America in Debt
A Coolidge Foundation Conference
at the Library of Congress
March 7, 2024
America in Debt began with a keynote address on the eve of the conference. Historian and Wall Street Commentator James Grant spoke on “Printing Press Debt.”
James Grant, Founder, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer
Hon. Phil Gramm, Author, The Myth of American Inequality
Hon. Lloyd Smucker, Congressman, Pennsylvania
Introductions: Historians and policymakers opened the conference with reflections on the state of America’s debt crisis.
Dr. William Beach, Fellow, Coolidge Foundation
Dr. Ryan Reft, Historian, Library of Congress
Hon. Peter Welch, United States Senator
Hon. Virginia Foxx, Congresswoman, North Carolina
Amity Shlaes, Chairman, Coolidge Foundation
America’s Founding to the 1920s: The Hamiltonian Norm Ascendant: From the 1790s onward, the financial authorities of the United States federal government carefully established policies and practices that built trust in the quality and convertibility of government debt.
Moderator: Dr. William Beach, Coolidge Foundation
Hon. French Hill, Congressman, Arkansas
Dr. Michael Caires, Historian
Dr. Robert Bruner, Author, The Panic of 1907
Hon. Christopher Cox, Author, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn
The 1960s to the Financial Crisis of 2008: Wrong Turns and Corrections: The commitment to the Hamiltonian Norm survived. Threats to that commitment, however, began to mount as new stresses on the integrity of federal debt emerged.
Moderator: James Freeman, Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
Christopher DeMuth, Distinguished Fellow in American Thought, Heritage Foundation
James Grant, Founder, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer
Hon. David Stockman, Author, The Great Deformation
Hon. Phil Gramm, Author, The Myth of American Inequality
Featured Address
Stopping the Debt Explosion
A Global Perspective
David Malpass
2008 to the Present: Collapse of the Hamiltonian Norm: Seemingly irresistible pressures from the burgeoning entitlement programs and governmental responses to one economic crisis after another led to one of the gravest peacetime threats to the economy since the country’s Founding.
Moderator: Steve Forbes, Chairman, Forbes Media
Dr. Paul Winfree: President and CEO, Economic Policy Innovation Center
Hon. Eugene Scalia: former United States Secretary of Labor
John Childs: Founder and Chairman, J.W. Childs Associates
Hon. Jeb Hensarling: Congressman 2003-2019, Texas
Three Questions for a Governor
with
Governor James Douglas
and
Matthew Denhart
Looking to the Future: Solutions to America’s Debt Challenge: Given the fall of the Hamiltonian Norm, where do we go from here? Analysts of every political stripe agree that the quality of our debt will determine our future prosperity and economic place in the world.
Moderator: Ambassador Richard Graber, President and CEO, Bradley Foundation
Hon. Paul Ryan: former Speaker of the House of Representatives
Steve Forbes: Chairman, Forbes Media
Romina Boccia: Director of Budget and Entitlement Policy, CATO Institution