Trump v. Cook · ¶11

Our Nation’s first de facto central bank predates even our Constitution. Through the early years of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress had been forced to print so much money to finance the war that its currency had become all but worthless. See G. Wood, The American Revolution 145–147 (2002). (“Not worth a Continental,” as the saying goes.) “Duty . . . compells me,” General Washington wrote to Congress in 1780, to request some solution to “the great depreciation of the Money,” for fear of “mutiny” in the ranks. Letter from G. Washington to S. Huntington (May 27–28, 1780), in 26 Papers of George Washington 202–206 (B. Huggins & A. Garbooshian-Huggins eds. 2018). To solve the problem, Congress realized, it would have to tie its own hands—to place the power to create money elsewhere, in an entity that could credibly serve as “a principal Pillar of American Credit . . . by the…

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