They arose again in the financial and economic crises of the late 1830s and early 1840s, after state legislatures had created thousands of corporations. They were present in the 1790s, when the United States began to lead the world in the development of the corporation as the most dynamic form of modern business enterprise. history that people have wondered whether ours is a government of the people or a government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. Why do the profits of American corporations and the compensations of their executives stay high and even rise in some cases while jobs disappear and both economic growth and median family incomes stagnate? Why does the judicial branch join in to strengthen the influence of corporations, financial and nonfinancial, as with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010? That decision granted corporations relatively unlimited free-speech rights to spend corporate funds in electoral politics. Why, during the ongoing financial and economic crises that broke out beginning in 2007, did large financial institutions and industrial firms teetering on the brink of failure – often because of their own misguided strategies and decisions – get bailed out by the federal government? Why did the government seemingly do much less for homeowners facing foreclosures on houses now worth less than the mortgage debt incurred to buy them, perhaps because they had lost their jobs in the economic downturn and could not afford the mortgage payments due? The questions being raised today cover a wide range of issues. The Occupy Wall Street movement that began in New York City in September 2011, spreading thereafter to other cities, raised or reiterated some of the basic questions about how well these American institutions work. Both the questions and the answers to them have varied widely over time. Questions about the actions and purposes of American corporations have been with us as long as corporations themselves.

–Theodore Roosevelt, First Annual Message to Congress, 1901 Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with those institutions. Irwin, 2011), A History of Interest Rates (with Sidney Homer 4th ed., 2005), and The State, the Financial System, and Economic Modernization (edited with Richard Tilly and Gabriel Tortella, 1999). His publications include Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s (edited with Douglas A.

He is chairman of the board of the Museum of American Finance. RICHARD SYLLA, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2012, is the Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets and Professor of Economics at the New York University Stern School of Business. His publications include Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests (with William J. He has been awarded the National Medal of Science.

Before that, he spent thirty years at IBM, where he rose to become Director of Research and then Senior Vice President for Science and Technology.

He was for many years President of the Alfred P. RALPH GOMORY, a Fellow of the American Academy since 1973, is Research Professor at the New York University Stern School of Business.

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