Words of Wisdom
Excerpts from the Remarks Delivered at the 2017 Museum Gala
At the 2017 Museum of American Finance Gala on February 1 , the Museum honored Joe Ricketts with the Charles Schwab Financial Innovation Award and Lawrence H . Summers with the Whitehead Award for Distinguished Public Service and Financial Leadership . Excerpts from the remarks delivered that evening are published below in the order in which they were presented .
CHARLES SCHWAB Founder and Chairman of the Board Charles Schwab Corporation
I have to say one piece of advertising : this Museum is incredible . In many ways it may be the only way the flame of entrepreneurship is really being kept alive . It ’ s pretty incredible ; you need to take your kids , your grandkids or anybody who will want to listen to you . This will give you a little history of how we achieved what we have in America . It ’ s pretty spectacular , and we ’ ve got to keep that flame alive . The Museum is trying to do that .
Last year I was recognized by the Museum [ with the Financial Innovation Award ], and I really loved receiving that award . It really meant a lot to me , frankly , and I think our industry that I grew up in hasn ’ t had quite the recognition for the transformation that we are providing to the American finance scene to investors and so forth . Look out , investment bankers , you are going to be put aside .
When [ the Museum ] approached me last year to add my name to the award I thought it was important to do . At first I was like , “ Are you kidding me ? Put my name on this award ?” Then I thought about how important it was to the world of finance , and how incredibly important it is to bring millions and millions of investors into the prospect of participating .
Looking back in history , financial innovation has certainly been a part of our country ’ s heritage , really since the earliest days of Alexander Hamilton . I saw his things in the Museum . I saw his writings . He was the first Secretary of the Treasury in 1789 . American credit at the time was completely void ; it was something that we — as a country coming out of the Revolution — simply couldn ’ t address . Our country at the time , of course , was not honoring its debt , but then Secretary Hamilton wrote a long and persuasive memorandum to Congress . He wanted the Congress to honor all the states ’ debts together as one nation . There was one cement , and that was recognition of our debt — that we would pay it off so we would become of course the world ’ s best place to do investing . Hamilton summed up in his view what it really meant . He said it simply was “ the price of liberty .”
Think about it . I think it is a pretty profound way [ to indicate ] the importance of finance . And we have become the place to invest , to say the least . So throughout our nation ’ s history , financial innovation has been obviously very key . I mean , in 200 years there are so many different things we could recognize for sure , and we will keep on going . It is really crucially important . That combination of innovation , coupled with profit making , coupled with entrepreneurship — is crucial .
So tonight I get to honor another entrepreneur in my field who really was a very tough competitor , and a very creative competitor . There are so many things I wished I had done that Joe did along the way . My good friend is now Joe Ricketts , [ but ] in the past we were really fierce competitors . We fought tooth and nail — you do this thing and we will do that thing , and so on . It was really a lot of fun , actually , through our formative years . Our careers have crossed paths more recently , and we have gotten to become really good friends .
We started collectively the low cost transaction business . We developed together — I mean not together ( we were not in concert but were competing for it ) — 24 / 7 service . You could do business on Saturday and Sunday with us , so that was pretty interesting . Even before the Internet we had one-stop investing , convenient trading like online and mobile ( which we have done more recently ). We also have a pretty important thing going on right now ; we were able to decouple
12 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Winter 2017 | www . MoAF . org