Ken Burns, co-director of “The American Revolution,” joins Mornings with Maria to reveal surprising insights from his new documentary series and explain why Americans urgently need to reexamine the story of the country’s founding.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan sent a letter to shareholders on Monday, along with the company’s annual report, detailing the bank’s history and its role in America’s growth as the country prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding.
Moynihan noted that the Bank of America’s oldest institution, the Massachusetts Bank, was founded in 1784, just a year after the Revolutionary War ended with the Treaty of Paris. The bank’s depositors helped the company grow by lending money to new and growing companies that were part of the early American economy.
“From the earliest days of our country, we have supported these communities. We have supported their development American capitalism. We did what a bank does: help its customers and clients grow,” Moynihan wrote. “Bank of America’s legacy banks emerged in communities across the country, and were there every step of the way as those communities filled our country.”
Bank of America also traces its roots to New England franchises dating to the country’s early days, as well as the North Carolina company, the remnant company of those old banks and founded more than 150 years ago to help finance the development of the region’s industries as the U.S. evolved from an agricultural society to an industrial society.
BANK OF AMERICA CEO SEES STRONG ECONOMY FOR 2026, SAYS WALL STREET MAY UNDERESTIMATE GROWTH
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan sent a letter to shareholders on Monday, along with the company’s annual report. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“Funds from far away were not sufficient or readily available and local banks were established to help build needed factories in their communities,” Moynihan wrote in reference to banks established along the East Coast in the early years of American independence.
Banks in the nation’s capital grew along with the expansion of the federal government, while the company’s Texas-based business helped finance the region’s resources boom and banks in the Great Plains spurred the economy’s development. economic growth of the Midwest and West. It also opened a bank in the Pacific Northwest.
Around 1930, AP Giannini founded the Bank of Italy – which helped support the reconstruction of Italy San Francisco after the great earthquake and fires of 1906 – bought a small company called The Bank of America, Los Angeles. After eventually consolidating, Giannini changed the name to Bank of America.
DISNEY WORLD HONORS VETERAN’S BIRTHDAY WORLD WAR VETERAN WITH MOVING FLAG RETREAT CEREMONY
Bank of America traces its corporate history to ancient banks founded in the earliest days of American independence. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Companies that are now Bank of America provided financing for the Erie Canal, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the U.S. government’s demands for the War of 1812, World Wars I and II, as well as many other national priorities,” Moynihan wrote.
“Whether private citizens, governments or businesses of all sizes, in communities across our growing country, Bank of America was there to help capitalism flourish. We were there to help advance the interdependent relationship between capitalism and democracy.”
“Over the 250 years that the American Idea has been in action, the activities of countless individuals, families, farmers and other small businesses, major institutions, governments at every level, the opportunities that capitalism provides – a financial return on labor through wages, and on capital and investments, interest on your idle funds, facilitating bond investments to build infrastructure, providing loans to entrepreneurs to grow their businesses – helped build our country that we have today,” he explained.
FOX BUSINESS LAUNCHES ‘MADE IN AMERICA’ SMALL BUSINESS CONTEST WITH $25,000 CASH PRIZES FOR WINNERS
The Golden Gate Bridge was built in part with money from Bank of America, Moynihan noted. (iStock)
The letter also discussed how Bank of America expanded its presence around the world by helping U.S. companies pursue global ambitions and by providing financial services at the request of the federal government to facilitate access to new markets or help rebuild in the aftermath of conflict.
Examples cited include the opening of banks in Argentina in 1917 to support American companies involved in the wool trade, and the establishment of operations in Argentina. Great Britain in 1931, when the US emerged as a creditor country after World War I.
In the aftermath of World War II, Bank of America became the first bank to open its doors in Japan at the request of the U.S. occupation government to provide loans to shipping companies to restart their operations. Japan’s post-war economy.
The letter from Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan explained how the company and its legacy institutions have helped the U.S. economy at home and abroad since the country’s founding. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)
GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE
Bank of America opened in France in 1953 to support the bank reconstruction after the Second World War of Europe and building on the success of the US government’s post-war Marshall Plan. It also opened a headquarters in the Middle East in 1972 when it entered the newly formed United Arab Emirates to support American companies in developing the region’s resources.
