Saturday, November 16, 2019

What was Alexander Hamilton's position on the National Bank?

It was Alexander Hamilton who first came up with the idea of a national bank. He was the First Bank of the United States's intellectual architect as well as its most redoubtable political champion. Hamilton was a visionary, recognizing that the United States needed a central bank to meet the huge economic challenges it faced. After the Revolutionary War, the American economy was in serious trouble. To get on its feet the new nation needed a central institution that could pay backs its huge debts, loan money to business and industry, and establish a national currency. Only a federal bank could carry out such strategically important tasks.
Opponents of a federal banking system believed that it violated the sovereignty of the states, especially in relation to their own banks. They were also hostile to Hamilton's general economic vision which they thought invested way too much power in banking and commercial elites and their political representatives at the expense of agriculture and small business. Nevertheless, the establishment of the First Bank of the United States went ahead, founded on December 12, 1791 in Philadelphia. This was undoubtedly the greatest single achievement in Hamilton's brief but illustrious career.
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2007/the-bank-that-hamilton-built

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