In a recent statement, the Federal Reserve declared that US banks are "sound and resilient," but a lot of markets, including real estate, testify to a very different situation.
In his new book, Paul C. Graham describes the 1789 Constitution as an attempted coup by the nationalists to consolidate power in the national capitol. At the constitutional convention Alexander Hamilton proposed a permanent president who would appoint all governors.
Expanding mass support for socialism in the 1890s put a rude end to the optimism of laissez-faire liberals. Many saw that the twentieth century would put an end to the great civilization that had been the product of nineteenth-century liberalism.