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The structural conceit is forced (Girard, the "saint," named his ships for French revolutionary agnostics like Voltaire; "Judas" betrayed the "Creator," not the "Savior"; "Risen and Fallen Angels" is a stretch on both earthly and heavenly levels). It also clashes with the book's other relentlessly repeated, central metaphor, the "golden goose." Throughout the book the authors use the golden goose as a "metaphor for the financial system, the institutional financial intermediaries (banks and insurers) and markets (for equity and debt) that made the nation and its inhabitants rich by efficiently matching entrepreneurial energy to investor savings." Hamilton created the golden goose, and his successors sustained it. By the end of the story it has grown strong, "from gosling to magnificent bird" we are twice told.
 It was hardly preordained that the Creator's goose would survive, however, and the authors vividly portray both the personalities and the stakes involved. Although Robert Morris later landed in debtor's prison, he used his personal credit to help establish the First Bank. If Jefferson's financial advisors had shared his dim view of the First Bank, he might have killed it even before its charter expired in 1811. But both Tenche Coxe, who switched from Hamilton's Federalist party to the Jeffersonians, and—more important—Albert Gallatin, Jefferson's Treasury Secretary, understood the importance of the bank. Even apart from the political battles, ne'er-do-wells like William Duer (the "Sinner")—who used his post as Hamilton's assistant Treasury Secretary to line his own pockets and whose failed attempt to corner the market for U.S. government debt triggered a depression in 1792—threatened at times to derail the entire system.
Interwoven with the nine biographies are succinct explanations of early American finance and business. Far more elegantly than I can, Wright and Cowen explain how the First Bank carried out the monetary policy endorsed by the Treasury Secretary, providing liquidity—an ample supply of funds—during times of financial panic. The bank also served as "lender of last resort" for troubled financial institutions, as when it headed off a potential run on the bank of Columbia in 1801 by depositing (on Gallatin's instructions) substantial government funds in the bank.
Centralized banking was sweetness and light, but the authors do not simply praise its advocates and excoriate the other side. Nowhere is this more evident than in a fascinating section contrasting Jackson and Jefferson. Jefferson's quest to kill the bank might have "meant an abrupt end to the American economic miracle," according to Wright and Cowen, and he relied on a Constitutional argument (the government's limited powers) that he conveniently ignored in other contexts. But Jackson stuck to a single, coherent philosophy. He consistently opposed federal investment in private corporations (such as the two national banks, which did the government's bidding but were privately owned) and for local projects, while supporting active federal investment in truly national projects. Indeed, the authors hint that Jackson's successful campaign to end the Second Bank may even have been justified. The markets were strong enough by 1836 to survive without central banking, and the bank and its arrogant president Nicholas Biddle were a potent symbol of the gap between the rich and ordinary Americans. Because it eased class tensions, "Jackson's victory in the Bank War was a major contributor to the country's relatively tight embrace of free market capitalism."
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