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Founders Notes: Rothschild

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The House of Rothschild Niall Ferguson Such bruising encounters in the office were later distilled into the famous "two chairs" joke, probably the most frequently reprinted Rothschild joke: An eminent visitor is shown into Rothschild's office; without looking up from his desk, Rothschild casually invites him to "take a chair." "Do you realise whom you are addressing?" exclaims the affronted dignitary. Rothschild still does not look up: "So take two chairs." What exactly was the business the Rothschilds did? To answer these questions properly it is necessary to understand something of nineteenth-century public finance; for it was by lending to governments or by speculating in existing government bonds-that the Rothschilds made a very large part of their colossal fortune. "I see in Rothschild," he went on, "one of the greatest revolutionaries who have founded modern democracy": Rothschild destroyed the predominance of land, by raising the system of state bonds to supreme power, thereby mobilising property and income and at the same time endowing money with the previous privileges of the land. He thereby created a new aristocracy. All banks have histories, only the Rothschilds have a

The House of Rothschild Niall Ferguson Such bruising encounters in the office were later distilled into the famous "two chairs" joke, probably the most frequently reprinted Rothschild joke: An eminent visitor is shown into Rothschild's office; without looking up from his desk, Rothschild casually invites him to "take a chair." "Do you realise whom you are addressing?" exclaims the affronted dignitary. Rothschild still does not look up: "So take two chairs." What exactly was the business the Rothschilds did? To answer these questions properly it is necessary to understand something of…

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