One Nation Under Debt

By Alan Gray, NewsBlaze

I never knew that the young United States was so deep in debt that it threatened to destroy the nation in its first year.

In One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson and the History of What We Owe, Robert E. Wright, PhD, the historian and curator for the Museum of American Finance., opens our eyes to the political and economic battle behind early America's first national debt and its continued legacy today.

Thomas Jefferson considered the national debt a monstrous fraud on posterity, while Alexander Hamilton called it a national blessing that would cement the young nation together and help it to prosper. Both, as it turns out, were right. Thankfully these policymakers found a way out of the morass. Their solution turned out to be temporary. The country's founding generations, from the administrations of George Washington to those of Andrew Jackson, never found a way to reconcile Jeffersonian's heart with its Hamiltonian mind.

Wright gives detailed information on how the financial problem began, why it continued and where it is today. The book's chapters are artfully named Parentage, Conception, Gestation, Birth, Youth and Maturity, Blessings, and Death and Reincarnation.

Parentage describes the long-term development of national debts, with emphasis on precedents in Holland and Great Britain, the first two nations to create non-predatory governments and to develop modern financial systems.

Conception details how financial practices of colonial British North America influenced the financing strategies employed by the Patriot side during the initial phases of the American Revolution. It also explains how statesman, Robert Morris, held the nation's finances together with luck, foreign loans, a commercial bank and his own credit.

Gestation describes the relationship between the U.S. Constitution and the national debt.

Birth illustrates the politics and economics put in place by Alexander Hamilton during the administrations of George Washington.

Youth and Maturity both characterize the early U.S. capital market through in-depth descriptions of the ways in which individuals and companies used national bonds to further their financial goals.

Blessings strengthen Hamilton's vision of the national debt as an instrument of economic growth and political stability.

Death and Reincarnation, the final chapter, explains how Andrew Jackson leveraged America's economic expansion and growth to achieve one of his major policy goals, the complete repayment of the national debt, which offers lessons that can help in handling America's current and future arrears.

Lovers of American history, economics, politics and biography discover in One Nation Under Debt, an inviting narrative that reveals how a debt helped shape today's economy.

Robert E. Wright, Ph.D., is a clinical associate professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business. A prolific author and engaging speaker, Professor Wright is a curator for the Museum of American Finance, series editor of Pickering & Chatto's financial history monograph series and a consultant for the Winthrop Group, a history-based management consultancy.

ONE NATION UNDER DEBT: Hamilton, Jefferson and the History of What We Owe
McGraw-Hill
By Robert E. Wright, Ph.D.
March 2008
Hardcover ISBN: 10:0071543937
www.books.mcgraw-hill.com

judythpiazza@newsblaze.com