With a little luck and a big dose of political acumen, Hamilton had made federal "assumption" of state debts a reality. That was no mean feat, given that the taxpayers of the fiscally responsible states did not want to pay the debts of their profligate neighbor states. ![]() He funded the national debt and even engineered the "assumption" by the new federal government of all the various state debts accrued during the Revolutionary War and its aftermath. ![]() In that post, he directed a monumental undertaking to straighten out the nation's tangled finances. Several years earlier, in 1789, Hamilton had been appointed the first ever Secretary of the Treasury. In other words, if the Dow Jones Index then existed, the Bank alone would have comprised over half of it. Though a seeming pittance today, $10 million was a colossal sum for the day, dwarfing as it did the combined capital of all joint-stock companies then in operation in the country. Hamilton's proposed Bank was to be managed by private businessmen but to include a strong government investment of $2 million, or 20 percent, of the slated $10 million in capital. Not just any bank, but a Bank of the United States, with the right to open branches anywhere in a nation then serviced by only four relatively small and localized banks. What lay at risk was the centerpiece of Hamilton's financial system, a bank. Hamilton was at work on a document that would make or break America's nascent financial system. But for one unusual man, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, it was an extraordinary day, and a more extraordinary night. Cowenįebruary 22, 1791, was an ordinary day for the 42,000 or so citizens of Philadelphia, the largest city in the new nation and, for the time being, its capital. Wright and Cowen remind us of the key economic role of financial leadership from Hamilton to Jackson, and by extension to Volcker, Rubin, and Greenspan in our own time.”-Richard Sylla, coauthor of The Evolution of the American EconomyĪn excerpt from Financial Founding Fathers The Men Who Made America Rich Robert E. ![]() Here are the engaging stories of the early American statesmen and financiers who from the 1780s to the 1830s created, nurtured, and sometimes tested that financial system. “The United States is one of a handful of nations that for more than two centuries has enjoyed the blessings of a modern financial system and the economic growth it helped to create. “The early financial history of the United States merits additional popular and scholarly attention, and Wright…and Cowen…provide biographical information on nine founders of America's financial and economic systems, from Alexander Hamilton to Andrew Jackson and Nicholas Biddle.”- Library Journal
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