By John Tamny
THE MARKET IS BEYOND THE FED’S REACH
I t may come as a surprise to some, but in the mid-19th century, whaling was a major American industry. By major, we’re talking fifth largest in the U.S. According to Kevin Baker’s 2016 book America the Ingenious , this now-forgotten sector could claim annual revenues of $70 million while employing 70,000 people. In Baker’s words, “By the 1830s, it was whale oil that kept the lights burning and wheels turning in America.” Then crude oil was discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859. The days of whaling and whale oil were numbered... What was once economically consequential ceased to be.
Fast forward 100 years to the 1950s, and it was steel that symbolized immense U.S. economic strength. The Fortune 500 was first published in 1955, and a look at the early rankings would reveal names at and around the top, like U.S. Steel, Armco, Jones & Laughlin, and Kaiser. Let’s compare the endlessly changing team picture of U.S. commerce with that of the former Soviet Union... For help here, it’s useful to reference former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s 2007 memoirs, Age of Turbulence . In it, he described a 1980s visit to the country that included spotting “a 1920s steam tractor, a clattering unwieldly
“The proportion between the real recompence of labour in different countries, it must be remembered, is naturally regulated, not by their actual wealth or poverty, but by their advancing, stationary, or declining condition.” Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
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American Consequences
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