MoAF in the News

The US government is $16,828,845,497,183.90 in debt (but who's counting?). How did we get here? Talk about the origins of our debt, and you'll start a conversation about policy in the last few years, maybe the last decade. But, as MoAF President David Cowen explains to The Motley Fool's Morgan Housel, the real origins go back much farther than that.

There is a common perception that old news is worthless, but old news can often teach you more about the future than current news. MoAF President David Cowen provides a great example of the value of old news.

The Motley Fool's Morgan Housel asks David Cowen, CEO of the Museum of American Finance and a financial historian, what he thinks of Wall Street's boom-bust cycle.

The Motley Fool's Morgan Housel asks MoAF President/CEO David Cowen what the Crash of 2008 was like from the perspective of a financial historian.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries floor traders at U.S. stock exchanges engaged in elaborate and often bizarre pranks, and not just on April Fool's Day.

A brief, visual history of trading technology, from ticker tape to the present, featuring several images from the Museum's collection.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average goes back to May 26, 1896. Richard Sylla goes a lot farther back than that. Sylla, an economist at the Stern School of Business at New York University and chairman of the Museum of American Finance, is one of the nation’s most eminent financial historians. He is a natural source to put the Dow’s latest record in long-term context.

An interesting article on investors vs. speculators by WSJ reporter Jason Zweig, which references a "brilliant essay" published in our magazine.

MoAF's Deputy Director writes about the controversial history of "Monopoly" on Bloomberg's Echoes blog.

Dr. Richard Sylla's talk on Alexander Hamilton's Economic Legacy, co-presented by the Museum of American Finance and the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society in January, aired on C-SPAN the weekend of February 23-24 and is now available online.

MoAF's Deputy Director writes about the history of Barings Bank on Bloomberg's Echoes blog.

Bill Cunningham highlights the Museum in his "The Arts, Actually" column.

Change in the financial industry is a constant theme at the museum, whose exhibitions include a 1792 treasury bond issued to George Washington as well as information on hedge funds and electronic trading. The 25-year-old institution has a $3.6 million budget and last year had 43,000 visitors. The newest temporary exhibition lets visitors weigh in on five investments made by Barings Bank, including the Louisiana Purchase.

The annual event held at the Museum of American Finance in Manhattan attracted a number of old-school Wall Street celebrities, among them John C. Whitehead, the leader of Goldman Sachs in the 1970s and 1980s, and William H. Donaldson, a former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Museum of American Finance is one of 11 museums joining forces in a New Year's tourism initiative spearheaded by NYC and Co., the city's tourism arm.

Art makes for iffy returns, despite whatever the alternative investment crowd proclaims. The major November auctions in New York delivered “bipolar” results, according to the Mei Moses advisors, with only one standout success: the post war and contemporary evening sales produced compound annual returns of 15.3 percent, versus 6.9 percent in the S&P for the same holding period. Yet returns for all lots, including impressionists, at Sotheby’s and Christie’s over ten days, provided a paltry 6 percent, compared to 6.7 percent in the S&P. Notwithstanding, art is a financial tool, according to an expert panel moderated by behavioral economist David Adler at New York’s Museum of American Finance.