During this period, “Americans built a culture of speculation unique in its abandon,” writes the historian Joshua Rothman in his book Flush Times and Fever Dreams. That culture would drive cotton production up to the Civil War, and it has been a defining characteristic of American capitalism ever since. It is the culture of acquiring wealth without work, growing at all costs, and abusing the powerless. It is the culture that brought us catastrophic downturns, like the Panic of 1837, the stock market crash of 1929, and the recession of 2008. It is the culture that has produced staggering
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