State 'Currencies' and the Transition to the U.S. Dollar: Reply—Including a New View from Canada

摘要

Farley W. Grubb (2003) provides an explanation of the rhetoric and behavior of the Founding Fathers regarding the monetary clauses put in the U.S. Constitution, which is consistent with the quantitative evidence on price indices, exchange rates, and the incidence of currencies used in market transactions both before and after the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Ronald W. Michener and Robert E. Wright (2005) (henceforth MW) challenge this explanation. They assert that the burden of proof in this debate should fall on revisionists, among whom they rank Grubb (2003). Grubb (2003), however, is well within the mainstream of scholarly historiography from Charles A. Beard (1913) to Robert A. McGuire (2003), which treats the Founding Fathers as class- and self-interested rational maximizers rather than altruistic heroes. Indeed, I will show that MW's position is outside the scholarly mainstream, lacks adequate proof, and yields inconsistent, dubious, and unpalatable results.