George Hall on the History of the U.S. National Debt and Government Financing
Macro Musings with David Beckworth
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The Legacy of Alexander Hamilton
Many people appeal to the lessons of the Revolutionary War and Alexander Hamilton when thinking about these issues going forward. So you think about you want to start a revolution, you don't have a tax base. And so what are you left with, you're left with debt and money. What Hamilton does is he he engineers a restructuring of the debt and gets us out of this debt crisis. He says I'm only going to use this tax revenue to pay back bondholders but then turns around and defaults on them.
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