“You, madam?” asked Skye. “You have an interest in finance and economical matters?”

“I do,” I said, feeling myself redden. I was not quite ready to reveal myself to be a budding authoress.

It was fortunate that he spared me a request for further explication. “Then perhaps you have some thoughts upon the latest news, just arrived in a mule train from the East this very day?” His gray eyebrows raised in amusement, or perhaps anticipation. “I spent the afternoon reading through the newspapers, and I cannot credit what I have discovered.”

“Then tell us,” said Andrew.

He smiled, clearly pleased to be the one to relate it, yet I could see it troubled him too. “The new treasury minister, Alexander Hamilton, has appointed an immediate assistant, the second most powerful man at the Treasury. With the influence that department is gaining over George Washington and the federal government as a whole, it makes him well near one of the most powerful men in the entire country. Can you guess of whom I speak, for he is known to us all?”

Dalton snorted. “We have no idea, so out with it, man.”

Andrew smiled. “I have no idea, but look at Joan. I think she knows.”

I had opened my mouth, but I had not yet spoken. It seemed to me Skye had outlined, and I could not, at first, bring myself to say his name out loud. “No,” I managed at last. “Not William Duer?”

Skye nodded. “How ever did you guess it?”

“She didn’t guess it,” said Andrew. “She merely drew the only logical conclusion. I did not myself, but now I see how she did so. He is, after all, the only man known to us all, and he did speak of his close ties to Hamilton when we met him.”

Dalton actually snarled in disgust. “It makes me ill to think that a man like Duer, who has made his living by cozening patriots, should be rewarded with such power and influence.”

“He shall do well for himself,” said Skye. “It seems that his good friend Hamilton has convinced Congress to pay in full the states’ debts from the war. All our promissory notes that Duer got in exchange for land are now to be paid at full face value.”

“He knew!” I cried. “He and Hamilton must have plotted it out all along. They would trick patriots into surrendering their debt, and when they had enough they would get the American people, through their taxes, to pay off that debt, enriching themselves. It is the most monstrous abuse of power imaginable.”

“That is how things are done in England,” said Dalton, “but it is not how they are supposed to happen here.”

“No, but it is the way of things,” said Skye. “It hardly matters what principles are foremost in men’s minds. Those men are still men, and they will either be too idealistic to maintain power or too corruptible not to seize it.”

“You judge human nature too harshly,” said Andrew. “For what did we fight if this country is doomed to be no better than the one from which we won our independence?”

Dalton regarded him with the greatest seriousness. It seemed his orange whiskers stiffened, like the ears of a cat going back. “You do not submit to a harsh master because the next master may, for all you know, be no better. You fight, and that is what we did. We fought for the chance, lad.”

“And do we fight now?” I asked, looking up from my needlework. “Is the fighting all done? We fight against England for oppressing us, but when we do it to ourselves, when our own government places men like Hamilton and Duer in a position to destroy the soul of the nation, do we take our ease and do nothing?”

“There is nothing to do,” said Skye.

I was not so certain. I could not think what we might to do to push back against the interests of greed and cruelty that had so clearly gained ground, but that did not mean I could do nothing. I thought of my book once more and considered that perhaps this novel, this first American novel — could I but write it — might be an instrument of change, or at least part of a movement for change, a movement of sincere citizens hoping to keep their government free of corruption. If this news about Duer so troubled me, it would trouble others. All over the country, honest men and women must be looking on with horror as corruption wound its way into the hearts of the political men in Philadelphia. Alexander Hamilton, once Washington’s trusted aide, had turned the nation in the direction of British-style corruption. I knew I must find my voice, and soon.

Sincerely,
David Liss

“The Whiskey Rebels” was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

This reality show is sending some clear signals to the denizens of the real and really crowded world. The main signal is that the trade and financing rackets of recent decades are over. The extravaganza of economic hypergrowth based on cheap resources is over. The promiscuous swapping around of risk and rewards is over. There is no global institutional framework for managing the impairment left in the wake of this binge. It will be up to the individual nations now to figure out their national lives and livings.

Alas, the financial impairment is still on-going world-wide and has quite a ways to run before it’s finished working its hoodoo on the so-called advanced economies. The lame duck US economic posse so far has done everything possible except the two things that really matter: allow the fraudulent securities at the heart of the problem to be exposed to the light of day to determine their actual value; and allow those companies who trafficked in them to suffer the full consequences by going out-of-business. For the moment, they’re content to shovel cash into the truck-bed of every enterprise in America that shows up at the Treasury loading dock. This can only have the effect of eventually destroying the value of that cash.

The world has changed faster than anyone realizes. One big question is how long the American people will stumble around in a daze before we get back to work doing constructive things in this country — and by that I mean activities scaled to the resource realities of the years just ahead. More specifically, I mean how we are going to grow the food we eat without massive quantities of diesel fuel and petroleum-based “inputs” and also how we are going to make any of the useful products we need in an energy scarcer time.

The transportation quandary suggests that we have to move away from the private automobile and commercial trucking, and that the airline industry is certain to contract dramatically. When are we going to start the discussion about rebuilding a US public transit system that was once the envy of the world? It no longer matters how much Americans love their cars, or even how much investment we’ve made in car infrastructure. At some point, we just have to face the fact that democratic mass motoring is no longer on the program. Nor is a commercial economy based on incessant motoring. One other implication of this is the necessity to use our waterways for moving things and people again. Has anybody noticed, for instance, that the once-bustling New York City Harbor, possibly the biggest and best sheltered deepwater harbor in the world, has next-to-zero operating docks left along its massive perimeter? While you’re at it, have a look at the waterfronts of Louisville, Cincinnati, Kansas City and a score of other inland port cities on great navigable rivers. What you’ll see are condo sites, festival marketplaces, picnic grounds, and plain old empty lots — everything but the infrastructure for commerce. We can’t afford this anymore. We have to put these places back to work.

The G-20 leaders in Washington last week made a lot of noise about ramping up domestic spending. In the decades to come, this will not happen without import replacement — which is just what it sounds like: instead of importing things you need, you make them at home, and people get paid a living wage to do it. Import replacement, by the way, is exactly how the United States rose in the 19th century to become the world’s preeminent manufacturing nation. It doesn’t foreclose trade with other countries, but it self-evidently changes the terms of that trade, and it would spell the end of the kind of predatory “globalism” that has led to the current state of gross imbalance and reckless destruction.

I believe this will happen whether we like it or not, because these things occur in cycles and the current cycle is obviously ending with a thundering crash of economies, modes of operation, habits and practices, and expectations. For better or worse, we have to move on to new ways of doing things.

I regard the most dangerous fantasy in America right now to be the wish that we can keep running things just the way they are now (my recurring synecdoche of WalMart, Walt Disney World, and the interstate highway system) by replacing oil and gas with “alternative fuels.” This just ain’t gonna happen. We’re going to use every kind of alt.energy there is and they will still require us to live very differently than we did the past sixty years. The public just doesn’t get this.

Regards,
Jim Kunstler
November 20, 2008

In the Reality Lounge was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.