Web Letters: The Right Choice at Treasury

For a great perspective on the current economic rape of America listen to a couple of interviews with Gerald Celente and Max Keiser. They are free MP3 downloads at http://drop.io/Summerbird. They are currently the two files at the top of the page.

Edward Safranski

New York, NY

Sheila Bair was quietly (probably because no one in the Bush administration would listen) pointing out the impending financial implosion for more than a year before it happened.

She proposed a solution (again ignored) which had both social and financial value.

If for no other reason than to reward someone who demonstrated competence, understanding and the technical ability to implement her solution, I sincerely hope the transition team picks someone who has acted in a totally non-partisan manner to use government to benefit the people who pay for it.

She shows the best characteristics a government worker is capable of.

Otis Maclay

Houston, TX

Your information on Hamilton is incomplete and inaccurate. The British had a twenty-year head start on the Industrial Revolution. The tariffs were designed to make British industrial goods more expensive so that infant American industries could be developed as part of the American market. It was Hamilton's desire to have an independent, self sustaining American market that was not dependent on foreign trade. If we had had unlimited trade with Britain, we would have never become a major industrial nation, and Great Britain would not have had our industrial support in two world wars. We would have become a banana republic without the bananas.

Hamilton's "Report on Manufactures" was the blueprint for our economic development. We were a planned economy, and "free trade" had nothing to do with our economic success. No country can have any real development without trade barriers. My generation called a "free trade" relationship between a major industrial nation and an underdeveloped nation "economic imperialism," because there is no independence without economic independence. Hamilton understood the concept, though he never used the term.

PBS had a "biography" on Hamilton that was loaded in favor of Wall Street and ignored his tariff policies. Hamilton's work for the Constitution was a collaborative effort, but he, alone, designed our economic success.

Pervis James Casey

Riverside, CA