Video Lecture: The New State, 1787-c. 1791

*Now, this video lecture is from 2017 and looking back on it, I omitted too much about Hamilton’s rationales regarding the establishment of a centralized, national bank, especially the more nefarious ones. These included–in Hamilton’s own words the use of the bank as a funding mechanism (through the inflationary printing money–explicative tautology there) in “times of crises, particularly war”. I use this occasion to further introduce political economy to my students in classes, to which I get on every occasion slack jaws of shock and awe (pun intended here, unfortunately) as well as puzzled responses like: “I never knew the Bank or the Fed did that!”

Welcome to the reality of the warfare state. It would take Hamilton all of 5 whole years to find a testing ground for his war bank in Pennsylvania with the Whiskey Rebellion, 1794.