A Free Nation Deep in Debt

A Free Nation Deep in Debt PDF Author: James MacDonald
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691126326
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
For the greater part of recorded history the most successful and powerful states were autocracies; yet now the world is increasingly dominated by democracies. In A Free Nation Deep in Debt, James Macdonald provides a novel answer for how and why this political transformation occurred. The pressures of war finance led ancient states to store up treasure; and treasure accumulation invariably favored autocratic states. But when the art of public borrowing was developed by the city-states of medieval Italy as a democratic alternative to the treasure chest, the balance of power tipped. From that point on, the pressures of war favored states with the greatest public creditworthiness; and the most creditworthy states were invariably those in which the people who provided the money also controlled the government. Democracy had found a secret weapon and the era of the citizen creditor was born. Macdonald unfolds this tale in a sweeping history that starts in biblical times, passes via medieval Italy to the wars and revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and ends with the great bond drives that financed the two world wars.

A Free Nation Deep in Debt

A Free Nation Deep in Debt PDF Author: James MacDonald
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691126326
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 580

Get Book Here

Book Description
For the greater part of recorded history the most successful and powerful states were autocracies; yet now the world is increasingly dominated by democracies. In A Free Nation Deep in Debt, James Macdonald provides a novel answer for how and why this political transformation occurred. The pressures of war finance led ancient states to store up treasure; and treasure accumulation invariably favored autocratic states. But when the art of public borrowing was developed by the city-states of medieval Italy as a democratic alternative to the treasure chest, the balance of power tipped. From that point on, the pressures of war favored states with the greatest public creditworthiness; and the most creditworthy states were invariably those in which the people who provided the money also controlled the government. Democracy had found a secret weapon and the era of the citizen creditor was born. Macdonald unfolds this tale in a sweeping history that starts in biblical times, passes via medieval Italy to the wars and revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and ends with the great bond drives that financed the two world wars.

State and Market in Victorian Britain

State and Market in Victorian Britain PDF Author: Martin J. Daunton
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 9781843833833
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Traces the effects and consequences of radical economic change, moral, social, and fiscal, in the Victorian period.

The Rise of Fiscal States

The Rise of Fiscal States PDF Author: Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107013518
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
Leading economic historians present a groundbreaking series of country case studies exploring the formation of fiscal states in Eurasia.

Disorder

Disorder PDF Author: Helen Thompson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192634216
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Getting to grips with the overlapping geopolitical, economic, and political crises faced by Western democratic societies in the 2020s. The 21st century has brought a powerful tide of geopolitical, economic, and democratic shocks. Their fallout has led central banks to create over $25 trillion of new money, brought about a new age of geopolitical competition, destabilised the Middle East, ruptured the European Union, and exposed old political fault lines in the United States. Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century is a long history of this present political moment. It recounts three histories - one about geopolitics, one about the world economy, and one about western democracies - and explains how in the years of political disorder prior to the pandemic the disruption in each became one big story. It shows how much of this turbulence originated in problems generated by fossil-fuel energies, and it explains why as the green transition takes place the long-standing predicaments energy invariably shapes will remain in place.

One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe

One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe PDF Author: Robert E. Wright
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071543945
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Like its current citizens, the United States was born in debt-a debt so deep that it threatened to destroy the young nation. Thomas Jefferson considered the national debt a monstrous fraud on posterity, while Alexander Hamilton believed debt would help America prosper. Both, as it turns out, were right. One Nation Under Debt explores the untold history of America's first national debt, which arose from the immense sums needed to conduct the American Revolution. Noted economic historian Robert Wright, Ph.D. tells in riveting narrative how a subjugated but enlightened people cast off a great tyrant-“but their liberty, won with promises as well as with the blood of patriots, came at a high price.” He brings to life the key events that shaped the U.S. financial system and explains how the actions of our forefathers laid the groundwork for the debt we still carry today. As an economically tenuous nation by Revolution's end, America's people struggled to get on their feet. Wright outlines how the formation of a new government originally reduced the nation's debt-but, as debt was critical to this government's survival, it resurfaced, to be beaten back once more. Wright then reveals how political leaders began accumulating massive new debts to ensure their popularity, setting the financial stage for decades to come. Wright traces critical evolutionary developments-from Alexander Hamilton's creation of the nation's first modern capital market, to the use of national bonds to further financial goals, to the drafting of state constitutions that created non-predatory governments. He shows how, by the end of Andrew Jackson's administration, America's financial system was contributing to national growth while at the same time new national and state debts were amassing, sealing the fate for future generations.

Capitalizing China

Capitalizing China PDF Author: Joseph P. H. Fan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226237249
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
La 4e de couverture indique : "Despite a vast accumulation of private capital, China is not embracing capitalism. Deceptively familiar capitalist features disguise the profoundly unfamiliar foundations of "market socialism with Chinese characteristics." The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), by controlling the career advancement of all senior personnel in all regulatory agencies, all state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and virtually all major financial institutions state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and senior Party positions in all but the smallest non-SOE enterprises, retains sole possession of Lenin's Commanding Heights. The chapters in this volume examine China's high savings rate, banking system, financial markets, financial regulations, corporate governance, and public finances; and consider policy alternatives the CCP might consider if its goal is China's elevation into the ranks of high income countries."

The US National Debt, 1787-1900 Vol 1

The US National Debt, 1787-1900 Vol 1 PDF Author: Robert E Wright
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040242278
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This volume assembles a broad selection of rare primary resource materials in the form of essays, reports, books and compendia informing on US public finances in the late eighteenth century. It investigates the debates put forward, from which comparisons with today's debt can be drawn.

The Culture of Immodesty in American Life and Politics

The Culture of Immodesty in American Life and Politics PDF Author: M. Federici
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137093412
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
By identifying and illustrating aspects of American culture that are out of sync with the modest republicanism that gave rise to the United States in the late eighteenth century, the contributors to this volume expose the vulgarity and excess of American culture.

Are South Africans Free?

Are South Africans Free? PDF Author: Lawrence Hamilton
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 147252179X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Despite South Africa's successful transition to democracy and lauded constitution, political freedom for the majority of South Africans remains elusive. The poor and unemployed majority are poorly represented and lack power and thus freedom. Under these conditions, the freedom of the privileged minority is also seriously impaired due to the costs of maintaining their relative security and well-being. Lawrence Hamilton is an internationally-known political theorist, who has spent ten years teaching in South African universities. In this unique book he brings ideas - political and philosophical - to the fore to understand a contemporary political conundrum. He outlines the persistent, unresolved problems characterizing contemporary South Africa: poverty and quality of life statistics that are appalling for a middle-income country, levels of inequality that make South Africa one of the most unequal places in the world, skewed economic and political representation that reproduces elites rather than generating opportunities for all and an electoral system that implements the idea of proportional representation so literally that it undermines meaningful representation. Are South Africans Free? aims not only to explain the current state of South Africa but to provide positive new directions and suggestions for institutional change. Hamilton argues that freedom as power in South Africa does not depend on good will, charity or duty, and it goes beyond the complete realization of the political and civil liberties currently safeguarded in its constitution. Such change will depend on courageous leadership, active citizenship, new forms of representation and a macroeconomic policy that offers radical redistribution of actual and potential wealth.

The Debt Age

The Debt Age PDF Author: Jeffrey Di Leo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351356429
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This collection of essays, by some of the most distinguished public intellectuals and cultural critics in America explores various dimensions of what it means to live in the age of debt. They ask, what is the debt age? For that matter, what is debt? Is its meaning transhistorical or transcultural? Or is it imbued in ideology and thus historically contingent? What is the relationship between debt and theory? Whose debt is acknowledged and whose is ignored? Who is the paradigmatic subject of debt? How has debt affected contemporary academic culture? Their responses to these and other aspects of debt are sure to become required reading for anyone who wants to understand what it means to live in the debt age.