Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life – A Masterful Narrative of the Transformation from Suspicion to Wealth and Freedom

by Steve Fraser

A gripping chronicle of Wall Street, from George Washington to George W. Bush. Americans have experienced a love-hate relationships with Wall Street for 200 years. Long an object of suspicion, fear, & even revulsion, the Street eventually came to be seen as an alluring pathway to wealth & freedom. Fraser tells the story of this remarkable transformation in a brilliant, masterfully written narrative filled with colorful tales of confidence men & aristocrats, Napoleonic financiers & reckless adventurers, master builders & roguish destroyers. This is an extraordinary work of history that illuminates the values & the character of our nation. Full of fascinating anecdotes, captivating characters, & references to 200 years of popular & high culture.

Genres: History, Economics, Finance, American History, Nonfiction, Business

768 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Steve Fraser is an author, an editor, and a historian whose many publications include the award-winning books Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor and Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life. He is senior lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania and cofounder of the American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books. He has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and the American Prospect.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dense, overly long but still insightful and enlightening cultural history of Wall Street. Fraser does an excellent job highlighting how the Wall Street ethos of risk and speculation has alternately been lauded and condemned by the American political and popular culture, usually depending on whether the economy is booming or busting. Thus titans of finance like J.P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt were both praised for their wealth and acumen – and derided for their wealth and callousness. This cycle was interrupted by the Great Depression, which led to fundamental changes in Wall Street's relationship to governance (for the first time, it was forced to be governed) and its relationship to the public (which derided then ignored it) for fifty years before mounting a comeback in the 1980s and the dot-com craze of the '90s.

At 600 tightly packed pages, Every Man a Speculator could easily be 200 pages shorter. It needed a good editor to pare it down, and also to the catch numerous examples of extra or missing letters and inconsistent style that I saw. Unfortunately, the result is inconsistent, at times brilliant and taut, at others bloated and redundant. Skimming is your friend for whole chunks, especially where Fraser starts spending pages to summarize the plots of various Wall Street-related novels.

The book is worth the read for the chapters covering the time period beginning with the close of the Civil War and ending with the Crash of 1929 – probably because those chapters resonate most clearly with our own era. Hanging unspoken over them is the financial collapse of 2008. Fraser published Every Man a Speculator in 2005, just after the dot-com bust and Enron and Worldcom scandals, but before the generational shocks that continue to reverberate a decade later. As a result, the connections between the Gilded Age and Roaring 20s and now are implied rather than stated – and all the stronger for it.

That said, Fraser proves himself a better prognosticator than many of the misguided optimists he quotes in his book. On its final page, Fraser seems a little perplexed, and a lot perturbed, that the recession and financial scandals of the early 2000s had not provoked a reassessment of Wall Street's preeminence in American economic and cultural life. His thoughts prove prescient:

Perhaps without a true systemic economic crisis, one of historic proportions threatening to the well-being of everyone and not merely the country's peak financial institutions, the Street may continue to embody the ever-renewable American optimism underpinning "shareholder nation." However, such a calamity would ignite incalculable political upheaval as well. Should that happen, no one knows where it would lead. The United States was lucky in the 1930s. Wall Street's defeat was a victory for the New Deal, not fascism. Now, however, the context is rather different.

One wonders what a new chapter of Every Man a Speculator would say in the aftermath of that very crisis, the heroic efforts to stem its spread, the ultimately lackluster attempts to hold its perpetrators accountable, and the authoritarian backlash to which it contributed and with which we continue to grapple.

[Arminius · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives a detailed account of the American public’s opinion of Wall Street. It references a lot of books of the various times during the country’s investment fever. When it was hated by the many from Alexander Hamilton’s bank funding notes and when it was revered by the many during the 1920’s. It speaks of people who made riches off of speculation, like Vanderbilt, and how the commoner viewed this kind of living as not an honest one because it did not work in a field with its hands. Anti-Semitism was thrown on Wall Street due to some banking giants like Lehman Brothers being Jewish. Jewish conspiracy theories were promulgated by the powerful words of businessman Henry Ford. Later “the street” was implicated in communist ties by Senator McCarthy. It explores the great depression’s effect on banking. And in an unintentional way it clarifies the Banking problems of 2008 by describing the purpose of the “Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.”

[Diane C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure why alot of people had an averse reaction to this book. It's dense,enthustiastic and yes, a bit repetitive (I think the author wants us to remember certain events and people). But also an eye opener about Wall Street and it's history. You'll experience a great deal of deja vu reading about the 19th century with it's booms and busts.

It's a great book. How else would I have known that the federal government had to bail out some of the railroads after wild speculation, and practically rebuild the defective rail lines of the railroads like the Erie that went bust with bad investments?

[Vincent DiGirolamo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an underrated book. Should have won many prizes for its depth and breadth, its style and bite. You will learn a lot about America reading this cultural history of Wall Street from the Buttonwood agreement in the 18th century to the metldowns of the 1990s. He notes the important changes in society, the structure of the economy, and role of government. Yet also shows the continuities -- the manipulation and chicanery by elites and wanna-be elites. Just becoming familiar with the different terms of denunciation over the centuries -- plutocrats, moneycrats, Satans of Finance, the Etstablishment, etc. -- is a treat. Fraser's a fair-minded tour guide with something to teach unreconstructed Marxists, Yuppies, and Masters of the Universe. You'll wish you had read a lot of the books and seen a lot of the movies he references, but in the end he shows how culture works to criticize and reinforce the status quo. Readers of this book probably won't criticize Obama for not having enough businessmen -- bootstrap capitalists who know what it means to make a payroll each month! -- in his cabinet. In fact, you'll wonder why he has so many. The only question I'm left with is how have Americans allowed their government to be hijacked by big business time and again, most egregiously in the Gilded Age, the 1920s, 1980s-'90s, and now again. Great book for a discussion group, I think, or even a class in which you could read Melville, Dreiser, Wolfe, etc. right along with the pertinent chapters. It'll definitely stretch your vocabulary. The kid can write!

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent History of Wall Street Most Notable for Its Exquisite Detail, Breadth and Coverage of America's Early Years., January 17, 2009
By C. Chambers "Americanreviewer"

http://curtischambers.blogspot.com/

Mr. Fraser has written a detailed and intimately researched tomb covering the history of Wall Street back to its earliest beginnings. This book is similar in theme to Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (Wiley Investment Classics), Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation, andExtraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

Here is what distinguishes Mr. Fraser's book:

- The focus on solely the American Experience, as opposed to including European.

- The period of history covered is much greater than the others. Mr. Fraser begins with a great tale of Alexander Hamiton and Thomas Jefferson. I found this especially valuable and unique.

- A broad focus. The author focuses not only on the financial, but on how Wall Street influenced the arts, popular culture, politics, et al.

I recommend this book if you want a broad, in-depth history of Wall Street. It is the best I have found in covering the pre-1900 period of American finance.

Because the book is a history, it compresses hundreds of years as you read it in a few hours. This allows one to see the boom/bust cycles of Wall Street with clinical detachment. If only we could apply this 20/20 vision to our own period of history

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was written in 2005, before the crash of 2008, so I was interested to see if the author, Steve Frazer,had any inkling of what was coming. Surprisingly, he suggested some warning signs – American optimism is boundless, in its enthusiasm for the “shareholder nation” and the quick recovery of the markets after 2000 was not brought about by any systemic changes; rather it was the same old bubble where everyone wanted to get in on the good times and easy money. In the last paragraph, he writes ominously, “Perhaps without a true systemic economic crisis, one of historic proportions threatening the well of everyone and not merely the country’s peak financial institutions, the Street may continue to embody that ever-renewable American optimism. . . However, such a calamity would ignite incalculable political upheaval as well, and no one can know where it would lead. America was lucky in the l930’s. Wall Street’s defeat was a victory for the New Deal, not fascism.” Will we be so lucky again

[Definitelydennis · Rating 2 out of 5]

done with this book.

Steps to write a book:
1. Have an idea
2. Do research
3. Organize research
4. Choose important parts of research.
5. Write book.

The author skipped step 4, and just wrote what feels like a never ending list of chronological facts with no end in sight and no cohesion or overall purpose.

This book is too dense to be read, but too unsearchable to be used for research.

[Steven]

So far this guy is using every word he can find in the thesaurus...I say just craft things using good old standard English and tell better stories if you want people to listen to your story. But that's just me

[Scott Sipprelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful reminder that the scoudrels and scams of yesteryear are history's echo of Bernie and the Crash of 2009. Book was a little dense and tutorialish, but a good compendium of Wall Street history nonetheless.

[Tyler Pellom · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most thoroughly written books I’ve ever read. The language is incredibly dense and academic.

My only qualm is that, in large swaths of the text, it reads more as a history of financial literature than history of the market.