Description: This encyclopedic work chronicles the growth and expansion of banking, securities, and insurance since the colonial period. The author traces the origins of American finance to the older societies of Europe and North Africa, and shows how English merchants transferred their financial systems to America. He explains how financial matters dominated the founding and development of the colonies, and how financial concerns incited the Revolution. And he shows how the Civil War began the transformation of America from a small economy largely dependent on foreign capital into a complex capitalist society. From the Civil War, this account of the nation's financial history proceeds through periods of frenzied speculation, quiet growth, sudden panics, and furious periods of expansion, right up through the incredible growth of the stock market during the 1990s and the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.