I wish Dan and pgl would have more patience with slow witted folk like Roger Fox and me. I have to agree with Roger Fox that the author made very little effort to explain just how investment in government debt led to wider markets for private debt and thus to financing the industrial revolution. My guess in that when the wealthy found that consuls paid better than investments in land. they probably became open to investing in paper that paid even better than consuls. We see this even now with investors spurning low yielding government debt in favor of stocks and higher yield corporate bonds. But Ventura and Voth could have explained this better.

I was under the impression that Peter Temin in his thoroughly researched, and well argued, The Jackson Economy (1969), had largely cleared Jackson of blame for the 1837 recession. It seems to me you have simply repeated the classical story of this recession, which as Temin showed is not supported by the facts, The theories that you reiterate here were long accepted as plausible and probable causes of the recession, and they do make a better story. It is unfortunate, however, that a prestigious blog like this should risk perpetuating a historical myth, without even mentioning Temin's thorough scholarship which debunked it. I hope you will issue a correction, or at least a clarification.