Bob Ingraham shows how Hamilton turned Revolutionary War debt into public credit — and why Bessent's growth fight with the IMF is the same war over who decides America's economic destiny.
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Bob Ingraham shows how Hamilton turned Revolutionary War debt into public credit — and why Bessent's growth fight with the IMF is the same war over who decides America's economic destiny.
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In this week's Saturday Class, Bob Ingraham, with host Tony Papert, took on the question everyone keeps asking: what do we do about the debt?
Think Like Hamilton, Not An Ivy League Trained Accountant.
The battle lines were drawn at the IMF's annual meeting in Bangkok. Director Kristalina Georgieva issued what Bob called an ultimatum.
Growth will not solve debt and deficit problems.
— Kristalina Georgieva
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent skipped the meeting. Bob could not recall the last time a Treasury Secretary missed it in person. Instead, Bessent put out a one-line answer.
Economic growth is the key condition on which durable prosperity depends.
— Scott Bessent
Those two statements are a world apart. Behind them sits the question of national sovereignty.
Who decides what we do with our own economy? Is it the sovereign United States government? Or is it a supranational body serving central banks and a private financial empire?
Since 1971, we have let the IMF and its allies decide. Trump and Bessent are saying, "No more."
On January 14, 1790, Hamilton submitted his Report on Public Credit. The constitutional republic was only months old. And it was bankrupt.
The total debt ran somewhere between $78 and $85 million, mostly from the Revolutionary War. The country had only about 3.5 million people. Bob estimates about a million free adults at most. A loaf of bread cost half a penny. So $78 million was a crushing load.
Hamilton first consolidated the debt. The federal government assumed the debts of the states. Many Americans still thought of themselves as Virginians or New Yorkers first. Assumption changed that. The nation's creditworthiness became every citizen's interest.
The foreign debt came first. A default would have branded America an outlaw nation. Britain held the north and still kept forts on the Great Lakes. Spain held the south. European colonies ringed the Caribbean.
So Hamilton did something counterintuitive. He borrowed $14 million more, primarily from Dutch bankers. That bought time to stabilize the situation and start payments.
Then came the funding plan:
It worked spectacularly. By the mid-1790s, the dollar was one of the soundest currencies in the world.
But isn't that just the IMF playbook? Not at all.
This was a life or death crisis.
— Bob Ingraham
Hamilton was saving the nation, not serving its creditors.
In the Report on Public Credit, Hamilton declared the debt "redeemable at the pleasure of the government."
...when a government contracts a debt with interest, without any precise time being stipulated or understood for payment of the capital, that time is a matter of pure discretion with the government, which is at liberty to consult its own convenience respecting it.
— Alexander Hamilton, Report on Public Credit
Then came his stroke of genius. A portion of the public debt would be placed on deposit in the National Bank. Backed by the full faith of the United States, that debt became a bank asset. On that basis, the bank could issue new notes and extend credit for shipbuilding, farming and manufacturing.
What he is doing is he's turning the debt into an asset, where the debt acquires a power to generate new loans by the National Bank for productive investment.
— Bob Ingraham
This was no Bank of England. Those European banks were monetary institutions, just like the Federal Reserve today. Hamilton's National Bank was a commercial bank that made loans into the productive economy.
Hamilton never treated the nation's finances like a household budget. Everything he did aimed at unleashing the productive economy.
We will honor the debt, but we will do so at our own convenience and on our own terms.
— Bob Ingraham
The nation-building came fast: federal lighthouses, the first patent law, the Merchant Marine and Coast Guard, and a national manufactory in Paterson, New Jersey. Jefferson and Madison fought every step. Washington backed Hamilton every time.
That is the same fight we are in today.
The full class has much more. Bob shows why the lighthouse takeover rested on the necessary and proper clause, demolishes the myth of Washington as a neutral referee, and contrasts Hamilton leading the bayonet charge at Redoubt 10 with Jefferson fleeing Benedict Arnold's army on horseback.
Watch the full class on YouTube, then send it to someone who thinks the only answer to the debt is austerity.
—Promethean Action Editorial Staff
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