Chapter 1 - No Place Like Home

Summary

This chapter argues that questions over what kinds of money Americans should use, often assumed to be settled by the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, persisted throughout the twentieth century and in ongoing debates about who should be allowed what kinds of credit. It narrates the cultural forms of this history by combining critical accounts of the key transitions in the credit economy with new readings of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The first section argues that Frank Baum’s 1900 novella is better read through the emergence of retail credit than through the bimetal debates that have dominated its critical reception. The second section reads Victor Fleming’s 1939 film The Wizard of Oz through the debates about the ending of the depression and the shape of New Deal credit and argues that the film’s celebration of this credit obscured its political implications. The final section reads Sidney Lumet’s 1975 The Wiz through the crisis in the New Deal, and the subsequent emergence of neoliberal governance, that the New York financial crisis of the mid-1970s signalled.