Review of When Washington Shut Down Wall Street: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 and the Origins of America’s Monetary Supremacy. by William L. Silber

Volume 10, No. 4 (2007)

At the beginning of World War I, the US Treasury secretary closed the New York Stock Exchange to stop the sale of dollar-denominated securities. Then, as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board he embraced the “Too Big to Fail” doctrine orchestrating a bailout of New York banks by flooding the nation with paper currency. This pragmatic future Senator was also a major beneficiary of one of the greatest banking enterprises in America.