Gillian Tett

speaker

1,226 appearances 12 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 2 Sep

Gillian Tett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 4.

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The Story of Money · The canal that shaped American finance · 29 Jul 2026 podcast

But

Although ten percent of the population wrote and said they wanted to see the canal happen, of course there were quite a lot of people who actually didn't like the idea at all, weren't there?

I mean it's fascinating this idea of trying to make sure a maximum number of people have skin in the game to get them all engaged in supporting.

But what kind of investors were they and how much did they have to chuck in initially?

One of the things that make this whole story more extraordinary is that all this was occurring as you had the panic of eighteen nineteen.

Tell us Dick briefly what that panic was and whether it damaged or actually helped efforts to get the financing together for the Erie Canal project.

Yeah, I mean no one tried to do massive muni bond projects in the middle of the two thousand eight financial crisis.

Seems like the worst time possible.

I'm putt I'm I'm rather glad, Robin, you're not singing there.

Exactly.

We can all sing about Muni bonds one day.

But um so clearly this was a massive triumph for DeWitt and also in many ways a massive triumph for the New York City as well.

But what did it actually do to trade?

I guess w also begs the question though about what actually happened to the investors.

Course it but the other point you miss is that masses of Americans stick their savings into this, partly because it's tax exempt and of also because it's seen as being boring and stodgy.

But in doing that, they're doing a really fantastic civic thing in helping to create all the infrastructure that America relies on.

And by the way, Legardia these days is fantastic.

So this Erie Canal project was a win win win, it seems, um, even though subsequent projects weren't quite as successful, met some cases very unsuccessful financially.

But I'm curious, to what degree is it still part of the responsible finance um principle or reflecting those principles, as you mentioned earlier, Dick?

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