William Duer, recently departed as assistant treasury secretary, had hatched a plan to corner the market in government bonds and bank shares and enlisted Alexander Macomb, a wealthy merchant, to join the effort. What made this situation so distressing for Hamilton was that he had just tapped Duer as governor of the SEUM, where Macomb was also a governor. The two men emerged as ringleaders of a speculative clique known as the Six Per Cent Club because they tried to manipulate the price of government bonds yielding 6 percent.
