8 January 1835: US national debt hits $0

By selling land, collecting taxes and cutting public spending, the US national debt was brought down to $0 for the first and only time in the country’s history on this day in 1835.

When the USA was founded, it owed something in the order of £75m in debts to fund the War of Independence. After getting involved in the Napoleonic Wars, the debt rose to $127m. Andrew Jackson, the country's seventh president and founder of the Democratic Party, was determined to get rid of the US national debt once and for all. Jackson called the debt a "national curse" and promised to "pay the national debt, to prevent a moneyed aristocracy from growing up around our administration that must bend to its views, and ultimately destroy the liberty of our country."

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Ben Judge

Ben studied modern languages at London University's Queen Mary College. After dabbling unhappily in local government finance for a while, he went to work for The Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh. The launch of the paper's website, scotsman.com, in the early years of the dotcom craze, saw Ben move online to manage the Business and Motors channels before becoming deputy editor with responsibility for all aspects of online production for The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News websites, along with the papers' Edinburgh Festivals website.

Ben joined MoneyWeek as website editor in 2008, just as the Great Financial Crisis was brewing. He has written extensively for the website and magazine, with a particular emphasis on alternative finance and fintech, including blockchain and bitcoin. 

As an early adopter of bitcoin, Ben bought when the price was under $200, but went on to spend it all on foolish fripperies.