flâneur

Founders Notes: Jay Gould

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Dark Genius of Wall Street Edward J. Renehan Jr. Though reviled for more than a century as Wall Street's greatest villain, Jay Gould was in fact its most original creative genius. Gould was the most astute financial and business strategist of his time and also the most widely hated. He was the undisputed master of the nation's railroads and telegraph systems at a time when these were the fastest-growing new technologies of the age. His failed scheme to corner the gold market in 1869 caused the Black Friday panic. He created new ways of manipulating markets, assembling capital, and swallowing his competitors. Many of these methods are now standard practice; others were unique to their circumstances and unrepeatable; some were among the first things prohibited by the SEC when it came into being in the 1930s. Gould's story is an important reminder that full-contact capitalism, driven by unadulterated avarice, built this country's physical and financial infrastructure. Only two obscure academic biographies for business historians, Julius Grodinsky's Jay Gould: His Business Career (1957) and Maury Klein's The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (1986), have provided balanced, substantial, and

Dark Genius of Wall Street Edward J. Renehan Jr. Though reviled for more than a century as Wall Street's greatest villain, Jay Gould was in fact its most original creative genius. Gould was the most astute financial and business strategist of his time and also the most widely hated. He was the undisputed master of the nation's railroads and telegraph systems at a time when these were the fastest-growing new technologies of the age. His failed scheme to corner the gold market in 1869 caused the Black Friday panic. He created new ways of manipulating markets, assembling capital, and…

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