first billion dollar company to bailing out the federal government, his business management techniques were unprecedented and would be used by future robber barons a century later.    Books discussed: The House of Morgan by Ron Chernow

Before Bernie Madoff was the infamous scoundrel he is today, he was a market maker in over-the-counter stocks and was pivotal in the creation of the NASDAQ stock exchange. Today the NASDAQ is a proxy for technology stocks. In this podcast we explore why that is.

In the early 1920's a southern man attempted to take on Wall St by cornering the market for the stock of a company he created. What ensued was one pf the best lesson you can learn when gambling; the house always wins.