fiat money

Alexander Hamilton was America’s first Secretary of Treasury under President George Washington. When he first entered office in 1789, America was an agricultural nation of just 4 million still broke from its financially costly victory over the British Empire in the Revolutionary War. The states had accumulated relatively massive debts to finance that war, which …

Baron Rothschild, the famous French financier, was once heard to say that he knew of only two men who really understood money — an obscure clerk in the Bank of France and one of the directors of the Bank of England. “Unfortunately,” he added, “they disagree.”