title: Money, Greed, and Risk: Why Financial Crises and Crashes Happen
author:  Charles R. Morris 
description: Imagine the American republic of the 19th century: at the beginning, a sparsely populated agrarian nation where the president, Thomas Jefferson, fords rivers on horseback to make it to his own inauguration; at the end of the century, it's a land of densely populated cities, teeming with factories and linked by a network of railroads. This extraordinary transition--and all the economic upheavals that went along with it--is described in the opening chapters of <i>Money, Greed, and Risk</i>, and provides the historical context for a broader look at how booms and busts happen. Charles Morris tells the story of American financial markets by looking at its larger-than-life characters: Nicholas Biddle (the first U.S. central banker), Jay Gould (a much-hated financial genius who patched together a network of rail lines), steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, oil baron John D. Rockefeller, and, of course, J.P. Morgan, who made America the world's banker. By the time these men had all passed from public life, the U.S. economy had changed from a primitive system that could be bent to the will of a single financier, such as Morgan, to a sophisticated, highly regulated, world-dominating conglomeration of massive corporations.
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  Table of Contents
  
  
  [Cover](cover.xhtml)
  
  
  [Title page](titlepage.xhtml)
  
  
  [Copyright page](copyrightpage.xhtml)
  
  
  [In Memoriam](ffirs01.xhtml#f01)
  
  
  [Epigraph](dedication.xhtml#f02)
  
  
  [Preface and Acknowledgements](fpref.xhtml#f03)
  
  
  [Introduction: How the World Changed in 2008](cintro.xhtml#f04)
  
  
  [1 Finance Humbled](c01.xhtml#c01)
  
  
  [What is financialization?](c01.xhtml#c01-sec1-0002)
  
  
  [Three perspectives on financial crises](c01.xhtml#c01-sec1-0003)
  
  
  [More than just a financial crisis](c01.xhtml#c01-sec1-0004)
  
  
  [Dilemmas of recovery](c01.xhtml#c01-sec1-0005)
  
  
  [2 Empire Confined](c02.xhtml#c02)
  
  
  [The state roars back](c02.xhtml#c02-sec1-0001)
  
  
  [Collision of empires](c02.xhtml#c02-sec1-0002)
  
  
  [Orchestrating disharmony](c02.xhtml#c02-sec1-0003)
  
  
  [Conclusion: Regime Change or System Change?](bconclusion.xhtml#b01)
  
  
  [The end of neoliberalism?](bconclusion.xhtml#b01-sec1-0001)
  
  
  [State, market and planning](bconclusion.xhtml#b01-sec1-0002)
  
  
  [Index](bindex.xhtm