What I learned from reading American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune by Greg Steinmetz.
Jay Gold took time off from counting his money to have lunch at Delmonico's, the fanciest restaurant in town.
While he was eating, a lawyer walked over to his table and punched him in the face.
A series of spectacular financial triumphs had made gold fabulously rich.
Now, at age 36, he was the most notorious businessman in the country.
Like others who tried to claw back money from gold, the lawyer was getting nowhere in court.
The laws were too weak, enforcement too lax, and the judges too crooked.
Gold had them in his pocket.
This book seeks to explain Jay Gold and his underappreciated and aggressively maligned role in the country's transformative economic expansion of the 19th century.
But it's just as much an exploration of Wall street during its wild west era after the Civil War, when, by the rough means on display at Delmonico's, the seeds of our current financial system were planted.
Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D.
Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie are not the focus of this book because they made their money in industry, not in finance.
Vanderbilt toiled in steamships and railroads, Rockefeller and oil, and Carnegie in steel.
Only the lesser known figure of Jay Gold, as rich as any of them, was foremost a creature of Wall street.
To the extent Jay Gold is remembered, it's for Black Friday, the day he blew up the gold market and paralyzed the financial system.
Lawyers swamped him with lawsuits, prosecutors hit him with subpoenas, and Congress hauled him in for hearings.
This was as far as things.
Got arrested three times.
Jay Gold never spent a day in jail.
Frustrated opponents turned to vigilante justice.
One victim tossed gold down a stairwell.