When Europeans complain about the slow pace of progress in building a ‘banking union’, a ‘capital markets union’, or a ‘savings and investment union’, they imply that it was ever easy elsewhere.  The reality is that other compound polities like the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada have struggled with the same issues of providing financial stability and efficient markets for centuries.  Geoffrey Underhill and I spent the better part of a decade drawing the comparison in these two essays for The World Economy (2023) and the Journal of European Integration (2024).  But you can also see the slow pace of progress in three excellent recent books on American financial history by Richard Vague, Jon Moen and Mary Tone Rodgers, and Aditi Sahasrabuddhe.  The story they tell is about how America was only born because Americans were able to create banks, how it almost collapsed without a functioning central bank, and how it still struggles to find the right balance between efficiency and stability.  These books are essential reading.  The reviews that follow are just a teaser of the insights they bring.

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