I thought Hamilton set up a National Bank. The Fed did not come into existence until 1913. While I agree foreign banks were involved over the years, the thrust of Hamilton's was to connect the wealthy to the central government by selling them interest bearing bonds. These were not backed by gold as the central government was 50 million in debt with no specie at the time except the foreign gold and silver collected for the bonds. Since Hamilton kept printing money the worth of the bonds collapsed just as the dollar has since 1913. Worthless paper money which quickly inflated "as good as a Continental" as I recall. It was worthless until Hamilton and his minions decided to pay them off at full value which was done after his minions ran around the states buying them for pennies on the dollar mostly from poor military men. Still in the end there was never enough gold and silver to back the paper money. This was also exacerbate by banking policy to lend out 10 times more than any bank held in specie. So the point is our "Country" was set up as a debt structured "credit worthy" (as Hamilton thought) government. I hear so much about going back to the gold standard, but the fact remains that the government whether by inflation or a run on the banks would Never be able to pay off.