The US and Nazi Germany

The growing German economy in the thirties had been good to some of America's largest companies, especially the automakers. Ford had established its second largest plant outside of North American in Cologne. General Motors' wholly owned subsidiary, Opel AG, happened to be the largest automaker in Germany. Combined the US automakers constituted the majority of German automotive car production. This was especially critical as German automakers Daimler-Benz and Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) had shifted from passenger car production to the service of rearming Germany. - Bhu Srinivasan Americana

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.

Federal Spending and Power

Within four years, during peacetime, the Navy Department's budget [under Teddy Roosevelt] would escalate to over $117 million - more than 20 percent of total federal expenditures. In 1896, when McKinley first took office, the navy required $27 million...

...As it happened, federal contractors were soon prohibited from night work for women and child laborers. Other than mere legislation and enforcement, larger government expenditures gave policy makers the lever of the purse to influence industrial behavior. Thanks to the navy, the government became one large, demanding customer.

Can be argued that this is when it all changed. Federal regulations and the birth of the military industrial complex.

Wall Street vs Federal Government

But [JP] Morgan's view of the President as an equal might have been reasonable given the circumstances: U.S. Steel's revenues that year [1901] were $560 million; the federal government's total revenues through all its taxation powers amounted to $562 million. And Morgan had interests in multiple companies, while poor [Theodore] Roosevelt was a proxy for but one government. - Bhu Srinivasan

Now in many respects Wall Street runs the government and we have no politicians like Teddy Roosevelt to stand up to them.

Interesting Economic Theory

Another example of why I'm enjoying the book Americana so much:

Without the Gold Rush, industrial economies would have been forced to turn to more sophisticated forms of central banking to keep up with advances in technology, production, and science, just as legal frameworks governing eminent domain, patents, copyrights, bond indentures, and the limited liability of corporations had propelled economic progress. Instead, due to this accidental discovery, banking for the industrial age would be continue to be based on metals found in the ground until the next century.

Makes you think (which is the mark of a great book).

Oh the Historical Irony

Another cool example of why I'm enjoying Americana by Bhu Srivivasan so much:

In 1824 Gibbons vs Ogden was decided by the Supreme Court in the aging Gibbon's favor. Gibbons vs Ogden went on to become the landmark case affirming that only the federal government had the right to regulate interstate commerce. Waterways and roads connecting states all fell within the framework, as ruled by the court: The era of monopoly grants was over. Indeed, it fell upon the native Southerner Gibbons, a plantation owner from Savannah, to affirm the superiority of federal rights over the states' rights in matters of interstate commerce.

Eli Whitney's Revenge

Eli Whiney is remembered most by history as the inventor of the cotton gin which made raising cotton in the South extremely profitable. Problem is Whitney never made any money off his invention because it was so simple that people made their own without licencing his patent or paying him any royalties. In a way though Whitney would have his revenge. From the book Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism by Bhu Srinivasan:

Whitney was on to a more lucrative venture altogether. Starting in 1798, having come to terms with the fact that little money would come to him from the cotton gin, he had turned his attention to weapons. With his skill in manufacturing and fame as inventor of the cotton gin, he received an initial order for ten thousand muskets for $134,000 from the US government. His long-awaited fortune eventually came from guns. In doing so, Whitney set the stage for the Connecticut River Valley to become a leader in arms manufacturing, a competitive advantage for the North that poetically would be felt by South Carolina and Georgia decades later.

Really enjoying this book which looks at American history through the lense of capitalism and what the economic motives of the times were.