1. Explore the role of development of the financial sector in public finance and national economic growth. In particular, these cases consider the transformation of a financial system from one comprising small and widely dispersed private banks and "goldsmith banks" to one dominated by one institution with a monopoly charter—the proto-central bank. 2. Review the influence of mercantilism on strategies of national finance. 3. Assess the early interactions between the state and the financial sector, giving particular attention to financial repression by the state. 4. Exercise simple analysis of financing for a distressed debtor. 5. Induce some principles by which governments and decision-makers might assess proposals to provide distress financing (i.e., bailouts) to banks and corporations.