Alexander Hamilton

This is an excellent biography on Alexander Hamilton, a formidable and sometimes controversial figure among our Founding Fathers. He is best known for being one of the main contributors to the Federalist Papers and being the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States.
There is a lot to like and be in awe about Alexander Hamilton. There is also quite a bit to dislike. Was he a visionary and a genius? Or a power hungry and greedy autocratic figure reminiscent of the British the U.S. fought away at the time. Through the past decades his place in history has gone through several reincarnations of both positive and negative revisionism.
Ron Chernow is undoubtedly on the sides of the Hamilton fan. However, even though his portrayal of Hamilton may not be totally objective. It is nevertheless fascinating due to its breadth, and depth. Hamilton comes across as a brilliant individual sometimes centuries ahead of his time. Chernow develops a convincing case that Hamilton was without peers in his developing the necessary financial and economic infrastructure of what was going to become the modern U.S.

If Adam Smith was the Scottish genius who invented modern economics, Hamilton was his American counterpart who actually applied modern economics principles in the governing of a new nation. His understanding in such matters far surpassed his more famous political opponents such as Madison and Jefferson.

Chernow mentions several examples of Hamilton's unique foresight. One was Hamilton's successful defeat of the discrimination bill. This was a nonsensical concept that proposed that capital gains on sales of treasury securities should flow back to the original investor. Hamilton quickly saw that such a concept was operationally unworkable and would prevent the development of a liquid market in tradable government securities. It would affect the U.S. ability to issue new bonds and finance both government operations and other upcoming wars. He made his case convincingly and the discrimination bill was defeated 36 to 13. Another bold move by Hamilton was to enforce the assumptions of all States' debt by the Federal Government. Thus, the fragmented portfolio of U.S. debt formerly backed by the weak credit of each specific State was now fully backed by the U.S. This reassured foreign investors, and allowed the Treasury to refinance some of the bonds with much longer terms and at lower interest rates. This prevented the U.S. to become bankrupt under the mountain of debt it had amassed as a result of its wars to fight for its independence.
After reading this book, you will feel that we would be only so lucky as to have a Secretary of the Treasury of Alexander Hamilton's caliber and genius. He loved to tackle challenging, abstract financial problems that few others could conceive. He would have been a heck of a mind to apply towards resolving our potential fiscal crisis associated with the retirement of the Baby Boomers.