HenryWallace
Member
I am reading "America's Bank, The epic Struggle to create the Fed" by Roger Lowenstein. I really appreciate the book's explanation of technical banking concepts and references to modern day parallels throughout. The long and winding road of the legislation is a great tale for history buffs in itself. But the more interesting thing to me is seeing how far we have come from the authors' intent
One thing is clear, the Fed has never been well understood by the American people, and this continues to this day. I often see Facebook posts about how Trump is going to close the Fed, etc. People don't realize what it is, who they are, or the extremely necessary functions of the "bankers bank".
It was born of a time when banking panics were common and everything was based on gold bars in a vault somewhere. Simpler times, for sure. In its creation, the main goals were improving, "financial plumbing" and to keep money elastic when a credit crunch occurred. The Fed continues to "plumb" our financial system, clearing checks, distributing bills, etc.
But today, the Fed's main sphere of influence is a little known provision that none of the bills authors could have envisioned being so important, setting interest rates. This doesn't even seem remotely considered at the time. It just goes to show how our country evolves
One thing is clear, the Fed has never been well understood by the American people, and this continues to this day. I often see Facebook posts about how Trump is going to close the Fed, etc. People don't realize what it is, who they are, or the extremely necessary functions of the "bankers bank".
It was born of a time when banking panics were common and everything was based on gold bars in a vault somewhere. Simpler times, for sure. In its creation, the main goals were improving, "financial plumbing" and to keep money elastic when a credit crunch occurred. The Fed continues to "plumb" our financial system, clearing checks, distributing bills, etc.
But today, the Fed's main sphere of influence is a little known provision that none of the bills authors could have envisioned being so important, setting interest rates. This doesn't even seem remotely considered at the time. It just goes to show how our country evolves