Some thoughts on an evolving theory of history and sovereignty. 1) Human existence depends on the right amount of water. Ideally, not too much would fall from the skies, and not too little -- humans prefer the temperate condition between drowning and desertification. 2) Even in temperate zones, though, the right amount of rain, water from God's hand, cannot be relied upon - so aqueducts, irrigation, dams, water storage, and other risk management exercises regarding water become a necessary force. There develops an authority for this situation, large and powerful enough to maintain wide horizons both geographical and chronological. 3) We may for convenience call this water management institution The State or sovereign and we may for simple pragmatic reasons consider it a legitimate institution, though taxes (gasp!) and some degree of central planning are necessary. 4) Here we start developing the metaphor. In the commercial world, the ease or difficulty of turning...
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The "green new deal" is a cliche. Now we hear of a national green bank. As if Alexander Hamilton had hooked up with Rachel Carson. The Biden administration's long talk of a "national green bank" came into focus last week with the announcement that the administration is providing $27 billion in climate finance funds to coalitions of nonprofit lenders. The funding comes out of funds already appropriated by last year's Inflation Reduction Act. Formally, the "bank" is known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The hope is that the GGRF will evolve into something like a true bank, borrowing from private capital on the one hand what it lends out to private enterprises on the other, and making enough back from its debtors to pay its creditors. The hope, furthermore, is that this will truly be a NATIONAL bank in a Hamiltonian sense, the center of a network of private banks that will end up financing everything from community solar projects to EV chargi...
A year ago, I saw the following question on Quora. "Why did Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a musical about Alexander Hamilton? Was he popular at the time of the Revolution or during his presidency?" I am going back to that old post now, chiefly because it helps me illustrate what a big-hearted soul I am. I wrote a reply to that question (or, strictly, those questions) that barely even mentioned the fact that, no, Hamilton never had a "presidency". Instead, since I am a big-hearted soul, I gave that gaffe a pass and focused on what makes Hamilton a gripping musical. For the record, though, the display of ignorance there tears me up inside. I have to imagine this is a fairly young person betrayed by a disastrously bad education system, one that obviously has not conveyed the basics of the life of one of our founders. On a slightly related point: I overheard a conversation not too long ago in which the guy on his cell phone in a restaurant near me was talkin...
From the National Archives, here's a letter by Th omas Jefferson discussing monetary policy. This is an explicit explanation of his views on the economic merits of the question, not simply the constitutional question of whether the federal government can charter a national bank (an argument with which I presume the readership of this blog is familiar). Jefferson is an "elder statesman" when he writes this letter, in November 1813. He hasn't been President for more than four years. Further, the original "Bank of the United States," the one that Hamilton created over Jefferson's strident objections, is no longer in operation. Its charter had expired and gone unrenewed during Madison's first term. BUT ... it was proving difficult to finance the ongoing war without a central bank, and this caused some soul-searching within the Republican-Democratic Party, by now the only national political party left. Hence the discussion. Eventually the party w...
The United States came into existence through the success of the rebels in a war in which they -- the aforesaid rebels -- fought with the aid of inflated money ("not worth a continental") and potentially destabilizing debt. The political compact we know as the U.S. Constitution came about largely because of that fiscal and monetary crisis. It came about because of the vision and energy of Alexander Hamilton, who brought Madison and Jay into the fold so together they could write magnificent advocacy known as The Federalist , and who was then charged by the first President with the gigantic task of getting the new Treasury underway. Today, many of the nations of Europe are heavily in debt. They have sought a higher degree of unity in part as a reaction to that indebtedness, and thus new unity includes a single currency, a European Central Bank., and closer cooperation among the finance ministers of the nations that share this currency. This...