Fear and Loathing of Central Banks in America

The Federal Reserve System is America’s uneasy compromise between our wariness of concentrated financial power and our desire to promote efficiency in our national payments system. In fact, the Federal Reserve is the nation’s third attempt to establish a large national bank—what we now call a central bank—that is in a unique position to influence a nation’s money and credit. This Commentary retells the story of the rise and fall of the two earlier national banks, the Banks of the United States.