Hamilton's Curse

Court historians have long praised the glories of Alexander Hamilton as the greatest of the founding fathers. This view is back in vogue as U.S. economic policy becomes ever more statist.

In this work, Professor Thomas DiLorenzo provides the other view. He shows that Hamilton is the architect of most of today’s failed economic policies: protectionism, central banking, and debt. His core principle is that government should be used to benefit the rich and privileged, mostly through its power to print money and run financial scams. In this sense, Hamiliton’s Curse has been visited upon the United States in the 2008 bailout of powerful investment banks.

Hamilton was the master of the political lie. He used his rhetorical powers and elite connections to invent the myth of the Constitution’s “implied powers.” He established the imperial presidency. He devised a national banking system that imposes boom-and-bust cycles on the American economy. He saddled Americans with a massive national debt and oppressive taxation. He pushed economic policies that lined the pockets of the wealthy and created a government system built on graft, spoils, and patronage. He transformed state governments from Jeffersonian bulwarks of liberty to beggars for federal crumbs.

Moreover, DiLorenzo shows that Hamilton, as compared with Jefferson, was an economic ignoramus. Whereas Jefferson was schooled in a classical liberal tradition and revered the legacy of A.R.J. Turgot, Hamilton was an old-fashioned mercantilist who thought that barriers and debt were the keys to prosperity.

By debunking the Hamiltonian myths perpetuated in recent admiring biographies, DiLorenzo exposes an uncomfortable truth: The American people are no longer the masters of their government but its servants. Only by restoring a system based on Jeffersonian ideals can Hamilton’s curse be lifted, at last.