Saturday Class – How Hamilton Rescued the New Nation from Bankruptcy, and What it Means for Us Today – October 24, 2026

Every week, Promethean Action holds a Saturday Class — a deep dive into the ideas, history, and strategic thinking that the mainstream won’t touch.We’d love for you to join us live. Sign up here and we’ll send you class details every week.📚Get one of Bob’s books free. Bob Ingraham writes regularly on his Substack. Yearly and founding paid subscribers get one of his 12 books free, your choice.Think Like Hamilton, Not an AccountantIn 1790, Hamilton turned a bankrupt nation’s debt into the engine of its growth.Watch now on YouTube.In this week’s Saturday Class, Bob Ingraham, with host Tony Papert, took on the question everyone keeps asking: what do we do about the debt? Think Like Hamilton, Not An Ivy League Trained Accountant.Growth or Austerity?The battle lines were drawn at the IMF’s annual meeting in Bangkok. Director Kristalina Georgieva issued what Bob called an ultimatum.Growth will not solve debt and deficit problems.— Kristalina GeorgievaTreasury Secretary Scott Bessent skipped the meeting. Bob could not recall the last time a Treasury Secretary missed it in person. Instead, Bessent put out a one-line answer.Economic growth is the key condition on which durable prosperity depends.— Scott BessentThose two statements are a world apart. Behind them sits the question of national sovereignty.Who decides what we do with our own economy? Is it the sovereign United States government? Or is it a supranational body serving central banks and a private financial empire?Since 1971, we have let the IMF and its allies decide. Trump and Bessent are saying, “No more.”A Nation Born BankruptOn January 14, 1790, Hamilton submitted his Report on Public Credit. The constitutional republic was only months old. And it was bankrupt.The total debt ran somewhere between $78 and $85 million, mostly from the Revolutionary War. The country had only about 3.5 million people. Bob estimates about a million free adults at most. A loaf of bread cost half a penny. So $78 million was a crushing load.Hamilton first consolidated the debt. The federal government assumed the debts of the states. Many Americans still thought of themselves as Virginians or New Yorkers first. Assumption changed that. The nation’s creditworthiness became every citizen’s interest.Stop the BleedingThe foreign debt came first. A default would have branded America an outlaw nation. Britain held the north and still kept forts on the Great Lakes. Spain held the south. European colonies ringed the Caribbean.So Hamilton did something counterintuitive. He borrowed $14 million more, primarily from Dutch bankers. That bought time to stabilize the situation and start payments.Then came the funding plan:Excise taxes: 7 cents a gallon on ardent spirits, or 10 cents if foreign products were involved, plus smaller taxes on tobacco, refined sugar, coffee and tea.Tariffs: the 1790 tariff, then a 1791 tariff that more than doubled the rates.A national mint: a stable currency to end the chaos of state coinage.It worked spectacularly. By the mid-1790s, the dollar was one of the soundest currencies in the world.But isn’t that just the IMF playbook? Not at all.This was a life or death crisis.— Bob IngrahamHamilton was saving the nation, not serving its creditors.The Master StrokeIn the Report on Public Credit, Hamilton declared the debt “redeemable at the pleasure of the government.”…when a government contracts a debt with interest, without any precise time being stipulated or understood for payment of the capital, that time is a matter of pure discretion with the government, which is at liberty to consult its own convenience respecting it.— Alexander Hamilton, Report on Public CreditThen came his stroke of genius. A portion of the public debt would be placed on deposit in the National Bank. Backed by the full faith of the United States, that debt became a bank asset. On that basis, the bank could issue new notes and extend credit for shipbuilding, farming and manufacturing.What he is doing is he’s turning the debt into an asset, where the debt acquires a power to generate new loans by the National Bank for productive investment.— Bob IngrahamThis was no Bank of England. Those European banks were monetary institutions, just like the Federal Reserve today. Hamilton’s National Bank was a commercial bank that made loans into the productive economy.Our Terms, Our DestinyHamilton never treated the nation’s finances like a household budget. Everything he did aimed at unleashing the productive economy.We will honor the debt, but we will do so at our own convenience and on our own terms.— Bob IngrahamThe nation-building came fast: federal lighthouses, the first patent law, the Merchant Marine and Coast Guard, and a national manufactory in Paterson, New Jersey. Jefferson and Madison fought every step. Washington backed Hamilton every time.That is the same fight we are in today.Go DeeperBob Ingraham’s Substack. His current posts focus on Alexander Hamilton. ingrahamr.substack.comThe full class has much more. Bob shows why the lighthouse takeover rested on the necessary and proper clause, demolishes the myth of Washington as a neutral referee, and contrasts Hamilton leading the bayonet charge at Redoubt 10 with Jefferson fleeing Benedict Arnold’s army on horseback.Watch the full class on YouTube, then send it to someone who thinks the only answer to the debt is austerity.—Promethean Action Editorial Staff Authors Author, historian, political organizer. Published books on American history, Dante, the global drug trade, the Anglo-Dutch Empire and National Banking. Former Editor at Executive Intelligence Review. View articles Founding member of the LaRouche movement in the 1960s. Former editor of LaRouche’s writings and EIR magazine. Regular host of our Saturday class series. View articles