Historical Echoes: Echoes, Schmechoes, This Post Only Has a Drop of History in It

Amy Farber



You might hear: “Economy eschmonomy.” Another possibility is: “Economy schmeconomy.” This phenomenon of repeating a word with the prefix shm- (or sometimes “schm-”), is called shm-reduplication. It challenges the relevance and sometimes the value of the repeated word, and examples can be found in articles like this Newsday clip “The High End: Economy, shmeconomy — the rich still travel.”

Historical Echoes: The Fed’s Ties to the Barbie Doll

Amy Farber



Which of the following statements is true (you may choose more than one):  (a) you are more likely to get a job at the Fed if you look like a Barbie doll, (b) you are less likely to get a job at the Fed if you look like a Barbie doll, (c) the inventor of the Barbie doll sat on the Board of Directors of a Federal Reserve Bank, (d) a key cleaner/restorer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York building has strong ties to Architect Barbie, (e) a Federal Reserve Bank has used Barbie in its economic education program.

Historical Echoes: Who Wants to Be the Richest Economist?

Amy Farber



You might think that, given the extreme levels of wealth that exist today, the richest economist would be someone who was still alive. But you’d be wrong.

Historical Echoes: How Members of the Society for Creative Anachronism Make Money

Amy Farber



Have you seen these people? You might come upon them wearing historic period garb. The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), founded in 1966, is, according to its website, “an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe.”  The members like to recreate life in an earlier time, which means using the technology existing at that time and eschewing later technology (not all the time, just when they are in “anachronism mode”).

Historical Echoes: The Woman Who Would Be Bank

Amy Farber

Mary Roebling (1904-94) was the first woman to serve as president of a major U.S.  bank. (She was also the first woman governor of the American Stock Exchange, among numerous other honors.) According to a New York Times obituary, she came into her position through a combination of happenstance and preparation:

Historical Echoes: The Year of the . . . Pigeon?

Amy Farber

Correction: In the original version of this post, a quote from the Museum of American Finance website stated that the telegraph arrived in the 1950s. This actually took place in the 1850s. The museum has now revised its site to reflect the correct year and we have revised the relevant text in our post. We regret the error.


One could say that Sesame Street character Bert’s extreme interest in paper clips is misguided, but his obsession with pigeons? Maybe not so much. Pigeons have played a role in financial history, with one such role described by Tony Chen during his walking tour of the Hutong district in Beijing. When his group of tourists reaches the Qianshi hutong (see video), he gives an almost unbelievable account of pigeons, exchange rates, and bank robbers during the Ming dynasty, as reported in Time Out Beijing:  

Historical Echoes: Move Over Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard, Let’s Pay Homage to the -- Stereoscopic Viewer!

Amy Farber

Within the New York Public Library Digital Collections is the Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views. Stereoscopic photographs were viewed with a stereoscopic viewer or stereoscope. According to the “About” tab of the NYPL page for the collection, “During the period between the 1850s and the 1910s, stereos were a mainstay of home entertainment, perhaps second only to reading as a personal leisure activity.” They also functioned as a way for people to travel vicariously, or as an aid to the study of history and other cultures. You know you’ve found an image meant to be seen with a stereoscopic viewer when it is double, with the images slightly askew from one another. The kinds of images that were particularly suitable as subjects for stereoscopic photography were those involving objects at varying distances from the viewer (for example, landscapes and cityscapes). (This is only one form of stereoscopy, which incorporates other technologies.)

Historical Echoes: Pop Culture Sold Savings Bonds

Megan Cohen



U.S. savings bonds were created in 1935 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt to assist the United States in raising funds for a variety of government programs.

     One popular marketing tool was to enlist popular culture to sell the bonds, with television proving to be a natural outlet. An example was a commercial featuring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz encouraging people to buy U.S. savings bonds for Christmas.

Historical Echoes: No Valentines Please, We’re British

Amy Farber



It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and we’re not asking you questions or dispensing advice about it—that’s not (yet) our business. However, we can offer two attempts at humor regarding the Bank of England and amorous activity. The first touches upon a central bank’s fear for its reputation and the second its fear of being “manhandled” by the government.

Historical Echoes: The World of Bank Names, According to Andy Rooney

Amy Farber



Did’ya ever notice how silly those Historical Echoes posts can get? Andy Rooney passed in November 2011 (see the New York Times obituary and the obituary from CBS), so he missed his chance to comment on the Liberty Street Economics blog (although here’s a guy pretending to be Mr. Rooney talking about blogs). But while he was alive he sure had a lot of funny and insightful things to say on a lot of topics, including bank names.