ARTICLE: 'How Jesse James, the Telegraph, and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 Can Help the Army Win the War on Terrorism: The Unrealized Strategic Effects of a Cashless Battlefield,' By Peter E. Kunkel, Military Review, November-December 2008
Naturally, I love historical analogies like this one.
I see a natural seam here between "expeditionary banking" and Development-in-a-Box™--as in, the former segueing into the latter as security improves.
Very cool stuff. No surprise here, as it comes from Leavenworth's "combined arms center."
(Thanks: Lexington Green)
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Comments (1)
My grandfather served on MacArthur's staff in Japan after WWII, rebuilding the Japanese treasury department from the ground up. This article reminded me of the stories he used to tell about demilitarizing the economy there. One of the measures they took was to introduce retail banking; it helped put the Zaibatsu out of business and brought real entrepreneurship to a country that had never known social mobility on such a scale. This, like so many other things they did, caused a complete transformation of the society.
One other story he told remains vivid in my mind: as part of MacArthur's emphasis on education, they mandated for the first time that Japanese children should get milk in school. By the time my grandfather left Japan in 1951, the effects were plainly visible in a generation of children already taller than their parents. The benefit, of course, was that education became synonymous with thriving health and growth.
Posted by Matt Osborne | November 20, 2008 8:23 AM