Is Our Economy's Financial Sector Worth What It Costs Us?

AbstractIn 1867, when the American economy was still largely agricultural, Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, threw out the following challenge in a lecture that he gave in Lower Manhattan: “There are 500,000 farmers, probably, in the State of New York today, who, if you were to ask each of them how much per bushel his corn had cost him to grow for the last twenty years, I doubt if fifty of the 500,000 could tell you. And this is but one instance out of ten thousand. Now, every grower of agricultural products should inquire and ascertain, year after year, ‘What does this cost me? What does it bring me?‘‘‘‘…