The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-century New York and New Orleans
- ISBN-10
- 0190211652
- ISBN-13
- 9780190211653
- Category
- Business & Economics
- Pages
- 232
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2015-11-15
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Authors
- Barbara Hahn, Bruce E. Baker
Description
The cotton kings' relates a rip-roaring drama of competition in the marketplace and reveals the damage markets can cause when they do not work properly. It also explains how they can be fixed through careful regulation. At the turn of the twentieth century, cotton was still the major agricultural product of the American South and an important commodity for world industry. Key to marketing cotton were futures contracts, traded at exchanges in New York and New Orleans. Futures contracts had the potential to hedge risk and reduce price volatility, but only if the markets in which they were traded worked properly. Increasing corruption on the powerful New York Cotton Exchange pushed prices steadily downwards in the 1890s, impoverishing millions of cotton farmers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture tried to solve the problem with better crop predictions and market information, shared equally and simultaneously with all participants, but these efforts failed. To fight the cotton market's corruption, cotton brokers in New Orleans, led by William P. Brown and Frank Hayne, began quietly to assemble resources.0They triumphed in the summer of 1903, when they cornered the world market in cotton and raised its price to reflect the reality of increasing demand and struggling supply. The brokers' success pushed up the price of cotton for the next ten years. However, the structural problems of self-regulation by market participants still threatened the cotton trade. More corruption at the New York Cotton Exchange appeared, until eventually political pressure inspired the Cotton Futures Act of 1914, the federal government's first successful regulation of a financial derivative.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Taxation for Decision Makers, Binder Ready Version
By Shirley Dennis-Escoffier, Karen A. Fortin[LO 8.2] The Timberlake Corporation has an opportunity to sell its manufacturing facility to Carroll Corporation for $4,500,000. The property has a basis of ...
-
Taxation for Decision Makers, 2019 Edition
By Shirley Dennis-Escoffier, Karen A. Fortin[LO 9.2] The Timberlake Corporation has an opportunity to sell its manufacturing facility to Carroll Corporation for $4,500,000. The property has a basis of ...
-
Taxation for Decision Makers, 2020
By Shirley Dennis-Escoffier, Karen A. Fortin[LO 9.2] The Timberlake Corporation has an opportunity to sell its manufacturing facility to Carroll Corporation for $4,500,000. The property has a basis of ...
-
Keeping House in Lusaka
By Karen Tranberg Hansen1934. Memorandum on the Native Tribes and Tribal Areas of Northern Rhodesia . Lusaka : Government Printer . Timberlake , Michael , ed . 1985.
-
Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World
By DAVID LEVINSON, KAREN CHRISTENSENTimberlake, L. (1987). Only one Earth. London: BBC Books: Earthscan. Tinker, I. (1987). Street foods: Testing assumptions about informal sector by women and ...
-
Taxation for Decision Makers 2006
By Shirley Dennis-Escoffier, Karen FortinThe Timberlake Corporation has an opportunity to sell its manufacturing facility to Carroll Corporation for $ 4,500,000 . The property has a basis of ...
-
Handbook of Organizational Performance: Behavior Analysis and Management
By William K Redmon, Thomas C Mawhinney, Carl Merle JohnsonTimberlake (1980, 1984) promulgated a behavioral-regulation analysis of learned performance that emphasizes the importance of behavioral.
-
Money and the Rule of Law: Generality and Predictability in Monetary Institutions
By Peter J. Boettke, Alexander William Salter, Daniel J. Smith190; Timberlake 1993, pp. 356–357). By increasing fiscal expenditures, President Carter may have successfully cornered the Fed into delaying tighter ...
-
Economic Politics: The Costs of Democracy
By William R. Keech, William R Keech( Timberlake , 1993 , p . 4 ) The same was true of the second Bank of the United States , which was chartered in 1816. However , under the leadership of ...
-
Handbook of Organizational Performance: Behavior Analysis and Management
By William K Redmon, Thomas C Mawhinney, Carl Merle JohnsonSchlinger, H. and Blakely, E. (1987). Function-altering effects of ... Timberlake, W. and Allison, J. (1974). Response deprivation: An empirical 48 HANDBOOK ...