The Speculation Economy

FIVE THE COMPLEX WHOLE

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By 1900, the creation of the giant modern corporation and its outpouring of watered stock brought the problems of antitrust into alignment with the first stage of federal securities regulation in the form of the federal incorporation movement. The bond that united them was overcapitalization. While some Americans, especially in the West and South, were anxious about the sheer size of the new enterprises, most were agitated by their perceptions of monopolistic price gouging to satisfy the demands of capital and that individual ...