Sublime

J. S. Morgan’s core business was short-term trade finance, “discounting bills,” as it was called. Its primary customers were American cotton or iron merchants. They typically sold their goods on credit, taking back a piece of paper, or “bill of exchange,” which could be cashed at a specific bank such as Barings at some set future date. If a

Lehman Brothers

Self-managing organizations naturally provide for exceptional learning opportunities.

Best-practice steam engine technology could have saved the equivalent of a quarter of labor costs at most plants. Inefficient furnaces were oxidizing away huge amounts of metal. The Germans were pulling ahead in the use of overhead belt conveyors. It was absurdly wasteful to support 119 rail-shape standards. Better management of furnace linings,

one Carnegie executive claimed he could make a farmboy into a melter, previously one of the more skilled positions, in just six to eight weeks. Integrated operations also eliminated the last vestiges of internal contracting. Line employees now worked only for other hired hands, increasing their psychological distance from senior managers. One labor

Henry Simons was the source of Minsky’s lifelong interest in finance, as well as the idea that the fundamental flaw of modern capitalism stemmed from its banking and financial structure. Minsky took the lesson that capitalism could be stable if, first, large-scale capital investment were owned and financed publically rather than privately and,

The job