Credit in the Gilded Age
By Bill Allison Mar 05 2009 8:15 p.m. 1 commentI've been reading The Gilded Age, by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. It's amazing how little the Washington they depict--the lobbyists, the appropriators, the schemes--has changed. This passage, however, put me in mind of our current credit and banking crisis:
Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:--"I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars."
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[...] I couldn’t find the bill on OpenCongress yet, but I did note that Dodd is sponsoring a bill to put Mark Twain on a coin. Perhaps they can put a quote on the back from the Gilded Age. [...]