{"id":33219,"date":"2022-01-29T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-29T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.blog\/?p=33219"},"modified":"2022-01-29T18:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-01-29T18:30:00","slug":"one-of-the-founding-fathers-tricked-his-way-into-creating-a-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2022\/01\/29\/one-of-the-founding-fathers-tricked-his-way-into-creating-a-bank\/","title":{"rendered":"One of the Founding Fathers tricked his way into creating a bank"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\" id=\"block-2e4aa3e4-91fa-4890-bb6e-28353a9de992\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" height=\"394\" width=\"525\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.cghnyc.com\/media\/chase-building-up-1410x1058.jpg?resize=525%2C394&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Chase Bank - Chermayeff &amp; Geismar &amp; Haviv\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"block-351bd617-0fcf-473c-8706-b2f4aa31808a\">Thanks to the popularity of the musical <em>Hamilton<\/em>, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, plenty of people know the role that the eponymous legislator played in the creation of the United States, before he was killed during a duel. They may even know that he helped create the idea of a central bank, as the nation&#8217;s first Treasury Secretary. But what is probably less known is how his rival, Aaron Burr, had almost as long-lasting and important a legacy in banking &#8212; one that relied on assistance from Hamilton &#8212; but his began with a bit of misdirection. <a href=\"https:\/\/whyisthisinteresting.substack.com\/p\/the-aaron-burr-edition?r=2gay&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=email\">As this short history details, the result was what became Chase Bank<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the late 1790s, following the new US Constitution&#8217;s adoption, New York City was enjoying a period of commercial growth and expanding population. These increases didn\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t come without a price, however, and one of the most vexing problems the city faced was the lack of clean water. Aaron Burr observed the need for a healthy water supply and devised a plan to employ the local demand for water into a vehicle he could use to enrich himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He proposed the creation of a private company &#8212; the Manhattan Company &#8212; that would provide clean water for street cleaning and firefighting as well as the infrastructure for the project by laying pipes. Burr&#8217;s Manhattan Company ultimately won approval from the state Legislature. However, Burr&#8217;s plan was an artifice and a ruse. What he really wanted to do was start a bank; hence, just before his Manhattan Company was approved, Burr inserted a clause in the bill giving his company sweeping powers to use surplus capital to function as a bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" id=\"block-bc422ae9-a3cb-4254-b9e9-bf1e3e387b7b\">After Burr&#8217;s Manhattan Company achieved incorporation, it quickly began to engage in the banking business and operated under that name until it merged with Chase Bank in the early 1950s. After a series of subsequent mergers, beginning in the early 1980s and culminating with the union of the JPMorgan and Chase banks, JPMorgan Chase became the largest bank in the United States<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to the popularity of the musical Hamilton, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, plenty of people know the role that the eponymous legislator played in the creation of the United States, before he was killed during a duel. They may even know that he helped create the idea of a central bank, as the nation&#8217;s first Treasury &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2022\/01\/29\/one-of-the-founding-fathers-tricked-his-way-into-creating-a-bank\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;One of the Founding Fathers tricked his way into creating a bank&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}