ABSTRACT
A museum dedicated to the history and artifacts of money and finance is the quintessential expression of American financial culture. American financial history is strewn with failed investment, wholesale and retail banks, corporate bankruptcies, Wall Street booms, busts, recessions, and speculative frauds. Historically, American financial swindlers and fraudsters are punished, fined, even jailed, but are often able to resurrect their fortunes and reputation. The American Revolution initiated the shift of European currencies toward the new continent. The American Congress of 1778 established a continental currency and began issuing short-term treasury obligations. The elder Morgan started a firm in Boston with George Peabody, an American merchant banker in London. The debate on American values, small town versus urban centers, the working man and small business owner versus the financiers and industrialists, recurs in every presidential campaign and deteriorates into the worst clichés from “bailing out the fat cats of Wall Street” versus “Joe the Plumber,” the everyman.
