The Dead Pledge - (Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism) by Judge Earl Glock (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book "shows that the kinds of bailouts that inspired such popular fury during the 2008 financial crisis emerged from a long history of government support for the financial sector, most especially for banks making mortgages. Glock argues that a central goal of the American government in the early 20th century, from the Progressive Era through the New Deal, was to encourage new and riskier types of bank loans through government guarantees. He shows that the Great Depression led the government to act on its earliest promises and provide billions of dollars of bailouts to insolvent banks, even while it extended support to an ever greater proportion of banks and financiers. The book thus argues that the most significant and extensive government safety net that emerged from the first half of the twentieth century was the safety net protecting banks and lenders, especially those making long-term mortgages"--

Book Synopsis

The American government today supports a financial system based on mortgage lending, and it often bails out the financial institutions making these mortgages. The Dead Pledge reveals the surprising origins of American mortgages and American bailouts in policies dating back to the early twentieth century.

Judge Glock shows that the federal government began subsidizing mortgages in order to help lagging sectors of the economy, such as farming and construction. In order to encourage mortgage lending, the government also extended unprecedented assistance to banks. During the Great Depression, the federal government made new mortgage lending and bank bailouts the centerpiece of its recovery program. Both the Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt administrations created semipublic financial institutions, such as Fannie Mae, to provide cheap, tradable mortgages, and they extended guarantees to more banks and financiers. Ultimately, Glock argues, the desire to protect the financial system took precedence over the desire to help lagging parts of the economy, and the government became ever more tied into the financial world.

The Dead Pledge recasts twentieth-century economic, financial, and political history and demonstrates why the greatest "safety net" created in this era was the one supporting finance.

Review Quotes

America's farmers and home buyers long suffered from limited access to mortgage credit. In this engaging book, Glock aptly shows how federal interventions to boost mortgage lending fostered powerful special interests, which subsequently created new imbalances in the economy. That's why we continue to have housing bubbles and crashes.--Richard Sylla, coauthor of Alexander Hamilton on Finance, Credit, and Debt

In this sweeping narrative, Glock brings together the histories of American finance, economic thought, and policy making. Glock reframes our conventional understanding of when and how the "financialization" of American capitalism took place, defining it as an early twentieth-century phenomenon. The modern mortgage market, he explains with lucid prose, developed in tandem with--and inseparably from--the modern American state. An engaging read, sure to provoke debate.--Laura Phillips Sawyer, author of American Fair Trade: Proprietary Capitalism, Corporatism, and the 'New Competition, ' 1890-1940

Judge Glock's fascinating book, The Dead Pledge, provides a new perspective on the evolution of American capitalism and the development of modern financial institutions by exploring the intriguing theme of "economic balance" and its allure to a wide range of economic actors, academics, and policy makers from the Progressive Era through the New Deal.--Walter Friedman, author of American Business History: A Very Short Introduction and Fortune Tellers: America's First Economic Forecasters

From one of the finest in a growing generation of historians writing at the intersection of finance and politics, we learn about the passions and the interests of financiers, politicians, intellectuals, reformers, and farmers who created the system of government-backed finance that has dominated the modern era. The Dead Pledge provides a new history that will guide our ongoing debates about the appropriate role of government in finance and finance in society.--Peter Conti-Brown, author of The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve

About the Author

Judge Glock is a senior policy advisor with the Cicero Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. His work has been featured in the Journal of American History, Business History Review, National Public Radio, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.