Uncle Sam’s Helping Hand: A Look at the Reconstruction Finance Corporation Imagine it’s 1932, and America is knee-deep in the Great Depression. Banks are failing left and right, businesses are shutting down, and people are losing their jobs and homes. It’s a dark time, and the country desperately needs help. Enter the Reconstruction Finance Corporation...
From London to Jamestown: Who Bankrolled the New World Dream? Imagine setting sail across the vast Atlantic Ocean, leaving behind everything familiar for a chance at a new life in a distant land. This is exactly what the first English settlers did when they embarked on the perilous journey to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. But...
From Soup Kitchens to Super Guns: How Did Hitler Fund Germany’s Military Buildup? Imagine Germany in the early 1930s – still reeling from the devastation of World War I, burdened by crippling war debts and facing a crushing economic depression. How could Adolf Hitler, a man promising national resurgence, turn this struggling nation into a...
From Bootstraps to Battleships: How America Paid for Freedom Imagine trying to fund a rebellion against one of the world’s most powerful empires – that’s exactly what the newly formed United States faced in the late 1700s. With no established national treasury, facing off against the mighty British Empire was a daunting task, financially speaking....
Paying for Freedom: How the US Government Funded the Fight Against Slavery The American Civil War, a tumultuous period in our nation’s history, wasn’t just fought on battlefields. It was also a financial struggle, with both sides scrambling to raise the massive sums needed to wage war. But how did the Union, fighting to preserve...
Greenbacks, Bonds, and Bankers: How the North Kept its War Machine Running The American Civil War was a clash of ideologies, but it was also a battle fought on the financial front. While the Confederacy struggled with limited resources and a collapsing economy, the Union had to figure out how to fund its massive war...