 banking philosophy? Yeah. All right. So some of the differences between the philosophy towards banks between Jefferson and Hamilton, is it? I wonder if it's... So first let me say I'm no expert on either Jefferson or Hamilton and there are people out there who really experts on this and read all the stuff and so on. So that as a caveat, let me say that I think my sense is that both Jefferson and Hamilton were wrong on banking. They both got it wrong. Jefferson was very suspicious of financial interests. He was very suspicious of banks. He was very worried about financial concentration of power, of economic power. He didn't like the idea of any kind of big bank and really Jefferson is the one who ultimately dominated the discussion on banking and had a really massive influence on the history of banking in the United States because what happened was because of Jefferson's suspicion of large banks and because of the fact that he very much... He was generally suspicious of industry and of capitalism as a quite economics of industrialization and so on. Again, this is pre-industrial revolution. So he didn't see what was coming clearly. He was much more interested in farming, in agrarian interest. He had this romantic view of the farmer, politician, soldier kind of thing that maybe got from the Romans or whatever, but it's very much that the earth farming, working with your hands was very valued. So as a consequence, what happened was banks in the United States never got chartered federally and never really were allowed to have a federal footprint that has never had the ability to actually have branches across the entire United States. What happened was that banks were chartered and regulated and controlled at the state level and the states having been significantly influenced by Jefferson protected their banks and did not allow out-of-state banks to come into their states to buy existing banks. They would not allow out-of-state banks to branch into this state. So what you got in the United States unique to all of the countries in the world is you got a banking system where every state had many, many banks. Some states did not allow banks to have more than one branch. Some states didn't allow the banks to go out of their county, but no states allowed banks to go outside or out-of-state banks to come into the states. It became a very, very controlled, regulated and small industry with the exception of New York, which was the money center, money center banks they were called, but they even couldn't own banks outside of New York. So they had contractual relationships where they provided help to those banks, provided loans to those banks, but they never held deposits for those banks. But every bank was in a state and that was it. So at its peak the United States had over 20,000 banks. Now just to give you a comparison, Canada generally has had five banks. The United States has had over 20,000. Today, now in 1994, and I'll get to Hamilton in a minute, in 1994 Congress changed that and basically said banks could be federal in the sense that they got away from federalism, but in a good way I think in this case. I wish they do this with health insurance. They got away from federalism. They basically said banks can go anywhere in the United States. They can branch anywhere. They can buy anyone. You cannot erect barriers between states for banking activity. I mean I think ultimately that was the right case and it should have been under the, what do you call it there, in a state commerce, the commerce clause, but it was never perceived that way and Supreme Court ruled several times that banking did not count under the commerce clause. So 1994, Congress allowed this and you got massive consolidation post-94. And as a consequence of that, today there are only 5600 banks in the United States down from 20,000 and we're probably heading towards 500 banks or 1,000 banks but not much more than that. Again, Canada has five banks and just to give you one other data point, Canada, the United States since its founding has had 12 banking crises, 12 financial crises centered around banks. Canada during the same period of time plus or minus has had exactly zero, not a single banking crisis. And I would argue and many other economists would argue that many of the banking crises in American history are consequence of the lack of diversification at the bank level and a consequence of this massively fragmented banking system all brought about by too much respect, I think, for Jefferson's position. Hamilton on the other hand had a much healthier respect for industrialization, a healthier respect for capitalism and, you know, and he understood the importance and the crucial function of banks. And I think if Hamilton would have won, you would have never got these kind of fragmented banking system. He was for federal charters of banks. So he had a much healthier, much more rational, much more educated position about finance and about banking than Thomas Jefferson did. However, he also believed that the United States should have in a sense a central bank or the equivalent of a central bank so that the United States government would have a whether it was private or whether it was run by the government, a favored bank, a bank that it dealt with exclusively. And indeed, you know, the first, I think the first American bank and Bank of America, no, it wasn't Bank of America, first something bank, national bank was created when Hamilton was Treasury Secretary. And, you know, and he was later done away with in 1936 by presidents. Oh my god, forgetting who is present, who is the first populist president? Yeah, 1836. Anyway, it doesn't really matter. So, you know, they are, they were both flawed. And I think Hamilton, by advocating for central bank, I think undercut his position and ultimately led Jefferson when I think the proper solution would have been to have federally chartered banks, independent banks, private banks, no relationship with the state. The state would bank with a variety of different banks. And, you know, you put the treasury deposits and things like that would have to be a variety. It could not play favoritism. There would be no national bank, i.e., central bank or anything close to a central bank. Certainly, there would be no federal reserve. And as I think, I think that Hamilton was right on the debate but still fought. Andrew Jackson was the president. 1836, I think it was, where he did away with the first national bank of the United States. And then there was a second national bank of the United States. And then we got the federal reserve. And there were periods in which there were no national banks in the United States. And it's called the free banking era. But the free banking era was flawed because you got, I mean, it was flawed for a number of reasons. But one of the reasons was you got this proliferation of small little banks that could not consolidate and could not have a national footprint. So banking in the United States, financial institutions of the United States have been messed up, screwed up, badly regulated, not that there's a right way to regulate, but have been regulated by the state since the founding and really a lot of the economic problems, a lot of the economic problems that inflicted the United States during the 19th century and certainly during the early 20th century. And into all the way up to the Great Recession of 2008 were consequences of these kind of banking issues, the bad banking regulations, overregulations, and the overfragmentation of the industry. All right. Thank you. It's the best I can do in Hamilton and Jefferson. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist roads.