New Economic History Book Reveals Hidden Struggle Behind the Industrial Revolution Nationalist Statesmen Battle Wall Street and Southern Slaveholders in Fight to Create Canals, Railroads, and Modern Society November 20, 2020–What motivated the key people who created the industrial revolution? In this ground-breaking new book on economic history, author Anton […]
A Review of Thomas Frank’s The People, NO! A Brief History of Anti-Populism By Nancy Spannaus Nov. 7, 2020—As the current brawl over the presidential election results should make clear, the people of the United States are dangerously divided, almost split down the middle. In my view, the question before […]
by Edward Spannaus John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court, a film written by Richard Brookhiser and Leo Eaton, and directed by Leo Eaton. Eaton Creative, Inc., 2020. Running time: 2 hours, 26 minutes. Available on Amazon Prime. Richard Brookhiser, John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme […]
By Nancy Spannaus Sept. 14, 2020—As I am preparing for a class series on my book Hamilton Versus Wall Street, as well as a presentation at the Treasury Historical Association on Sept. 23, I have been struck once again with the importance of Mathew Carey in carrying forward the Hamiltonian […]
Sept. 2, 2020—My reaction to watching most of the Democratic and Republican conventions can be summed up in one phrase: Wall Street is the winner. Neither party has taken on the reality of the economic and social collapse which the predatory Wall Street financial system has wrought, nor has it […]
Increasing Productivity, Expanding Farm Output, Eliminating Poverty By Stuart Rosenblatt July 5, 2020–As the nation confronts the expanding COVID-19 crisis and the collateral economic damage caused by the pandemic—the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression—a consensus is emerging that any recovery effort include a commitment to employ millions […]
by Nancy Spannaus July 3, 2020—On the occasion of this Fourth of July, which is bound to be fraught with virulent attacks on the Declaration of Independence, I was tempted to simply repeat Abraham Lincoln’s stirring refutation (which I featured last year). But there was a deeper philosophical point to […]
The Growth and Collapse of One American Nation, The Early Republic 1790-1861 By Donald J. Fraser Fraser & Associates, Roseville, California, 2020, 605 pp. A Book Review by Nancy Spannaus June 21, 2020—In examining the question of what defines an American identity, author Donald Fraser has chosen one of […]
By Nancy Spannaus June 4, 2020—Tomorrow will be the anniversary of the June 5, 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the third in a series of murders which decapitated the most promising political leadership of the United States. One by one, they fell: President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, […]
By Nancy Spannaus April 5, 2021—I was very happy to see the recent article by Oren Cass of the American Compass, entitled “We’re Just Speculating Here…, The Rise of Wall Street and the Fall of American Investment.” In a lengthy footnoted piece, replete with informative graphics, Cass documents the ways […]
By Nancy Spannaus March 22, 2021—Over the last two days, two prominent advocates for Alexander Hamilton have come forward to defend Hamilton’s legacy as a visionary statesman, including against the charges that he was an “enslaver.” These important initiatives came from Douglas Hamilton, Hamilton’s fifth-great-grandson, who directly took on the […]
The Emergency Jobs Program of 1933-34
By Nancy Spannaus Nov. 21, 2020—When FDR’s relief expert Harry Hopkins told FDR about the looming emergency for tens of millions of Americans in the winter of 1933-34, FDR authorized action. If nothing were done, Hopkins had said, people would starve en masse. Immediate action was needed, because, as he […]