In 1776 the United States government started out on a shoestring and quickly went bankrupt fighting its War of Independence against Britain. At the war’s end, the national government owed tremendous sums to foreign creditors and its own citizens. But lacking the power to tax, it had no means to repay them. The Founders and Finance is the first book to tell the story of how foreign-born financial specialists—immigrants—solved the fiscal crisis and set the United States on a path to long-term economic success. Pulitzer Prize–winning author Thomas K. McCraw analyzes the skills and worldliness of Alexander Hamilton (from the Danish Virgin Islands), Albert Gallatin (from the Republic of Geneva), and other immigrant founders who guided the nation to prosperity. Their expertise with liquid capital far exceeded that of native-born plantation owners Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, who well understood the management of land and slaves but had only a vague knowledge of financial instruments—currencies, stocks, and bonds. The very rootlessness of America’s immigrant leaders gave them a better understanding of money, credit, and banks, and the way each could be made to serve the public good. The remarkable financial innovations designed by Hamilton, Gallatin, and other immigrants enabled the United States to control its debts, to pay for the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and—barely—to fight the War of 1812, which preserved the nation’s hard-won independence from Britain.

The authors chronicle how a different group of nine founding fathers forged the wealth and institutions necessary to transform the American colonies from a diffuse alliance of contending business interests into one cohesive economic superpower.

The author of The Whiskey Rebellion “dig[s] beneath history’s surface and note[s] both the populist and anti-populist dimensions of the nation’s founding” (Library Journal). Recent movements such as the Tea Party and anti-tax “constitutional conservatism” lay claim to the finance and taxation ideas of America’s founders, but how much do we really know about the dramatic clashes over finance and economics that marked the founding of America? Dissenting from both right-wing claims and certain liberal preconceptions, Founding Finance brings to life the violent conflicts over economics, class, and finance that played directly, and in many ways ironically, into the hardball politics of forming the nation and ratifying the Constitution—conflicts that still continue to affect our politics, legislation, and debate today. Mixing lively narrative with fresh views of America’s founders, William Hogeland offers a new perspective on America’s economic infancy: foreclosure crises that make our current one look mild; investment bubbles in land and securities that drove rich men to high-risk borrowing and mad displays of ostentation before dropping them into debtors’ prisons; depressions longer and deeper than the great one of the twentieth century; crony mercantilism, war profiteering, and government corruption that undermine any nostalgia for a virtuous early republic; and predatory lending of scarce cash at exorbitant, unregulated rates, which forced people into bankruptcy, landlessness, and working in the factories and on the commercial farms of their creditors. This story exposes and corrects a perpetual historical denial—by movements across the political spectrum—of America’s all-important founding economic clashes, a denial that weakens and cheapens public discourse on American finance just when we need it most.

An illuminating financial history of the Founding Fathers, revealing how their personal finances shaped the Constitution and the new nation In 1776, upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers concluded America’s most consequential document with a curious note, pledging “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” Lives and honor did indeed hang in the balance, yet just what were their fortunes? How much did the Founders stand to gain or lose through independence? And what lingering consequences did their respective financial stakes have on liberty, justice, and the fate of the fledgling United States of America? In this landmark account, historian Willard Sterne Randall investigates the private financial affairs of the Founders, illuminating like never before how and why the Revolution came about. The Founders’ Fortunes uncovers how these leaders waged war, crafted a constitution, and forged a new nation influenced in part by their own financial interests. In an era where these very issues have become daily national questions, the result is a remarkable and insightful new understanding of our nation’s bedrock values.

Over 70 in-depth interviews of Fintech Founders provide lessons from some of the most successful fintech entrepreneurs that will help you understand the challenges and opportunities of applying technology and collaboration to solve some key problems of the financial services industry. This book is for entrepreneurs, for people working inside of large organizations and everyone in between who is interested to learn the secrets of successful entrepreneurs. In this advice-filled resource, Rubini gathers advice that comes from a diverse range of financial services niches including financing, banking, payments, wealth management, insurance, and cryptocurrencies, to help you harness the insights of thought leaders. Those working inside the financial services industry and those interested in working in or starting up businesses in financial services will learn valuable lessons on how to take an idea forward, how to find the right business founders, how to seek funding, how to learn from initial mistakes, and how to define and reposition your business model. Rubini also inquires into the future of fintech and uncovers provoking and insightful predictions.

The Founder's Dilemmas examines how early decisions by entrepreneurs can make or break a startup and its team. Drawing on a decade of research, including quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders as well as inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them.

Richard A. Naclerio investigates the events that surrounded the U.S. Federal Reserve's creation and the bankers, financiers, and economists who shaped its role over the next century. He sheds new light on the making of one of the world's most important financial institutions and how it came to have such crucial national and international influence.