Talk:First Report on the Public Credit

Edits needed
The article needs to differentiate between the First and Second reports on public credit and some of the other of Hamilton's reports. It is the second report that talks about the National Bank (afaik). Perhaps the article title should be Report on Public Credit with sections for each report (or maybe there is a better name that covers the whole Hamiltonian economic plan). I don't have all my ducks in a row to make referenced changes now, but I shall try. -- Mufka (user) (talk) (contribs) 16:29, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The First Report and Second Report deal with the financial structure of America. The Report on Manufactures dealt with economic framework for America -Hamilton and Washington by his endorsement agreed to implement if they could. I think an seperate article on each report is best, there is already one on the Manufactures and here on Public Credit I. The article American School covers the Hamiltonian system extensively from its proposal to the fights to get it enacted finally triumphing in the Lincoln administration becoming the United States economic policy until 1970's under Nixon and the emergence of the free market/trade movement with its resulting deregulation and free trade agreements. Let me know what you are thinking here and I will work with you and may have the references you need as my library is extensive. Thanks. --Northmeister 00:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the idea that each paper should have a separate article. Also, I think (and recommend) that any article on a paper such as this should lead with a link to the actual text. This way any question that arises from the article can be directly corroborated and/or researched by the reader prior to posting into talk or editing. Sorry if I missed it, but do not see a link to the actual report (Hamilton's text). I do see a jpg file with a picture of "the document" ... however am only able to see a single page. Was the report that short (may be)? If so, I recommend some comment to this effect (i.e., " ... actual document [right] is only a single page"). Without this, the reader is left in doubt and will opt for another resource. Thanks! --MistoryQuest (talk) 20:10, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Controversy
This article seems to be missing some of the counter-arguments to assuming the debt; wasn't at least one argument that the plan represented a windfall to the financial speculators who had bought up many Revolutionary bonds at a tiny fraction of the original face value? --Gwern (contribs) 20:44 16 August 2011 (GMT)

Rewrite
I'm rewriting the article in response to earlier requests for clarification (see above).

The existing material revealed some misapprehensions about Hamilton's proposals in the Report and the debates they provoked, according to my sources - Ellis, Staloff, Malone, Brock, and others.

"Funding", "Redemption", "Assumption", "Discrimination" were conflated in some cases by earlier editors - not surprising, because some secondary sources are difficult to understand.

As an example, "Redemption" is a key facet in the larger "Funding" issue, not a separate matter. 36hourblock (talk) 18:31, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Bankruptcy of the Continental Congress
In the second section "Government debt under the Articles of Confederation" is the following: "To avoid bankruptcy, the Continental Congress eliminated $195 million of its $200 million debt by fiat." this statement is referenced, but I have no access to the original source so I have no way to view the context and understand the meaning of the original source. But it seems to me that 'bankruptcy' is not a concept that could have applied at the time. Bankruptcy is a legal status that applies to persons (persons or firms in the US—persons only in the UK, for example) that allows an entity some protection from creditors. It is not clear that there was any authority that could have provided such protection, nor that any such protection was needed. Having no access to the original, and no understanding of the intent of the author, I have no way to "fix" this, but I'm fairly sure that the Congress did not act in order to avoid bankruptcy, it simply defaulted (cancelled) its IOU. Baon (talk) 21:01, 3 December 2017 (UTC)