Museum of American Finance

Last month the Museum of American Finance (formerly the Museum of American Financial History) opened in a former bank building near The New York Stock Exchange.

The New York Times reviewer indicates that the new, larger exhibit area is an improvement, but hopes for more:

After $9 million in costs (and with a $3 million annual budget), the museum, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, now has a library and an auditorium, along with 10,000 square feet of exhibition space on what was once the imposing “private banking” mezzanine. It is a magisterial space, its grand murals celebrating American industrial achievements — powered, presumably, by the investments of many who once banked here.

Unfortunately, the bank was completed just before the 1929 market crash, which must have left many clients in straitened circumstances. But this museum is not shy about such vagaries in financial fortune. It sees its mission as both celebratory — paying tribute to the “American democratic open market system” — and educational, depicting just how that system evolved and the ways it works and sometimes falters.

So little is taught about this subject in the public schools, and so much still needs to be learned by those who have not quite figured out the nature of derivatives and other financial instruments, that the museum is both welcome in what it attempts and disappointing in how it falls short. In some cases it is too obvious (a wall display of the objects lying behind the trade of pork belly and grain futures doesn’t add much); in other cases too compressed (being taught about the nature of bonds is one thing, understanding junk bonds is something else).

The museum's currency exhibit includes this 60-pound gold ingot from the California gold rush.

The museum may need even more space to do justice to financial history in the making. The modern evolution of mortgages – from loans to NINAs (No Income, No Assets) to teaser subprimes packaged in toxic CDOs – could require a whole new wing.

Also, new forms of wealth and new symbols of financial status keep popping up. Super Bowl tickets, for instance. The chart below is from a print edition of today's NY Times.