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The United States has stricter laws than any nation against insider trading in financial markets, but the earliest of these laws date only from 1909. Prior, stock and commodities exchanges governed themselves with minimal external oversight. Geiger will present a close-up view of member relationships and business practices within the Chicago Board of Trade during the later 19th century when rival groups of exchange members, often family-centered, competed for money and power on the trading floor. Members routinely employed tactics that now would be flagrantly illegal. Even so, they created an exchange of international importance, and introduced strategic financial innovations that transformed global markets.
Geiger’s first book, Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri’s Civil War, 1861-1865 received the 2011 Tom Watson Brown Prize for the best book on Civil War history published in the preceding year and also received the Francis B. Simkins Award for the best first book on southern history published in a two year period.
Thursday April 19, at 12:00 PM
Location: LJ 119, Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington DC
For more information, contact the Kluge Center at (202) 707-3302. Request ASL and ADA accommodations five days in advance at 202-707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.
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