Chapter 1 introduces the corporate form with a brief review of key corporate concepts, including corporate limited liability, corporate investors, corporate risk and reward, and corporate fraud. Corporate terms are tied with simple, but illustrative, economic analysis. This chapter discusses early financial history in the U.S., including the origins of the New York Stock exchange—formed by the so-called Buttonwood Agreement—the role of banking corporations, the Jacksonian era, though the free banking era. America has always been a capitalist nation, but the founding fathers’ debates continue to this day between Jeffersonian-Jacksonian populists (who supported small businesses and agrarian communities) and Madisonian-Hamiltonian federalists (who trusted large banks and centralized governments). Easy- to-form corporate entities exemplify a legal innovation that enabled massive financial innovation; namely, stock (equity) investment on a large scale. Meanwhile, the Buttonwood Agreement, though not an official government document, demonstrates an early form of financial self-regulation.