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Jewish Banking Houses in America
The
concept of banking is invariably associated with the Jewish people,
which seemed to have a particular proficiency for finance and money
lending. Conspiracy theories putting the wealthy Jewish bankers,
most prominent among them the Rothschild family, at the center of an
evil scheme to enslave the peoples of this Earth under their
financial control, abound and historically supported the ascendancy
of extremist nationalist and anti-Semitic regimes, such as Hitler's
Nazis.
Whether
such Jewish and Masonic conspiracies existed during the Gilded Age,
in the wake of the First World or are still looming in present day's
America, is not a subject of this work and shall not be discussed in
this chapter. But the undeniable propensity of Jewish people to
choose banking as their profession and their success at it, is. The
rise of Jewish banking houses in America during the Gilded Age thus
deserves our full attention.
Historically
the hang of Jewish people to become money changers and lenders
stemmed from both necessity and outstanding opportunity. Economists
will have no difficulty to explain the role of bankers in a modern,
integrated economy. Money as a medium for exchange and as a
financial instrument needs to be handled, meaning traded, saved and
lent. The banker is the intermediary in charge of such handling and
with increasing commerce and industry, his role is also increasingly
important.
In
the deeply Christian Europe of the Middle Age and Renaissance eras,
money lending was invariably associated with usury and forbidden by
the Catholic Church. Until reformation redefined the concept of
usury and thus allowed banking as a respectable occupation, no good
Christian would seek it as a profession, essentially leaving the
field to the Jewish. Hence, the outstanding opportunity.
The
necessity came from the numerous restrictions Jewish people had to
endure particularly in Germany and Central Europe, under the Holy
Roman Germanic Empire. Confined into ghettos and often forbidden to
do sedentary trade or industry, peddling and banking were the best a
Jew could do to earn a living.
The
proficiency came with exercise and as the most gifted among them
started to accumulate considerable wealth, the community of Jewish
bankers increasingly became a power to be reckoned. Community was
(and still is) a strength which much helped the Jewish people in all
their endeavors and again, it was a necessity and a consequence of
their oppression. As a minority in every European country, the
Jewish had to rely on solidarity amongst them, which eased their
transnational business. Thus a Jew found himself welcome in the
Jewish community of a distant place or in a foreign country and
trust, essential to business, was easily established.
Bankers of the Gilded Age
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Jewish Banking Houses
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