Alexander Hamilton on Finance, Credit, and Debt
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Beschreibung des Verlags
“A treasure trove for financial and public policy geeks . . . will also help lay readers go beyond the hit musical in understanding Hamilton’s lasting significance.” —Publishers Weekly
While serving as the first treasury secretary from 1789 to 1795, Alexander Hamilton engineered a financial revolution. He established the treasury debt market, the dollar, and a central bank, while strategically prompting private entrepreneurs to establish securities markets and stock exchanges and encouraging state governments to charter a number of commercial banks and other business corporations. Yet despite a recent surge of interest in Hamilton, US financial modernization has not been fully recognized as one of his greatest achievements.
This book traces the development of Hamilton’s financial thinking, policies, and actions through a selection of his writings. Financial historians and Hamilton experts Richard Sylla and David J. Cowen provide commentary that demonstrates the impact Hamilton had on the modern economic system, guiding readers through Hamilton’s distinguished career. It showcases Hamilton’s thoughts on the nation’s founding, the need for a strong central government, problems such as a depreciating paper currency and weak public credit, and the architecture of the financial system. His great state papers on public credit, the national bank, the mint, and manufactures instructed reform of the nation’s finances and jumpstarted economic growth. Hamilton practiced what he preached: he played a key role in the founding of three banks and a manufacturing corporation—and his deft political maneuvering and economic savvy saved the fledgling republic’s economy during the country’s first full-blown financial crisis in 1792.
“A fascinating examination of Hamiltonian economics.” —The Washington Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sylla (Alexander Hamilton: The Illustrated Biography), an NYU professor emeritus of economics, and Cowen (coauthor of Financial Founding Fathers), head of the Museum of American Finance, comprehensively examine Alexander Hamilton's financial legacy. Architect of the modern U.S. financial system, Hamilton created a securities market, national currency, and central bank, and, the authors write, handled the country's first market crash masterfully. Each chapter begins with context for Hamilton's own excerpted writings, which include letters, essays, and reports to Congress, abridged to maintain a focus on finance. Arranged chronologically, the book details Hamilton's work to move the U.S. from a wartime footing to a climate conducive to business growth. Hamilton's prose is lively, vivid (a Revolution-era letter terms the "fluctuating constitution of our army... a pregnant source of evil"), and, most importantly, persuasive; faced with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's opposition to the central bank, Hamilton convinces George Washington by broadly interpreting the Constitution to mean that every governmental power includes "a right to employ all means requisite and fairly applicable to the attainment of the ends of such power." This remains a benchmark argument today, the authors point out. This is undoubtedly a treasure trove for financial and public policy geeks, and the book will also help lay readers go beyond the hit musical in understanding Hamilton's lasting significance.
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