Download or read book The Exchange Artist written by Jane Kamensky and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-01-24 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting story of the country's first banking scandal in the first decades of the American republic This enthralling historical narrative of the birth of speculative capitalism in America opens in the 1790s when financial pioneer-turned-confidence-man Andrew Dexter, Jr. created a pyramid scheme founded on real estate speculation and the greed of banks, who freely printed the paper money he needed to finance the then tallest building in the United States-the Exchange Coffee House, a 153-room, seven-story colossus in downtown Boston. The story of Dexter's rise and eventual collapse offered an object lesson to the rising young nation, and presents striking parallels to the subprime mortgage meltdown and looming economic collapse of today.