ABA Banking Journal Podcast

The episode contains a handful of genuinely interesting historical specifics (colonial money supply, Bank of North America as first IPO, 3-to-30 bank growth) but it's a brisk 15-minute overview that sacrifices depth for accessibility, with much of the runtime consumed by intro, sponsor read, and long host questions. Most of the historical narrative will be familiar to anyone with a basic finance-history background.

“the money supply that we had was a hodgepodge of Spanish dollars and bits and pieces of, some British coins, but not many, and things like tobacco warehouse certificates which passed as money”

“There were only three banks in the United States in 1790. There were 30 in 1800.”

The framing of the Bank of England as Britain's 'secret weapon' and the France-vs-Britain interest-rate comparison is a mildly fresh angle, but the episode largely retells a well-documented historical narrative (Continentals, Hamilton, Shays' Rebellion) without contrarian or first-principles reinterpretation. The Confederation-as-UN analogy is a one-liner rather than a developed argument.

“The Bank of England, which was established in 1694 was Britain's secret weapon in all those wars of the 18th century”

“technically every time the government made a loan, it was a personal loan to the King of France. And kings, of course, are notorious on not paying their their debts.”

John Steele Gordon is a legitimate, prolific economic historian with multiple well-regarded books on this exact subject matter, not a career podcast guest or thin 'thought leader.' However, he is a writer-historian rather than a practitioner who built or ran financial institutions at scale, which caps the caliber score for a practitioner-focused B2B audience.

“General Jedediah Huntington described the soldiers at Valley Forge as being barefooted, bare legged, and for the most part, bare-assed.”

“It was 20% was to be owned, of the shares were to be owned by the federal government, and the other 80% were to be held by private investors. He also put in the charter that the government had the right to inspect the books at any time.”

The episode delivers a reasonable set of concrete historical markers - 1694, 1781, 1791, the 20/80 ownership split, 3-to-30 bank growth, Shays' Rebellion 1786 - but is entirely absent of dollar figures for what was actually raised or spent, specific interest rates, or operational detail about how the Bank of North America actually functioned. The specificity is chronological rather than financial.

“The Bank of England, which was established in 1694”

“It was 20% was to be owned, of the shares were to be owned by the federal government, and the other 80% were to be held by private investors”

The host consistently asks long, winding questions that half-answer themselves before the guest can respond, and there is zero pushback or productive challenge to any of Gordon's claims. Inserting a Brian Moynihan paraphrase mid-conversation and then having Gordon simply affirm it ('are the circulatory system in the body') is emblematic of a soft PR-style exchange rather than probing journalism.

“Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, once said that recently that, banks don't cr-create, and I'm paraphrasing here a little bit, but banks don't make the economy, they reflect the economy.”

“Can you tell us a little bit about how that bank functioned and the lessons that had for for future efforts to create a central bank?”