Why is Alexander Hamilton considered the father of modern banking?

Alexander Hamilton is given credit as the "father of modern banking" because he pushed hard for a British-style central federalist system, created the first central bank in the US and was the 1st US Secretary of the Treasury. Basically he laid the foundations for the modern Federal Reserve.

modern banking

The banking systems of the major economic powers in the late C18th, early C19th were pretty similar to how they are today. If you consider the Commonwealth spanned more than half the world and followed English Common Law (it still does) there weren't major structural differences in how banks operated globally (except catholics, muslims). The practices we think of as modern banking originated with the Argenta'rii over 2000 years ago. The evolution of banking regulation in the USA largely occurs due to responses to financial crises, some might say it only occurs in this way. The central bank is a reactive political entity, it doesn't pre-empt politics or markets. For Common Law countries, the only real differences between national economic systems throughout history are down to which crises they had to face and when.

modern banking II

The definition of "modern banking" is subjective but I would argue modern banking originated in the USA in 1998, was ratified by Congress in 1999 and became de-facto law throughout the Anglo-American world (USA, UK, EU, Japan) thereafter. The difference was the combination of commercial, insurance and securities activities under one roof, which prior to 1999 was illegal for everybody except Citigroup (Citi + Travellers').

Another era-change for "modern banking" was the deregulation of OTC derivatives, which transferred from the office of the CFTC to a self-regulatory framework drawn up by a cartel of major banks. A "Modern Bank" is a market-maker (issue, warehouse, buy and sell the same security), regulator, appraiser, market indicator, lender, investor, private consultancy firm, underwriter, insurer, lobbyist, government contractor and supplier. Prior to 1998 these tasks were performed by separate entities and prior to 2000 these vast OTC channels did not exist/were regulated by the CFTC/SEC

modern banking III

Banking has as many eras as you care to make distinctions for. In the era of Alexander Hamilton, the "gold-standard" was in place. Confusingly the US used the "silver" standard in Hamilton's time (Spanish influence). The key is that the value of a currency was pegged to a physical commodity (gold/silver/tobacco) - you could not create new money without new raw materials. Wars (American Civil, WWI etc) brought the advent of "Fiat" currency, as the government required funding but could not mine or acquire sufficient raw materials. It's perfectly reasonable to argue "modern banking" started then or indeed when the USA permanently left the gold standard in 1971.

modern banking IV

You could argue fiat currencies originated much earlier than 1862 depending on how you choose to define "fiat". Wiki says China invented fiat currency around 1000 AD.

I define fiat as a permanent mental severing of the link between commodity and currency, something that's not strictly true about China circa 1000 AD. The Chinese had paper money but the value of the currency was still securitised by an underlying commodity (silk, precious metals), even if the currency itself was NOT directly convertible into commodities.

He pushed for a private and independent central bank, the First Bank of the United States. It was similar to the Bank of England, except he expected it to loan money to private institutions and businesses as well as perform its government duties. He also founded the Bank of New York, which was a private lending institution similar to modern commercial banks.