The U . S . Government Now Owns Stakes In 30 Companies . Intel Is Just The Beginning

In January 1790, the House of Representatives put a simple question to its new Treasury Secretary: what should America make for itself? Alexander Hamilton took almost two years to answer. He was 36, an immigrant orphan from the Caribbean island of Nevis who had talked his way into King’s College and then into George Washington’s inner circle. His Report on the Subject of Manufactures, delivered December 5, 1791, was the longest of the four great reports he wrote for Congress… and the one Congress mostly ignored. Hamilton’s…