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Friday, 15 August 2008
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Capital safety
Thomas Lamont epitomized the cool, classic, well-bred and wellspoken
House of Morgan partner during the 1920s and ’30s. In
many ways he was the perfect image of the 1920s. Silver-haired, slender,
short, suave, and handsome, Lamont was polite and persuasive—impish, yet
impressive—conservative, but with a flair. He was a salesman—perhaps the
first super-salesman.
He wore spectacles, the very image of vision, and waved them as he spoke.
He naturally created an image that made it impossible for others to separate
style from substance when they looked at him. Many suspected he was the
brains of the firm, but in the 19th-century sense of a man who could pick
deals and sharpshoot them, he wasn’t. He was a salesman and PR guy who
made you so confident in him that you believed what he told you. When the
press needed a quote from J.P. Morgan Jr. and his top investment banking
firm, it was the costly-clad Lamont who whispered into the reporters’ ears,
firmly impressing upon them what Morgan wanted them to believe.Other useful articles:
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Funds for investment
Whether Morgan’s reputation would have flourished further under different,
less restrictive political conditions can never be known. Sure, his father
had reorganized the railroads, created the first billion-dollar firm and bailed
America out of the Panic of 1907. But his father operated at the very end of
the era of true free markets—a time when he could summon more money
than the government could—and that granted him world-wide power. J.P.
Jr., too, had his own impressive gig in international finance that had its own
worldwide influence. Without his financing, the western war effort would
have been much more difficult. But Junior had to contend with an onslaught
of government regulations that, slowly whittled away at his operations. No
man in finance ever had bigger shoes to fill than did J.P. Jr., and his strength
kept the continuous presence of the House of Morgan a dominating feature on
Wall Street through the Progressive era and into the New Deal. Dad couldn’t
have done better. -
Investment management
Morgan, Sr. must have turned in his grave in 1940 when the government
had its way—J.P. Morgan & Co., the banking entity, was incorporated and
transformed to a state-chartered bank. The exclusivity was gone forever with
16,500 shares floated to the public in the open market. Sadly enough, J.P.
Morgan, Jr. resorted to going public because of death and inheritance taxes
that threatened the firm’s capital as partners passed away. He reasoned that
“so much of the capital is in a few hands, and those hands are elderly.” J.P.,
Jr. was not happy with this move and slowly faded out of the picture. Private
banking in America was dead. Soon so was Jack.
Remaining slightly active and still a director of U.S. Steel among other companies,
Morgan turned to his yacht (the Corsair), his prize-winning tulips, and
his father’s library which was filled with rare manuscripts. But he succumbed
to heart attacks and a stroke and died in 1943 at 75, just three years after the
great private House of Morgan was turned into a public entity. Ironically, he
died at the same age as did his father before him. Once more, he couldn’t
outdo dad, but in his case just keeping up was plenty good enough.Other useful articles:
- investment management
- first investments
- investing money
- money for investing
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