Charles Arthur Conant

According to Murray N. Rothbard the ultimate purpose of the work in the Philippines was to remove Mexican silver currency, which was used on a large scale in Asia, from circulation[3] He returned to take a positions as treasurer of the Morton Trust Company of New York where he specialized in overseas banking.

After the United States' venture into a war against Spain, Conant participated actively both in advertising to the American public and in the administration of the colonial financial system, both in the Philippines and in Central America.

Conant's most important work consists of journal articles collected in The United States and the Orient, in which he argued, before John A. Hobson and Vladimir Lenin, which took a moral perspective into the theory, that imperialism was a natural and necessary outgrowth of capitalism.

His main caveat was that pure gambling by uninformed speculators could hurt the market's ability to reflect true values.

He urged that speculation only be carried on by experienced investors with the ability to understand and process complex financial and economic information.