AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS RAILROADS, TRUCKS, AIRLINES AND BANKS FROM 1945-2012

Mark Rose
Lifelong Learning Society Distinguished Professor in Arts and Humanities, 2012-2013

DESCRIPTION: Ordinary Americans often describe their choices such as home/auto purchases, investments, and going out for dinner as artifacts of the market. This market, as the reasoning goes, supplies goods and services according to consumer demand, i.e., if customers insist on yellow automobiles, large or small engines, or kosher foods, the market responds. This series will discuss a moment during the 1950’s and 1960’s when the largest systems in the U.S. - banks, railroads, and airlines - were not creatures of the market, and federal officials regulated rates and services in detail. One example is that federal and state law prohibited interstate banking. Beginning in the 1970’s, federal officials launched a process of loosening those regulations so that banks could merge, and could enter new businesses such as selling insurance. Many asserted that the market was in charge, as they celebrated these seeming acts of deregulation. In truth, government brought those markets into being and government had bestowed new-found authority on bank, rail, and airline executives. We cannot purchase a meal or an auto that in some fashion is not part of government. Now, when ordinary Americans talk about markets, they are really talking about government-created institutions.

FOUR LECTURES:

1. Declining railroads, booming airlines, and safe banks after World War II
2. President John F. Kennedy and getting the economy moving
3. Deregulating banks and transportation, 1978-1999
4. Market talk and the Financial Crisis of ‘08

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: Dr. Mark rose is Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). Rose also co-edits a book series, American Business, Politics, and Society, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. During 2012-2013, Rose is the LLS Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities. He is writing books on the politics of American banking and on the U.S. city since 1945.