Hot answers tagged finance
16
Seems like the questioner was asking for a bit more than just an idea of conversion rates, so here is some background on how the pre-decimal currency worked.
4 farthings = one penny
2 halfpennies = one penny
tuppence = colloquial two pence
thruppence = colloquial three pence
240 pence in one pound
6 pence = sixpence (aka a Tanner), or half a shilling.
...
4
This is a very good question with a very weird and convoluted answer. This is my first post, so I've only got two links - I've bolded terms you should google, and referred to interesting wiki articles by their title.
First, banks and corporations did not fill the same functions as they do today - and the giant powerhouse financial institutions were ...
4
Money's meaning changes over time; it is not a static category. For simplicities sake, lets assume that you learn how to use Lsd (£/s/d) figures, and work out a few of the more curious word name (tuppence).
Even then, you won't know how much money was worth in that era unless you read a lot of social history.
There are time values for money converters ...
4
Has scholarship shown that persecuted religious minorities have tended to be financially successful?
Here is a relevant example concerning the Jewish minority in late 19th-century Vienna, as recorded by Peter Gay in Freud: A Life for Our Time:
Many of the immigrants from the miserable villages to the east dressed
and spoke and gestured in ways alien and disagreeable to the Viennese;
they were too exotic to be familiar and not exotic enough to be
...
3
The huge debt inherited from his father, Charles V (Charles I of Spain), had to be renegotiated with bankers several times. Thus, a system of bonds was created in which bankers accepted to receive the interests only. The principal, however, was never returned and the interests kept on growing. This system of bonds was the first in history, by the way.
The ...
3
One unique characteristic of Hamilton's Bank of the U.S. (BUS) was that the government only had a 20 percent ownership of the bank, but the government had the right at all times for reports and status on the operation of the bank. Hamilton was concerned that government officials would be tempted to use the bank to give/gain favors politically...so he found ...
3
He pushed for a private and independent central bank, the First Bank of the United States. It was similar to the Bank of England, except he expected it to loan money to private institutions and businesses as well as perform its government duties. He also founded the Bank of New York, which was a private lending institution similar to modern commercial banks.
...
2
From Wikipedia –
In all the French spent 1.3 billion livres to support the Americans directly, in addition to the money it spent fighting Britain on land and sea outside the U.S.
France's status as a great modern power was affirmed by the war, but it was detrimental to the country’s finances. Even though France's European territories were not ...
1
Has scholarship shown that persecuted religious minorities have tended to be financially successful?
Yale Professor Amy Chua makes this case for Russian Jews, Yugoslav Croats, Chinese in Southeast Asia and others, in this book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_on_Fire
Note, however, that she is also the author of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother."
1
Has scholarship shown that persecuted religious minorities have tended to be financially successful?
The Chinese minority in Indonesia is the first supporting example that comes to mind. However worldwide it is far more common for oppressed ethnic minorities to be relatively poor due to the legal and social barriers they have to deal with.
I love Neal Stevenson's work (particularly the Baroque Cycle), but like many authors he's got his annoying quirks. In ...
1
Has scholarship shown that persecuted religious minorities have tended to be financially successful?
Generally I would say "no". The exception of course being the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which prohibits taking advantage of "brothers" (those with the same faith) by charging interest - this obvious opened up a nisce for minorities of other faiths.
But it's not as clear cut, as - to take Europe - Jews didn't only lend money to ...
1
The 1929 stock market crash (and the excesses, bordering on illegality that led to it) led to the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934, following the onset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Securities_and_Exchange_Commission
There were Congressional acts, those of 1933 and 1934 that changed ...
1
One important consequence of repeated Spanish bankruptcies was that the modern Netherlands won its war of independence from Spain. It may have (years later), led to the successful secession of Portugal in 1640 as well. In any event, they marked the decline of the Spanish empire, and its eventual withdrawal (in the 19th century) from the affairs of (central) ...
1
Since I was just looking up information in David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years in the context of another question, I can contribute a quote from that source that confirms part of what @fledermaus has already indicated:
Charles V was continuously in debt, and when his son Philip II – his armies fighting on three different fronts – ...
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