Ditching Gold Helped the Dollar Dominate

The birth of the U.S. was paid for by both a debauched paper currency and large debts that it soon defaulted on. When Alexander Hamilton became Treasury secretary in 1789, his job was not just restoring the countryâ??s credit by restructuring the debt and imposing new taxes; he also had to clean up the mess that was money in the early U.S. . .