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Description of  The Panic of 1792: The History and Legacy of Americas First Financial Crisis [Audiobook]

B08TM2T5VJ MP3@64 kbps During the Revolution, relatively little consideration had been given to the role of the federal government in the new nation, and the precise role and authority of an overarching entity with responsibility for all states within the union was a major problem. Having fought against and defeated a distant government that imposed seemingly arbitrary rules on the colonies, many people were suspicious about the role of the federal government. The only federal institution during the war was the Continental Congress, which had little real power and was unable to levy taxes from individual states. When the Constitution was drafted in 1787 and George Washington became the first president six years after the end of the Revolutionary War, he immediately began the task of creating the new federal administration. Very few banks, the mechanisms driving the financial system in most other countries, existed in the new country. In 1781, the year in which an American victory against Britain first seemed possible, not a single bank existed in any state. The very first bank was awarded a charter in Philadelphia in 1782, while the second would not be created until after the end of the war in 1784 in New York. Even still, banks were generally awarded charters by individual states, not by Congress, so America had nothing to equate to the treasuries governing the finances of most established nations. It was clear that the "hands-off" policy Congress initially tried to implement simply would not work in terms of the new nation's finances. Some means had to be found to limit imports, encourage exports, deal with the country's massive debt, and establish a national bank and sound fiscal policies that would apply to every part of the new union, not just to individual states. Much of that would fall on Alexander Hamilton and Robert Morris, who helped create the financial institutions that would become the heart of the United States' economy, but the story would also be incomplete without a former Continental Congressman named William Duer, who almost destroyed these same institutions through the Panic of 1792. The Panic of 1792: The History and Legacy of America's First Financial Crisis examines the origins of America's financial system, and how it was disastrously affected so shortly after the Constitution was ratified.