\u201cThere are two superpowers in the world today \u2026 \u00a0There’s the United States and there’s Moody’s Bond Rating Service. The United States can destroy you by dropping bombs, and\u00a0 Moody’s can destroy you by downgrading your bonds. And believe me, it’s not clear sometimes who’s more powerful\u201d \u2013 Thomas Friedman on PBS\u2019 NewsHour, 1996<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
John Moody (1868-1958) was a pioneer in bringing financial information and analysis to the investment world. In 1900 he published his first edition of Moody’s Manual of Industrial and Miscellaneous Securities<\/em> (shown below) which provided investors with background and basic statistics on US company stocks and bonds. The success of this compact yet comprehensive volume led to subsequent annual editions; by 1903, \u201cMoody\u2019s Manual,\u201d with its title slightly changed, had become an indispensable tool for bankers and investors seeking to invest their dollars wisely.<\/p>\n John Moody\u2019s publishing company came to be known as Moody\u2019s Investors Service and, in addition to publishing the manuals, developed a credit rating system whereby the bonds of companies and municipalities are assigned a letter grade based on the entity\u2019s stability and likelihood of repaying its bond investors. Today, Moody\u2019s ratings (and those of other ratings issuers who followed Moody\u2019s lead) are a major determinant of how easily, and at what price, companies and municipalities can raise money on Wall Street. In the early 2000s, Moody’s sold its manual-publishing business to Mergent, Inc, which subsequently re-branded the publications as “Mergent Manuals.” MIT\u2019s collection of Moody\u2019s\/Mergent Manuals \u2013 dating all the way back to 1900 \u2013 is essentially an encyclopedic history of business in the 20th and 21st centuries, covering over 50,000 companies from over 100 countries. The print editions remain available in MIT’s Dewey Library, but electronic access to most Manuals since 1909 is now available to the MIT community online via Mergent WebReports<\/em>.<\/p>\n Published: New York, 1903 \u201cThere are two superpowers in the world today \u2026 \u00a0There’s the United States and there’s Moody’s Bond Rating Service. The United States can destroy you by dropping bombs, and\u00a0 Moody’s can destroy you by downgrading your bonds. And believe me, it’s not clear sometimes who’s more powerful\u201d \u2013 Thomas Friedman on PBS\u2019 NewsHour, 1996 John Moody (1868-1958) was a pioneer in bringing financial information and analysis to the investment world. In 1900 he published his first edition of Moody’s Manual of Industrial and Miscellaneous Securities (shown below) which provided investors with background and basic statistics on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":false,"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4254,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions\/4254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/app\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2011\/02\/1903-title-1900-182x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Moody\u2019s manuals continued to grow in size and scope (and popularity) as the stock and bond markets expanded, eventually adding analyses, company histories, and financial statements to each company entry and encompassing all industries in US and international markets. The organization and naming of manuals has also evolved to reflect the changing economic and business climates. As the railroad industry became less dominant and more industries and companies were born, Moody\u2019s Manual of Railroads and Corporation Securities<\/em> (as it was known in 1909) was divided into multiple separate tomes covering all manner of investments, such as a Transportation Manual, Industrial Manual, Bank & Finance Manual, Municipal and Government Manual, Public Utilities Manual, and others.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/app\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2011\/02\/1903-title-184x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/app\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2011\/02\/1903-text-150x150.jpg\")
<\/a><\/em>Find it in the library<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"