Alexander Hamilton on Finance, Credit, and Debt / / David Cowen, Richard Sylla.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2018
• VerfasserIn: Cowen, David,; Sylla, Richard,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2018]; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

While serving as the first Treasury Secretary from 1789 to 1795, Alexander Hamilton engineered a financial revolution. Hamilton 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, U.S. 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. The 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. The book showcases Hamilton's thoughts on the nation's founding, the need for a strong central government, confronting 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. Sylla and Cowen center Hamilton's writings on finance among his most important accomplishments, making his brilliance as an economic policy maker accessible to all interested in this Founding Father's legacy.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter one To - (December 1779-March 1780) The necessity of a foreign loan is now greater than ever. -- Chapter two To James Duane (September 3, 1780) My ideas of the defects of our present system. -- Chapter three To Robert Morris (April 30, 1781) Banks . . . the happiest engines that ever were invented for advancing trade. -- Chapter four The Continentalist (1781-1782) There is something noble and magnificent . . . a great Federal Republic. -- chapter five Constitution of the Bank of New York (February 23-March 15, 1784) The Bank shall be called . . . the Bank of New York. -- chapter six To Thomas Willing (September 13, 1789) My inviolable attachment to the principles which form the basis of public credit. -- chapter seven Report Relative to a Provision for the Support of Public Credit (January 9, 1790) The debt of the United States . . . was the price of liberty. -- Chapter eight To Wilhem and Jan Willink, Nicholaas and Jacob Van Staphorst, and Nicholas Hubbard (August 28, 1790) The faith of our Government is fully pledged by the laws. -- Chapter nine First Report on the Further Provision Necessary for Establishing Public Credit (December 13, 1790) Most immediately essential . . . is the establishment of funds for paying the interest. -- Chapter ten Second Report on the Further Provision Necessary for Establishing Public Credit (Report on a National Bank, December 14, 1790) A National Bank is an institution of primary importance. -- Chapter eleven Report on the Establishment of a Mint (January 28, 1791) The unit in the coins of the United States . . . a dollar in the money of account. -- Chapter twelve Opinion on the Constitutionality of an Act to Establish a National Bank (February 23, 1791) Every power vested in a Government is in its nature sovereign. -- Chapter thirteen Prospectus of the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures (August 1791) The establishment of Manufactures [is] of the highest importance. -- Chapter fourteen Report on the Subject of Manufactures (December 5, 1791) The expediency of encouraging manufactures [is] pretty generally admitted. -- Chapter fifteen To William Seton (February 10 and March 22, 1792) The superstructure of Credit is now too vast for the foundation. -- Chapter seventeen The Defense of the Funding System (July 1795) Credit may be called a new power in the mechanism of national affairs. -- Chapter eighteen Articles of Association of the Merchants Bank (April 7, 1803) We, the Subscribers, have formed a Company . . . the "Merchants' Bank." -- Conclusion Legacies of the U.S. financial revolution. -- Notes -- Index