invariably result in private investors reaping the profits while the public bears the costs and liabilities.
We have relied for too long on private, often global, capital, while the Chinese run circles around us building infrastructure with credit simply created on the books of their government-owned banks.
Earlier publicly-owned U.S. national banks and U.S. Treasuries pulled off similar feats, using what Sen. Henry Clay, U.S. statesman from 1806 to 1852, named the
"American System" - funding national production simply with "sovereign" money and credit.They included the First (1791-1811) and Second (1816-1836) Banks of the United States, President Lincoln's federal treasury and banking system, and President Franklin Roosevelt's Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) (1932-1957). Chester Morrill, former Secretary of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, wrote of the RFC: