Amazing. Securitised slave-backed securities!
Yes, now look at all massive capital inflows much more suspiciously. The Lehman link was creepy.
It feels horrible, but I'm really curious about the mechanics of these bonds. What exactly was the security and how would an investor enforce? Could an investor in a non-slaveholder state/country do anything if they weren't paid? Were they banned anywhere before the Civil War?
If anyone finds a link to a prospectus or similar I'd be very interested.
It sounds like a single-tranche mortgage securitisation, from the (fairly vague) description given. You have an underlying pool of assets - the mortgages - and you sell slices. It doesn't sound like they had tranches and a payment waterfall - I'm not sure exactly when those were developed.
Nor does it sound, and this is interesting, as though there was an SPV holding the mortgages and issuing the debt. In fact, there couldn't have been, since these were being issued before the Limited Liability Acts came along. So it's not clear exactly how the payment streams from the mortgage borrowers would be hypothecated to the security owners - the contract would be between the investor and Lehman Brothers directly.
I am a bit suspicious that they were real securitisations, to be honest. The description given sounds a bit excitable.
Interesting article, not great headline - we knew Britain had plenty of a material interest in US slavery when the Civil War came around, just not in this exact format.
Yes, I suspect they were more like secured debentures than modern securitisations, but to be honest the lines are blurry. There are plenty of modern securitisations without tranching, and some without SPVs.
Anyway, I've ordered the historian's book, so I guess I'll find out tonight.
It would be great to see something similar (like ownership maps) for the Northern US, to drive home how many there were benefiting.
Anyway, I've ordered the historian's book
Let's NOT do a book club on that one, ok? But I've read it.
8: I didn't get to read all of this book because I'd bought it for Lee, but it seemed like a thorough investigation into major universities that profited from slavery.
Is it good, Thorn? The Half Has Never Been Told, that is.
Parts of it are very good, but it has annoying quirks too. I don't like the way he has these fictionalized point-of-view stories for his enslaved characters to make a point. I think the work he does on use of body parts as metonymy for enslaved bodies is fantastic and should be its own book. And the economic stuff is also interesting. But whether they work as one whole thing wasn't quite clear to me. Worth a read, though!
I guess it's technically synecdoche, which is also metonymy, but the point stands that I would read the hell out of a book about how many heads were moved where and how many hands did such and such.
But that was really common in non-slave contexts as well. If you read about the Napoleonic wars it's all "a few hundred rifles" this and "four thousand sabres" that, when they mean infantrymen and cavalrymen. And "all hands on deck" and so on. Fieldhand, stagehand, foremast hand...
I know, ajay, which is why it would be interesting to see someone actually research and run analysis and stuff, which is never going to happen. He does come up with some great quotes and uses it as a governing metaphor for the book, but I think that means he has to distort some of his other arguments or at least make them clunkier to make his aesthetic setup work.
Hands is a bad measurement, because everything doubles. 46 hands is actually 23 people. Probably. Figures like "47 hands" throw everything into confusion.
"46 hands is actually 23 people."
Or 22 able-bodied people, Lord Nelson and a pirate.
I have annoyed Buck unspeakably because he talks about readership of his newsletter in terms of "eyes", which has the same doubling problem.
"It's quite simple," said William Prince Ford, "I simply counted the hands and divided by two."
Who's that walking about upstairs?
-- I'm the famous Eccles! I got friends in!
Do you mind taking those noisy boots off?
-- OK.
THUD
THUD
Ahh, that's better.
THUD
Ohh, I didn't know he had three legs, Henry.
He hasn't, Min, he hasn't, he has a one-legged friend.
THUD
Ooh! He's got two one-legged friends!
THUD
Or one three-legged friend?
Both Goldman and Lehman got their start as German jews that were heavily involved in financing the cotton industry (ie, slavery). The house of Morgan, on the other hand, were originally New Englanders who more directly involved in marketing federal bonds and investments in the North in London, which made them strongly Unionist.
I assume that the slave-backed bonds were simply bonds provided by banks like Lehman (or Baring Bros after having bought from Lehman) who would lend planters in Mississippi and Alabama money to buy slaves from slave-exporting states like South Carolina or Virginia, and then take a security interest in the slaves if the debt wasn't repaid, and finance the thing by selling bonds in Europe. Not an SPV or tranche-based securitization.
So if the bond was even linked to s specific mortgage, it would probably just say 'working capital' or something?
My guess would be not linked to a specific mortgage, just a promise from a US syndicate to repay money at interest based on the same syndicate's securitized loans to planters.
Lots more information here about slavery financed legacies and investment. Not an ideally designed site, but a certified time suck.
46 hands is actually 23 people
Those are some tiny people, even if you're just measuring up to the withers.
I don't know why I said "Goldman and Lehman" above (one of those facts I thought I knew but was wrong on checking. True of Lehman but not Goldman).
This is why measure words come in hand. Sets of eyes, pairs of hands. It's common for them to drop out in colloquial English (I'd like a coffee please), or in certain registers of technical jargon. You'd have to know if 'hands' means 'pair of hands,' in which case a hand = person, or if it's a single hand, in which case it gets messier, considering that limb loss used to be more common. Any mention of half hands?
26: no kidding, I appreciate the fact that you took the time to look at the wiki page for Goldman (or whatever you did between comments 21 and 26), because your correction saved me from having an aneurysm.
A horse can be some-and-a-half hands, but there is no standard conversion to horsepower.
A brace of pheasant, a string of fish... Is "sixpack" a measure word for beer? "Sixer"?
Standard sizes for coolers in the US are listed based on the number of six packs they hold. This strikes me as funnier than it probably is to anyone else.
A "twofour" of beer is a common measure of beer consumed at the cottage over the Victoria Day weekend.
31: Is this still the case? I looked on several brands' sites, and Amazon, and the majority seemed to be measured in quarts, a few in cans.
I wonder if the availability of financing contributed to the pre-war run-up in the price of slaves.
Marginally on topic: I thought Walter Johnson's Soul by Soul was really good. Much more cultural than economic analysis, but about the US market for slaves.
Whoops, I thought DQ had sent me links on two different topics. Really I just failed to post the second link. "TV series sounds great, UCL website full of fascinating material," wrote DQ.
I love that you capitalize my initials, heebie, I think it is very respectful and shows beautiful manners. It makes me smile!
Or 22 able-bodied people, Lord Nelson and a pirate.
Lord Nelson jokes are the best jokes.
Good work; flattering the FPPs demonstrates impeccable hierarchical good manners.
27. You'd have to know if 'hands' means 'pair of hands,' in which case a hand = person, or if it's a single hand, in which case it gets messier, considering that limb loss used to be more common. Any mention of half hands?
Especially confusing when the emcee asks the audience to give a hand to a performer. What is the sound of 1 hand clapping?
I thought DQ stood for Doña Quixote.
oooo I like 41. Also any mention of Din Q makes me think of adorable donkeys, further cheerfulness!
Wow, the link in 36 is really interesting. Lots of slaveowners with my surname in Jamaica, some with dozens or even hundreds of slaves, and one who may have been a freedman who managed to get ownership of his family and was duly compensated.
41, 42 Doña Quixote is very cool but I'm afraid now I will think of our own SP as Sancho Panza. LB, I mean LizardBreath was right!
Wasn't there a Dona Quixote who commented here briefly? IIRC she was a fun-loving young twenty-something with a crazy life.
I recall the name but not any details aside from some positive affect.
She was a lesbian going through some ugly breakup stuff and left after what seemed to be mostly a misunderstanding about (as I recall) Strauss-Kahn. Some of the NYC people knew her and checked in and she was fine but not planning to come back. But that's all just to the best of my knowledge and probably largely wrong.
It was 2009, though, and definitely around this time of year, so July to October or something like that!
49: Sept. 5, 2010
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_10767.html#1223418
Huh, I'd forgotten there'd been a commenter by that name when I wrote 41 but I remember her.
50: And per 47 ended in this thread. Started with DSK, but soon went much more personal and on and on and on. Trigger warning: every bit as unpleasant threads like that tend to be.
Sorry, I was judging by a memory of my own and put it in the wrong year. Anyway, I gave people enough to google properly.
