Freedom of debt: the lessons of government finance before the Civil War -- A thousand dollar breakfast: the limits of war financing by elites -- Patriotism and profit: Jay Cooke and the democratization of debt -- The sale of American stocks constitutes the chief business at the Bourse: foreign...

In recent contributions, Weizs cker (2014) and Summers (2014) maintain that mature economies accumulate too much capital. They suggest large and lasting public deficits as a remedy. This paper argues that overaccumulation cannot occur in an economy with land. It presents novel data of aggregate...