Twentieth-century America rehabilitated speculation as patriotic duty for national strength

Evidence

The interwar era saw US administrations pursuing an ambitious project of “stakeholder democracy” (Ott 2011), which opened up the financial securities markets to a “national community” of federal debt holders and mortgage bonds investment. The first two decades of the twentieth century marked a concerted rehabilitation of speculation, which was then reimagined as a key pillar of a “strong nation.” Correspondingly, futures trading was recast not only as ethical but also as a patriotic duty (Preda 2009). — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 133

Categorization

• XREF: Shows the state-level apparatus that trained citizens for speculative self-presentation the reader traces to politics and dating.