Wyatt Wells – författare

Today antitrust law shapes the policy of almost every large company, no matter where headquartered. But this wasn''t always the case. Before World War II, the laws of most industrial countries tolerated and even encouraged cartels, whereas American statutes banned them. In the wake of World War II, the United States devoted considerable resources to building a liberal economic order, which Washington believed was necessary to preserving not only prosperity but also peace after the war. Antitrust was a cornerstone of that policy. This fascinating book shows how the United States sought to impose—and with what results—its antitrust policy on other nations, especially in Europe and Japan. Wyatt Wells chronicles how the attack on cartels and monopoly abroad affected everything from energy policy and trade negotiations to the occupation of Germany and Japan. He shows how a small group of zealots led by Thurman Arnold, who became head of the Justice Department''s Antitrust Division in 1938, targeted cartels and large companies throughout the world: IG Farben of Germany, Mitsui and Mitsubishi of Japan, Imperial Chemical Industries of Britain, Philips of the Netherlands, DuPont and General Electric of the United States, and more. Wells brilliantly shows how subsequently, the architects of the postwar economy—notably Lucius Clay, John McCloy, William Clayton, Jean Monnet, and Ludwig Erhard—uncoupled political ideology from antitrust policy, transforming Arnold''s effort into a means to promote business efficiency and encourage competition.

In the 1890s, the choice between the gold standard and the free coinage of silver upended American politics. The gold standard linked the United States to the larger international financial system, in which gold was the common denominator. The free coinage of silver would effectively sever these ties by devaluing the dollar. The gold standard allowed the U.S. to secure vast amounts of foreign capital on good terms to build railroads and develop industry, but at the cost of deflation. The free coinage of silver would raise prices, particularly for cotton and wheat, whose cultivators carried heavy debts and were hard-pressed. The struggle would define the United States. Would it continue to develop industrially, or would it return to its agricultural roots?

The combatants—among them Grover Cleveland, William Jennings Bryan, J.P. Morgan, and William McKinley—understood what was at stake. This book deals both with well-known aspects of the contest, such as the 1896 Presidential election between McKinley and Bryan, and lesser-known ones, such as how the currency issues interacted with racial politics and international negotiations over the role of silver in the world’s monetary system. The result is the most comprehensive account of financial politics in the United States in the 1890s yet published.