I actually almost began to see what you were talking about in this article, and that is also because we are discussing American History with my children this year, and are just up to the War of Independence.

What a blessing it would be, to have a simple, illustrated text, with some Scripture references and history of anti-usury sentiment on the part of Europe/Christendom’s peoples, to have as an ancillary text.

Sincerely,

Sempronius,
Touche’ !! No “authority” goes unpunished around here. Pace to all English (and Sicilian) lovers and a plague on the house of experts!!!

“On becoming the first secretary of the treasury in 1789,Alexander Hamilton presented Congress with a bold economic program.To secure the creditworthiness of the new U.S. government,he called for redeeming at full face value not only U.S. wartime debts and certificates but the debt instruments of the various states.Many of the latter had been bought up by speculators at very low prices.” -Wealth and Democracy,Kevin Phillips (Broadway Books,New York,2002)p.16

“‘Assumption and funding,’as Hamilton’s debt redemption provisions were called,provided the nation’s first cornucopia for financial speculators.From New Hampshire to South Carolina,cliques of wealthy Federalist supporters and officeholders,using traveling agents,had bought as many of the federal and state debt instruments as possible at cut-rate prices.Massachusetts seems to have had the largest bloc of holders,original and speculative,many from among the privateering,supply,and Continental loan elites…Lesser profiteers prowled through the backcountry,buying up old,unpaid certificates from veterans,widows,and storekeepers.A group of New York investors,given early information on Hamilton’s plans in mid-1789 by his deputy,William Duer,collected for as little as ten cents on the dollar some $2.7 million worth of South Carolina,North Carolina,and Virginia state Revolutionary debt.This was about one-third of the three states’ total.” -Wealth and Democracy,Kevin Phillips (Broadway Books,New York,2002)p.16

“The government’s choice to pay for the refunding through new excise taxes,heaviest on the Appalachian backcountry-whiskey was one of western Pennsylvania’s biggest exports-added to the regional bitterness.In Congress,northerners from coastal and commercial districts lopsidedly supported both the bank,debt assumption,and tax provisions.James Madison failed with his compromise to redeem at less than face value paper held by speculative (rather than original) purchasers.Still,the whole arrangement was in doubt until Hamilton made a deal with Jefferson,who later admitted not understanding what was at stake.In return for assumption,the capital would be moved from New York…” -Wealth and Democracy,Kevin Phillips (Broadway Books,New York,2002) p.16

“Details are few on who eventually collected what.However,of the $1.2 million paid out in 1795 to redeem federal notes,for which tabulations have been made,almost two-fifths went to four New England states.Massachusetts alone received more than all the states south of the Potomac River.Of the overall $40-$60 million disbursed by the federal treasury under the debt assumption and funding program,about half is thought to have gone to speculators.To emphasize its enormity,$40 million would have been almost 15% of the estimated U.S. gross domestic product of 1790!” -Wealth and Democracy,Kevin Phillips (Broadway Books,New York,2002)pp.16-17

You never hear patriotic small government Republicans mention any of this now,do you?

Robert,you forgot to mention The Servile State.Shame on you.With due respect to CW,I believe Belloc made a possible case for tariffs somewhere in Economis for Helen.

Hamilton once said that a public debt is a blessing? Figures. I wonder if Keynes was perhaps influenced – concerning his obsession with budget deficits – by Hamilton?

Please write more on Jackson and the National Bank. Being of the paleo persuasion, I’ve always detested the Bank and praised Jackson. But you bring a new perspective.

I still think it’s best to get rid of any government entity when we have the chance, as we almost never have the chance. (Our “small government” Republicans always give us oppressive new departments: Ike imposed HEW, Nixon EPA, Reagan DVA and Bush DHS, the latter of which Obama now is using to demonize veterans and conservatives).

And what of Hayek’s argument in favor of private, competing money systems?

Finally, has anyone ever speculated whether the Confederacy would have fared better had it kept its currency stronger and found a way to thwart Yankee counterfeiting? It must have been discouraging for Southerners to see the Greenbacks, themselves inflated, flood into the South and push out the Southern money, which was even more inflated. Would sticking to gold coinage — no paper money — have worked?

Keynesianism didn’t work any better in the 1860s than in the 1970s or 2000s.

“Money is a mystery.”You may find Silvio Gesell’s The Natural Economic Order particularly useful in deciphering this subject.

I’ve tried reading Taylor of Caroline’s Tyranny Unmasked,but his prose style was a bit too much for me.Perhaps I’ll try again some day.

Your words:

“John Taylor, if he were here, could tell us, in his loquacious, humorous, colloquial veranda talk, that in arguing about surface issues put forward to disguise the depredations of the paper aristocracy, we are missing the point.”

The paper aristocracy is the American idiom of the European “Briefadel,” a title conferred by letter rather than by heritage, the latter being the “Uradel.” Our “Briefadel” have brought themselves into being progressively through fractional reserve banking, then fiat banking and now counterfeit banking, with all of the attendant schemes associated with it, including the stock market.