Decline and Rise of Economic Power
By the end of the 19th century, the introduction of national taxation systems had ended the Rothschild's policy of operating with a single set of commercial account records resulting in the various houses gradually going their own separate ways. The system of the five brothers and their successor sons had all but disappeared by World War I. However, the estate tax relative to the bank and corporate assets was far more detrimental long-term because it restricted growth at a time when publicly owned banks were expanding rapidly with huge resources raised on capital markets. In the 1930s, their vast railroad holdings were nationalized and in 1940 the Nazis seized their bank. Then, after having the bank restored to them at the end of the war, in 1981 the bank Rothschild Freres was nationalized by the French socialist government of President François Mitterrand. The New York Times wrote that the Rothschilds "grossly misjudged the opportunities directly across the Atlantic" and quoted Evelyn Robert de Rothschild as saying that while the family had been in business for 200 years "we never seized the initiative in America and that was one of the mistakes my family made."
Read more about this topic: Rothschild Banking Family Of France
Famous quotes containing the words economic power, decline and, decline, rise, economic and/or power:
“The bourgeois takes economic power very seriously, and often worships it quite unselfishly.”
—Nicolai A. Berdyaev (1874–1948)
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall—which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“If in the earlier part of the century, middle-class children suffered from overattentive mothers, from being “mother’s only accomplishment,” today’s children may suffer from an underestimation of their needs. Our idea of what a child needs in each case reflects what parents need. The child’s needs are thus a cultural football in an economic and marital game.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
—Bible: New Testament, Ephesians 3:20-21.