anything. by the time we parked we woke all the way up it was over packed. my mom on the door started close she literally pushed me and i was the only one of the party who heard him speak. they were classic liberals. and this idea that today you cancel somebody out because you don't agree with them or you tear down statues without consensual vote of a city council or you rename things without any consistency, we are washing away peoples, names, ideas we don't like. and we are not doing it in the light of date necessarily always on a majority vote or through constitutional means we are berating people, we are suspending free speech or due process. so this is not the democratic party a lot of us knew. >> you can watch the rest of this interview with victor davis

hanson along with all prior episodes of in-depth on our website booktv.org. just click on the in-depth tab near the top of the page. >> thank you for joining us for this event featuring acclaimed author, historian, financial expert and founder of the progress in network, zachary karabell. my name is jim kelly i'm a member of the faculty and director of the cabell eat center. before we hear from zachary, i have the happy task of writing a short book and the remark. in 2020 we celebrated 100 years of a purpose driven education. our inception we believe in the power of partnerships to inform and lead change. as we continue our mission to force innovation and business, it is with honor and we continue to present these discussions and our new academic year.

i very much like to thank the center, global security analysis and our wonderful partners in the name of american finance and society at new york who is sponsoring today's conversation. the centennial series was designed to shine light on the emerging important trends. today's session features a keynote discussion with zachary karabell, historian and former financial executive and author of inside money, a book that offers the first full and frank look into brown brothers against the backdrop of american history. i would like to inject a little personal anecdote at this point. and note that my father got his first job on wall street inck 19207 as a runner for brown brothers. that goes back a long way it goes back much before that.

our session will take place in three parts. first, david cohen present ceo of the museum of american finance introduce our speaker, zachary karabell. then zachary will deliver his address for about 30 minutes. following the talk, david and i will facilitate audience questions, we would ask you type into the q&a section at the bottom of your resume screen. our speakers will be addressing as many as possible. also, please note we will be distributing by at lottery 100 copies of zachary's new book. you will be notified within a week as to whether you 11 of the books in the lottery. okay, before i turn it over too david to introduce our speakers, i want to ask you to consider making a donation to the museum of american finance or a gift to the gabelli school centennial

fund which addresses student emergencies connect withh covid-19 crisis. you can make a tax-exempt gift securely online at the link provided in the chat. now let me turn it over too david. >> thanks jim always great to be back to contain this amazing wonderful partnership. it strikes me about zachary and looking into his background is not just incredible of the endeavors he's involved in but also the incredible depth within those variant sectors. his entrepreneurial spirit and optimisml is prevalent which i suggest all of you check out with his podcast and as jim mentioned his progress network. zachary and his friends are looking at things that can move our society in a more positive direction. the hopes and aspirations i'm

not just the fears of a constant fear mongering that seem so prevalent today. as education is from columbia, oxford harvard the letter he received his l phd. his career on wall street heads of global strategy and investment, currently president research and capitol. now he has been an active contributor on tv in places like see nbc, msnbc and foxbusiness andee in many places like the wl street journal, the "washington post", time, but none more important than upcoming issue of our own magazine financial history. now come inside money is his latest book is 13th. the previous wide range of topics like how harry turman won the 1984 election or china/american relations. brown brothers is shunned the limelight t but now with this book, zachary has turned the

bright lights on about the firm, its culture, its people, all woven together using his words into the big story of the united states. so let's turn it over for the big story of brown brothers, welcome zachary. >> thank you so much david, thank you for the introduction. i appreciate that museum of finance putting this together in the cabell he school and jim kelly for the introduction prime speaking to you from the upper west side business school campus which i walk past with some frequency. it's a little bittt of a neighborhood feel to it.or i don't to thank you all for joining this and midday in july. i think of and the tail end of a resume world where we are all doing this via this. i'm sure that will continue at one form of a nether. i'm sorry we cannot so, i wrote

this book first with a question and that question was how did money shape the united states? a pretty broad question. certainly not what others haven't dealt with but when i was certainly fascinated by it. i'm particularly count money in the 19th century was not necessarily unique american commodity but the united states was unique in the proliferation of money the prevalence of it. the plethora of paper money that floods the planes and the coast in the united states compared to the illiquidity most part the the world for most of humanil history. most human history or wealth is tied up in ill liquid assets,

lands, and people. and in the night at sates 19th century has this explosion of capitol which is very messy and chaotic and also destructive when it delusions is also is constructive when it irrigates the capitol system. so i want to write about that. i also wanted to write about how money and the 19th century transforms into american power in the 20th. and particularly how a group of financial particular get to exercise extraordinary political power at the heart of the american government during world war ii and the cold war. and then to transpose an american system onto the global system. help money made america in the 19th century how the men in there almost all men, this is a heavily white mail history. how they then made the world of the 20 century on how we are still living in that world.

with the aftermath and thest effects of that are in the 21st. haand in that sense that is how brown brothers became my topic. i was aware of the fact there was a coterie of brown brothers partners in the middle of the 20th century who go from wall street into washington into thel halls of government and a very central waiver get to that in a moment sprayed those partners the railroad dynasty and of his father's fortune. and his family firm merger with the barbosa 1930s which plays into the narrative i just talked about. the partners in addition herrmann and the new deal becomes ambassador to moscow, is one of the reasons for dissemination of george kennan's attitude about the cold war he become secretary of commerce, he

becomes a distributor about marshall planning in europe and the distributive all-american aid to europe and governor of new york and finally the architect of the vietnam policy. in addition to him there's robert lovett was a major, major figure helped create the modern air force as assistant secretary of war under hendrik simpson during world war ii, becomes undersecretary to george marshall, one of the architects of that which is the precursor to wto. one of the architects of the national security state in the becomes undersecretary family secretary of defense during the waning period of the korean war. so i knew about that and i wanted to write about how that t all came to be. when brown brothers became sort of the perfect aperture of the story for the exoskeleton of the

ideas that i just laid out. but what became much more interesting to me as i wrotete e book and on sales not as aware of and took me a while to become sensitive to, is the degree to which brown brothers is a quiet mover and shaker of many of the most pivotal moments in american history. certainly some of the more pivotal moments in america's finance and the architecture of the american financial system. i guess more importantly, how their story including their contemporary evolution, says a lot about how we come to define capitalism. not all of it very a pretty. and how their story offers anal alternate pathway of capitalism in the future i ended up finding much more admirable than i honestly expected and i will kind of conclude with that. >> in many ways it's the only firm that could've the story they have the longest surviving

bank, asset management private investment firm in the united states. they date from 1818 i think the wrong about their own founding date and so far the firm really begins with the patriarch alexander brown was an irish linen merchant who flees to belfast in the 17 '90s he goes from being a linen exporter tool and importer. and he brings his four sons into the family business hence brown brothers are the four sons of alexander brown. he dispatches them to the important nodes in the brown trading empire, baltimore alexander brown lived and remained, livable which was the essential english report throughout this period of time. if you could not do atlantic trading business or transatlantic trading business without having a presence and agent in liverpool.

philadelphia and the new york city which eventually becomes the dominant house of these four branches. so there is no firm that has survived from 1800 until 2021 freight longevity is not in of itself a reason to write about something. a long life is not just an interesting life nor is itit necessarily provide any lessons. it's also overly tempting to try toci ascribe qualities and characteristics in retrospect to say this is where the firm did what it didn't survive the way it did. there's always a luck there's always contingency. there's plenty p of family partnerships throughout the first 50 years of the 19th century on the second 50 years of the 19th century, all of whom look like they were solid, stable going to stand the test of time and didn't one reason or another. the next generation is neither interested nor adept, whatever the reasons. so, accepting the fact is a

certain amount of luck in contingency and fate if not all determined by culture and attitude. there are some qualities that made brown brothers i think both unique in its 200 years and those two things in many ways are embedded in the dna of the firm by alexander brown and series of letters ofxa about 20 years the right toys for children that are unbelievably full of homilies and clichés it sounds like a crib of poor richard allman and frank on theo one hand and polonius lecturing to his children and shakespeare's hamlet.e things like never a borrower or a lender be. but alexander brown had his own variant thereof, things like trust is hard to earn an easy to lose but be careful out with them we do do business but it's better to be safe then venture

everything and loseur it. pounding these guiding principles into his children. his children then pounding this guiding principles into their children who pounded into their children that abuses the firm even after the 1930s and the last of the brown family stops being essential to the governing of the business and it moves into other partners who are not related by blood still embody this. and that, at its time is not necessary remarkable. in terms of howal the financial world evolved. the same you should hold front and center in your assessment of how you do business. it's a very different mantra of the contemporary mantra try to shoot for the moon. i've been try to be uniform how about a billion-dollar company

how going to get return on capitol. i was so empathetic culture brown brothers because there were certainly lots of speculators in the early and late 19th century a metronomic pattern of panic and 1819, 1837, 1850 and seven, 1873, 1893 , zero seven, i'm probably the last great massive depression starting in 19209. what brown brothers, alexander brown and his children learn through that is everyday we go to sleep you had better be prepared to wake up for a completely changed world in a negative way. that you can take nothing for granted. there is no way you can predict the fate and what is going to happen on the other side. all you can do is be prepared and be mindful that things can

happen. that was a guiding principle. now come on the one hand that prevents brown brothers from h ever becoming massively large. in fact they largely stay on the sidelines of the railroad boom of the 1880s and 1890s, 1870s, 80s, 90s. most who invest in the railroads massive fortunes were made and we remember all those names from j.p. morgan, to huntington, to leland stanford. we don't remember the fact that for all of those who get rich including of course herrmann and the irony of the scrappy gambler who becomes one of those important railroad barons at the turn of the 20th century and source of teddy roosevelt's trust busting with the northern trust which is what he tries to create to coordinate the entire railroad system card brown brothers sink no way we are not getting involved in that. the risk does not work well.

it did not work for them but it was a partnership. and it was a family partnership. and it was their money. every deal brown brothers does in the time to the present because it is a partnership, they are venturing their own hard-earned capitol. which means every single deal, they could lose it all not just gain it all. lyand frankly, the only people really made money in the railroad boom are often not the people built the railroads are issued the first bonds for the first one, there the secondary, the financiers who bought the bonds for pennies a month all the lines and bankrupt. and that is exactly what he did he did invest heavily in the union pacific railroad. in that stopping viable passenger liners has become where the dominant freight lines in the unitedthth states. so this idea being mindful of the downside not just about the upside it was a guiding principle that work for them. and again it did not prevent them from becoming rich. it did not mean they were not,

it meant their greed was by definition bounded. bounded by risk. bound by what they could lose. you contrast that with today's world by virtue of these partnerships in the financial were all going public in the 80s and 90s, the risk changed. the massive risks were offloaded either onto the balance sheet of shareholders or just on 2008, 2009 the balance sheet of taxpayers at the government bail them out right what that means if you're in a financial firm attacks firm, private equity today you might make individually $10 million or more than that. you are highly unlikely to lose $10 million individually but you might lose reputation, you might lose your job, you might lose some money. but you're not going to lose the kind of money you're going to make her in a partnership structure the brown brothers was always in, those two things are much more evenly balanced. on the other thing was part of their culture that explains them the success is anes acute

awareness that you can see in alexander brown but builds over time in his b children, that private gain and private company gain cannot be detached from the public good and definitely but there is a close and acute relationship between my individual gain and whether or not the community around is thriving. what this meant is it was a firm that them before the 1880s and 1890s self-conscious elite begins to coalesce in brown brothers is a founding card-carrying member of that which is why they were part of the story of the 60s there was a backlash against all of that. they were educated in yale men, skull and bones, the whole nexus of intermingling, close circle of wealth power and privilege. but with that was the motto you

had, peabody put when he found it in 1870s which was to rain is to serve with great power comes great responsibility. called the spider-man theory of elite history. and i believe they reallyca embodied this for you can see this early on when in 1828 alexander brown who was at that point was on the richest men in baltimore, realizes baltimore has fallen behind new york and philadelphia as a trading center because new york is open the erie canal to connect to the hinterland and connect to the thriving ohio valley. philadelphia is also building a canal in baltimore is a competitive disadvantage. they realize they are behind for the cannot build a canal in time they want to spend money on the first passenger steam powered locomotive rail line in the world. which really was a moonshot at the time but it was untested, no one had done it did not know the

steam while would work or whether it would blow up too much. they spend money they raise money publicly, they invest their ownpy money. and they do this because they know if they don't come up baltimore will fall behind. alexander is determined to see his community thrived because he believes that is necessary for his own self interest this makes them no money in fact it loses the money initially and yield some return over time. it is hardly a good investment it's judged purely in terms of shareholders. it is a great investment return to society. that is fundamentally central to the industrial revolution and to the growth of american prosperity and that is the world. that continues through time so that by the time you get the group of partners in the 19,

40s, 50s all skull and bones by the time they enter governments, it is this culture of to serve. the public service is a requirement of privilege. now, a lot of people said that is purely self-serving for they create a system globally with the dollar is a central axis of economics which meant they were going to thrive it. they create a u.s. dominated system they perpetrated the cold war, all true. one of my guiding themes is that human beings are messy and so is history. if you are looking purity of spirit and heart, you are going to be hard-pressed to find it in anyone. there are saints and sinners but they are usually the same individual in the same collective that you can be of service and self-serving. you can be selfless and selfish. and both can be true

simultaneously. and i think in many ways, our desire, our collective narrative desire for simplicity of moralityge gets in the way of te complexity of human nature and the messiness of history. the brown brothers, will they embodied this may help create a financial system of paper promises in the 19th century that are trusted more than the dollar, they facilitate this incredible growth this incredible growth they are also deeply complicit in the slave system's largest cotton merchant by the 1830s and 1840s. they are literally embedded in the system. they are simultaneously opposed to slavery as were many northern merchants and many people who recognize if you're wearing a cotton shirt, if you are thriving on the basis of american trade just many merchants of liverpool realize the british were anti- slavery, liverpool itself was thriving

also entirely because the labor of enslaved people both for cotton in thees united states convert sugarcane and other products in the caribbean. they were in bed with the system that they also hated. and part of the way of dealing with that was to try to get out of the physical cotton trade by the 1840s. but even that was complicated it wasn't just because they didn't like slavery because if they could become a paper merchant that facilitated the trade of others, they could scale up much more than just being a purveyor of physical goods. it wasn't just cotton so they move away from physical trade into paper trade detaching themselves somewhat more from the slave trade. and becoming founding supporters of the republican party. but, and no way cannot be sugarcoated nor can it be sugarcoated for much of the northern economy in the 1830s, 40s comments and 50s. one of the reasons i think lincoln talks about the unintended ability of a nation it's half slave free is that by

virtue of being half slave you were essentially all slave. meaning there's no such thing as half slave. that was one of the driving realities of the civil war. brown brothers also becomes part of the driver of early american imperialism. they extend loans from the 1900s into the 19 tens to the government of nicaragua. more to the point they actually by cheap loans others have extended they expect the government of nicaragua to pay them back. when nicaragua falls into its ownck civil chaos in the spiritf what we now call dollar diplomacy when loans to cuba the dominica and other countries, el salvador, honduras, nicaragua, becomes the excuse for thel united states to take more control of these governments for the government seemed to be unable to meet their financial obligation. and in 1912, on the urging of

the grandchildren the great-grandchildren of alexander brown was on the managing partners of brown brothers the administration takes in mariness occupying nicaragua where they state more or less the next seven or eight years. and too the point where the nation magazine oddly enough brown brothers fund and at the starting, becomes critic of brown brothers and calls nicaragua at the of the brown brothers. they also as i said incredibly inclusive but they were closed privileged elites that understood privilege as being two men are born and were not troubled by that. and were not democratic about that. what is interesting is the system is an outgrowth of that culture in the 1950s is a much more balanced one than our system today we have supposedly more democratic form of capitol.

meaning the elite world in which they were the establishment paid by the 1950s or the average front of my ceo was about 32. that is close 300 -- one. the reality e is it's a much moe economic system was partly constructed by much more elitist captains of industry and finance. i think part of it was intuitive sense drive for the individual companies to thrive. those things are kind of an organic hold. that's why been the end of the book, part of what i come to in this is eddie of the partnership model and the culture brown brothers was a model of sustainable capitalism for that's different fromth sustainability that we all use

today in the catchphrase for environmental awareness. sustainable capitalism is in the sense capitalism that literally can be sustained over generations. it is not far too much from the future and it does not go so far out on a limb. one of the real ironies of the story is that brown brothers, like all banks had to make a choice about what they're going to be a commercial bank, or an investment banker because most of the business at that time was in a commercial banking includig a burgeoning wealth management business which they helped create. they decide the primary identities going to be a commercial bank which is what it isba today. on a private partnership. it's offshoot eventually emerges with the offshoot of drexel which is a firm in philadelphia. which after several other mergers become one of the icons in the late 70s is michael who

becomes the king of a certain kind of finance in the 1980s. it was epitomized by the film wall street and by all of her stones michael douglas character claiming greed is good. which of the time meant for criticism of the culture but of course becomes in its own way a celebration. that film becomes foror generations from the 19 '80s sort of that we want to be in an many ways was replicate a little bit were leonardo dicaprio plays it simulates sleazy but otherwise heroic figure. their attitude was we are not trying to going to serve our clients. we are going to create a meaningful culture and financial benefits for our employees. and yes, return our partners

considerable wealth. but to do so in a way that is never systemically ane problem. we are going to go for the returns no matter what the risk. in the way i end the book is a rumination on -- you do not want the world areth brown brothers mentality is the only mentality in the financial world. brown brothers never would've underwritten elonmu musk. they never would've funded the moonshot all they did a little bit in the 1820s. and you do want that in a dynamic system but he certainly want that in an american capitol system hopes and dreams can get fueled by capitol. the problem is the way the ratio between that and more prudent awareness capitol is like the civil power and in adam. you've got to be mindful you're the purveyors of the destructive power and not just the

destructive potential bird that's why think brown brothers as an alternate version of what capitalism can be buried the balances become too skewed for showing what's called the elon musk verses versus the brown brothers. i've been critical of the ratio of weather that exists and we could do with more brown brothers a little less of the other and shifting the mix. and we should honor the story of a firm. unbrown brothers told us 5000 employees is $2 billion in revenue, about 500 million in per if they're publicly traded there probably be around 20 billion-dollar company, which is a minnow compared to j.p. morgan or morgan stanley. but why it is we don't respect that reality the way we illini or demonize the huge players who come too close to the sun or not. there's going to be note trilogy

on broadway about the rise and fall of brown brothers are stories not dramatic enough and it does not satisfy this craving for heroes and villains. but in many ways you don't want heroes and villains to conflict driving that financial system you want people are client dedicated, honorable people who are serving society, serving themselves, serving their clients. guess they are flawed, complicated, constantly need to be looking themselves in thehe mirror and self-aware. but nonetheless in many ways that is the lesson i took from this. that relationship between elites in society, if you've got a lot you need to give a lot, and to be mindful of risk. mindful of the power of what you are doing. not just to enrich and create but also create disturbances in the force. i we would all be better served by a more balanced capitalism that brown brothers over 220

years epitomizes, represents and in many ways at the endpi of th, came to very much up flawed. so i think that will be my formal presentation. and now will have some questions for. >> rig and the questions let me ask everyone to please ask your question in the chat function. we've already received some good ones. who like to encourage you to ask your own questions and we are taking them now. here's a good one, on a risk basis, what companies are like brown brothers today? the a company like tweedy brown or are there any other examples? >> those are two good ones very supposed to some degree warburg is a little like that. brown brothers itself is clearly one of the best answers to that

and cheekily brown brothers is one of the best examples of the companies that like brown brothers. there are at least company's they do exist. part of what i am saying is, by virtue of that culture, a culture where -- first of all brown brothers harriman has a culture every day our is not in the public papers, everyday we are not the story is a good day. that's partly why there's been a book about them for partly why they have shoot being the story. my joke for a while was made not of heard of brown brothers if you're not in the financial word, it may not even know brown brothers was still around even if you are in the financial world. there is always a brown brothers banker in the second of every major thing that happened in american history totally notti wanting to be the story but without him there is no story. on that quality precludes some of the attention paid for it is

the same thing is not a lot of stories there is within the financial advisory world, and my point is we should find a way to tell those stories and honor them. even if they lack the drama of other stories. because the stories we tilts shape our sense of what is possible. they shape our sense of what we eshould aspire too. this is a fascinating story in and of itself. we would be better served by paying a little more attention to those kinds of firms. >> thanks, there are several questions about the relationship of the other household names, the rockefellers, the vanderbilts, can't add it onto that did they shun the jewish financiers of the day? o was that a relationship of the bigger names or not? >> or is a lot even though brown brothers is not a leading railroad financier, a joint a

lot of the syndicate deals. so most of these deals when you're recapitalizing the entire rail line not like the union pacific or the northern or central illinois, you nameor it. not being done by one banker. it is being led by j.p. morgan with 20 others joining on. same thing providing loans to european governments in world pinwar i. i didn't talk about them in the prepared remarks but an essential moment in the change in the world ignites its relative to the world when the united states goes from being a debtor nation to a creditor nation to europe. and it brown hasav a real role n that along with morgan, lamont, and all these other names thatat are little more familiar. but they just are not leading the indicate they are joining the syndicate. so they're always in the room. they are invited, they're going to the metropolitan club, they're going to the knickerbocker club, they are

doing the deals they are just not the front and center dealmaker. the tank with a vanderbilts in the 1850s. brown brothers on the more speculative adventures one of the first steam step passengers across the atlantic to compete. that ends quite badly but not because of the but one of the ships sinks the worst passenger disaster. before the titanic 50 years later. they get some government underwriting which was curious to vanderbilt break vanderbilts like i made my own money, by myself. i was damned if i take second ts anybody to take government money. he was outraged at this steam ship line got government money. brown brothers always interacting with these groups. much like a lot of wall street, brown brothers in some sense at a cultural anti-semitism.

i cite one moment in the book where the widow of the grandchildren of who also runs the firm in the 1870s, 80s, 90s, she died in house in west orange new jersey in her house was up for sale. a jewish businessmen approaches the sons to buy the property and they very clearly said we do not want to sell to that sort why would be ever? yet at the same time when opens a golf and long island, some of the founding partners of the club or guggenheim, marshall fields, bailey harriman helps create cvs is not like they're unwilling to do business deals. history of the lot of the interaction between the jewish bankers and that lehmans in thee goldmans, and whatever will help

the wasp banking group. the very complicated v mix. anti-semitism on the one hand,d but not to the degree that we won't do deals remote location to the whole thing. matt's place to what i said before but if you're looking for simplicity and you are looking for easy heroes and easy villains i am not a big fan of that breed they exist i'm not a sympathetic look at hitler. much more history is less nuanced. >> zachary, cindy mccloud asks what inflows of the first and second national banks have on brown brothers operations? >> the second bank is much more crucial. jackson's a bank or about not renewing the charter of the second bank, even more important jackson intense animosity

towards paper money which oddly was the lifeblood for most subjects and supporters. it's a bizarre relationship that exists throughout american history where the heartland, the jacksonian world or before that the jeffersonian world, with consistently antagonistic to the money elites of the northeast. the hamiltonian's, banks, that theme in american history of animosity toward the creators of money and money as a sort of way ngof stealing the hard earned wk of the farmers and the laborers, was a powerful fuel for that jacksonian movement. really wailed against banks as did jefferson and sees it as a way for the elites of the northeast to steal the wealth of his supporters and the people of kentucky and the ohio valley at all those areas that are growing. but of course they needed the money of these banks for opening

farms and settling the frontier in fighting the native americans of the frontier is not an open space there's lots of other people there first. in the animosity towards banks and banking needed people and created violent financial ficrises. when the second bank isn't renewed and when jackson, leaving office issues the speakeasy circulate which forces banks too: all of their paper, helps create the panic of 1837 which was the one existenial crisis mode for brown brothers where they actually turn to the bank of england. i didn't mean to get into this but i do in the book is huge in england and the liverpool house in becoming brown shipley, and supplying the bank of england to the governors. that risk cultures framed by that moment and framed by the panic of 1987.

1887. >> >> comes up in the book a lot and what they learn from their experiences and you talk to people in that world and the societies which were called sect societies but actually more yelp called senior societies. and where isnc this place where when she was selected it was one of the rare places we could totally be yourself and later on when there was a backlash against elite establishment culture, probably because they were seen as leaving the united states in the garden path into the vietnam war and therefore consistent active scene then as stupidity plus in the cold wars may be called work was just the way for the establishment to enrich themselves the fact that

they were all of these will be societies meant that there were secret paths and partly web brown and that world of conspiracy therapies were seen a small confident caused delays and then brown brothers harriman would quietly bear, there were all these theories, messy in bed with nothing germany into the fund, the industrial machine and prior to the rise. but i think in reality, a world where youngng privileged med cua down the guard and honest with one another because they knew the speakers were safe with one. another and yes, those relationships would bond like most of us carried through over

the years and yes, they were intermarried and yes they would get under did each other favors and seven interlinking boards were one hand, you know shortly other and all of that reality was partly true and humanly true where you stand to benefit your friends and your connections in your class. i do think it was cementing these bonds. >> were relevant involved in the location in baltimore, do the complicate matters growing up in new york city and philadelphia. >> it certainly did but by that point, the baltimore office of brown brothers harriman was least significant and so the business that had already moved to new york and liverpool in an office in boston and the

baltimore house was a clearinghouse and an agent for the new york house at that point in the sin that alexander had in baltimore was actually hashed out by the 1830s and the others with john brown it also cast out with the both died in those houses while they were led by cousins and nephews were just not as important even though the baltimore house survived and eventually gets renamed alex brown and sons which eventually has a future history as well. but there was a tense moment at the beginning of the civil war with the new york house and run by james brown and borders of the flying entered the union jack and in the middle of the city that was confederate as most people know baltimore would be occupied because it was not

proceeding and so is definitelyl a tense time but in terms of the business side, baltimore was not important enough numeral business underground brothers by that point. >> bill was to know, did you get cooperation from the round brothers writing a book and how did you conduct your research. >> so i did get cooperation but i did not need to cooperation in the brown brothers commissioned a 150th anniversary book in 1958 and it took about five years in the early 60s called 1967, he collated all of the firms historical records and after that, and again i don't actually getting into the founding date, is not that important. in all of b that research materl is deposited the new york historical society where it resides today, 130 or 140 archival boxes for those of you have done research of this a lot of boxes since it was done by

yell and by the truman library there is some materials but not a huge amount and so there is no lack of publicly available documentation as hard as possible that theree is somethg buried somewhere in the firms in the archives that they did not get to the historical society and i saw no evidence that was the case but it doesn't mean that wasn't the case and frankly it was not that interested in trying to figure that out given there was enough there transparently i felt that was enough there. there was maybe they could've been said about the business of the round brothers and brown brothers harriman and into the a present i frankly a lot of those businesses, the bank to bank in custody morgan custody for asset managers and clearing for an traded stocks in the u.s. exchanges. all that is vital to the smooth functioning of the financial system but it is not step of a grand narrative and i'll let you judge what i wrote as a

narrative but i can certainly that iswh not. i did noto mean to get into it with the partners today largely because i didn't really want to write about the business today and i wanted to write about that business model the contract to what i talked about reported kind too big of a sale and wanted possess the farm eroded that respect but i did talk to some of the partners i wanted you to know writing the book that i didn't want him to feel with the book because it is their story and he certainly did not give themdn any veto power w not overly thrilled about the flavoring and sort of moments of anti-semitism in all of this and i think that they were worried that would be the thing that people focus onth when they read the book as opposed to have me out of a lattice, not the focus of it. i certainly wanted them to

feel like i was writing honest and honorable history of a firm and it did not have an agenda per se. >> every important point, in our country'ss history, were with these issues day-to-day. >> i would say relatively modest if not all some of that is by design in a new get the sense partners today have any real interest in what we call influence it is other motivating desire, they still don't really want to be in the news and behind the scenes where they prefer to be an regulatory like whenever there are things ingu y touch on their business like custodial relations and things of different the occ engaged the

regulators for sure probably know differently for another equivalent size firm in the front of the legacy were not interested in the public service part about pretty. >> it was mostly revenue stuff, or banking related to. >> at all of organizations and you know they do a good bit of direct asset management as well. >> and when people about money today and topics in finance or lobbying, many become intertwined into work culture and how theyre always matter lie a. >> i don't think it will was like this but certainly by the days we dide 90 have theke millionaires set in e 1880s, but for the most part, people huge amounts ofit money weren't interested in beingey government because sort of a small relative back order and

well until the 20th century and so, various industries believed lightly that they could exercise much more power by shaping government or paying for senator or finding enough light to a point that being an office themselves. that begins to change of the known of the 20th century andrew miller secretary of treasury, i think it's a product that if you will be on we have more of this revolving door between finance in washington and links in washington which certainly continues of the '90s and the majority of the reference to goldman sachs as a government saxes kind of the latter-day iteration of that and you do not see that the same way in the 19th century and even into the list for the 20th but you do see it in a little bit in the 1920s and then certainlyg during world war ii and into the cold war.

>> is there any degree of luck that they've seen as far as being in the right place there are times. >> sure, and i think if you look at a who's who of merchant houses in the 1830s coming when found a whole bunch that would've seemed solid and stable newou would've predicted they would've been around for generations and probably had some of the same values that the brown brothers did and one thing even 1830s, they work very rigidly systematic and very meticulous and how they accepted risk even then, quantitatively infected items for their clients and make sure they were not doing business and i think they were unusually particular and how they didid stuff even if the culture was similar but less of the bank of england in 1937 had not given them a bridge loan it, modest bridge loan come just

enough to cover and outspending obligations in the argument in liverpool it was, we do nothing really wrong and we managed our book an arrest pretty well but it was cascading and forced us to redeem 19 rather than what they are training at and at the capitol and given that the 30 - 50 percent of all liverpool credits slowing and rather theyf we fail, the whole thing is coming down i and it's better to from several females in the bank of england, said it was better to prop up the brown brothers anthony not have happened i don't know, there may have been destroyed or maybe the one in liverpool might've gone under i don't know and so, theyt not have found that next-generation and so like all of the kids were interested, a bunch were there and one

presumptively dies not everyone in liverpool, the children of william brown of sir william brown, he manages to bring on family partners who are unbelievably competent and in any stage that could've gone right it does not that culture remains which is fascinating to me as early does not remain the lehman brothers up in the 1930s when there are no more claimants left. >> a separate question the maybe quick and ie will say, one, what would the brown brothers think of crypto with a be last forth member to erase it in the second one, have you ever seen the paintings of the brown family and the brown building in baltimore and if so what you are your questions. >> i am not sure which painting

that refers to and there's one from the 1850s, have the family that's pretty well known. i think all of the paintings i've seen a pretty no which one but not picturing the exact one kind of youture the know, solid, they're always wearing black and they look like they are bankers families look like models of whatever moment there and whether it's the present time and crypto, the brown brothers is not doing any ts anytime soon knew that if it becomes part part of the financial system they are likely to develop custody tools and technologies that are safe and secure and reliable for crypto. >> was her any connection between brown and grain. >> not really like you say for sure whether they knew each

other or not but it's not whatt. you know, certainly in the 1930s, the firm writes aet brochure about asset management called shattered wealth it talks abouts how every ten years, the world changes in stocks and bonds and reassess your portfolio you can't make any assumptions that were to then, will work now and so in terms of how you invest in the value and make sure your portfolio is well constructed - even if they were not following specific mantras card. >> and a final question before i come back andin wrap it up to thank you, they say thank you for an exhilarating talk you mentioned a partnership may be better position to achieve the public good, why is that under the case and what do we see the

same principles private equity firms and engaged with and be more successful in impact investments i was a this a much longer conversation for the point of try to make is where the reward ratio exist within the firm culture and private partnerships are often some proprietorships in the way they deploy capitol is there essentially employing other people's capitol even if they are private and partnership model of the brown brothers is that it was always a capitol embedded in a real and therefore there was a huge amount of individual risks that you did on when considering where you were going to deploy capitol which does not necessarily pertain to a private equity firm, the way to find other people's money and fees on that pool of money, not like it is a partner's money than they bring in other peoples money even if there is a little

bit of a partner's money unit, like the partnership is the primary one hand funding vehicle vehicle. nothing the entire system should be structured way brown brothers construction you do do not want the financial system composed brett only of a brown brothers or - it is about what there balance of ratio is in a row for the thank you so become unbalanced and which line is the risk part because it's so focused on the outside reward as opposed to starting for sustainable balance of how we deploy capitol and if there's any lessons we concluded from brown brothers coming itnc is festive sustainable capitol in a has to be aware the entire lattice of society and that every huge gaine is usually counterpart is a huge risk and a huge loss that every immense construction is potential destruction and doesn't mean go

for it but be aware and be mindful be balance and that's what i'm trying to say the brown brothers was more ofrs a supportable model. >> we had a huge - this sours phenomenal i would like doug lapointe about the book, no biographies and effectively giving you a two for one because he covers him in such rich detail. and i want to thank our friends come the cfa, thank is always the school in particular and zachary for a phenomenal engaging our. >> if you are enjoying book tv, the son of her newsletter using the qr code on the screen, to receive a schedule of upcoming programs authors and discussion of this festival hundred hundred decibels more book tv everything on "c-span2", or anytime on my net booktv.org. television for serious readers. ten america hosted in a

discussion with from the ukrainian writers and former u.s. ambassador to russia on russia's invasion of ukraine and the fate of the country, here's a portion. >> one can help his or her country and the most important job is done by the army by people who are mobilizing money to shoot and to die for the country and if there are lots of other ways where volunteers are working and in some of the jobs made is not on the territorial army for example but also supplying loans to people who cannot lose their bread-and-butter and i now have an issue - although i'm not there that there is no lady, and hospital and she should be taken back to her flat, but there is nobody to take her we are looking for volunteers who could

actually come to the hospital and bring her to her apartment and help her to get into their apartment and 70 and sing over look after her and more people are able or maybe they don't want to live there and there are many people who cannot walk or cannot make it these people will stay and there until the end they should not be forgotten. >> watch the full program online anytime about tv .org it just search ten america, michael mcfall work ukrainian authors russia ukraine war. >> cspan shop .org is season is only sore, browse through the latest cspan products and apparel invokes, home decor, and accessories, there's something fairly cspan fan, every supports our nonprofit operation, shop now, anytime at cspan shop .org.

>> watch bookkeeping out on sundays, on "c-span2", or find it online anytime at booktv.org, this television for serious readers. >> twenty is now journalist and author glenn greenwald and we will be talking about his newest book "securing democracy" and in just a minute got glenn greenwald we are the libertarian freedom says investable inbox vegas and you are here and is there an oddity here. >> is definitely an oddity,th that's obvious that i want to be perceived - i don't think there's a lot of people at the conference and at the same time, the really honest when i began writing about politics a