A considerable portion of the most impressive infrastructure built over the centuries - including the center of old Mexico City itself, our system of canals in the United States, and thousands of miles of railroad track bed and bridges in all our countries - provides eloquent testimony to the net benefit of that international trade and finance.
Financial crises in the early nineteenth century, for example, particularly those associated with the Napoleonic Wars, were often related to military and other events in faraway places. An investor’s speculative position could be wiped out by a military setback, and he might not even know about it for days or even weeks, which, from the perspective of central banking today, might be considered bliss.