Wall Street on the Prairie: How Financial Innovation and Regulation Cajoled Citibank into South Dakota

2013 Lecture/Symposia Series

Wall Street on the Prairie: How Financial Innovation and Regulation Cajoled Citibank into South Dakota

Tuesday, March 12, 2013 | 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

If you are like most Americans, you have probably at some point in your life mailed your credit card payments to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. This talk explains why your money went to that specific Main Street and not to Wall Street, or some payment processing mill in Jersey. The main characters include Walter Wriston, the powerful and strong-willed CEO of Citibank; Bill Janklow, South Dakota's long-time governor and Chris Christie's doppelganger; the NBA-tall Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker; Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, better known as the Shah of Iran; Roosevelt Brain Trust member and SCOTUS justice Louis Brandeis; John Froelich, a South Dakota farmer who died in 1933; and, last but not least, thousands of tri-state (that would be Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota) school marms whose names are lost to history but not to the students they educated. And of course Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and rocket scientist Werner von Braun.

Presented in conjunction with Augustana College (Sioux Falls, SD), featured speakers include Augustana President Rob Oliver and Robert E. Wright, Nef Family Chair of Political Economy at Augustana and a member of the Museum's editorial board.

Talk will be followed by Q&A and reception. Admission is free, bur reservations are recommended. For additional information, please contact Tempris Small at 212-908-4110 or tsmall@moaf.org.

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