A tour de force of historical reportage, America's Bank illuminates
the tumultuous era and remarkable personalities that spurred the
unlikely birth of America's modern central bank, the Federal
Reserve. Today, the Fed is the bedrock of the financial landscape,
yet the fight to create it was so protracted and divisive that it
seems a small miracle that it was ever established. For nearly a
century, America, alone among developed nations, refused to
consider any central or organizing agency in its financial system.
Americans' mistrust of big government and of big banks-a legacy of
the country's Jeffersonian, small-government traditions-was so
widespread that modernizing reform was deemed impossible. Each bank
was left to stand on its own, with no central reserve or lender of
last resort. The real-world consequences of this chaotic and
provincial system were frequent financial panics, bank runs, money
shortages, and depressions. By the first decade of the twentieth
century, it had become plain that the outmoded banking system was
ill equipped to finance America's burgeoning industry. But
political will for reform was lacking. It took an economic
meltdown, a high-level tour of Europe, and-improbably-a
conspiratorial effort by vilified captains of Wall Street to
overcome popular resistance. Finally, in 1913, Congress conceived a
federalist and quintessentially American solution to the conflict
that had divided bankers, farmers, populists, and ordinary
Americans, and enacted the landmark Federal Reserve Act. Roger
Lowenstein-acclaimed financial journalist and bestselling author of
When Genius Failed and The End of Wall Street-tells the drama-laden
story of how America created the Federal Reserve, thereby taking
its first steps onto the world stage as a global financial power.
America's Bank showcases Lowenstein at his very finest:
illuminating complex financial and political issues with striking
clarity, infusing the debates of our past with all the gripping
immediacy of today, and painting unforgettable portraits of Gilded
Age bankers, presidents, and politicians. Lowenstein focuses on the
four men at the heart of the struggle to create the Federal
Reserve. These were Paul Warburg, a refined, German-born financier,
recently relocated to New York, who was horrified by the primitive
condition of America's finances; Rhode Island's Nelson W. Aldrich,
the reigning power broker in the U.S. Senate and an archetypal
Gilded Age legislator; Carter Glass, the ambitious, if then
little-known, Virginia congressman who chaired the House Banking
Committee at a crucial moment of political transition; and
President Woodrow Wilson, the
academician-turned-progressive-politician who forced Glass to
reconcile his deep-seated differences with bankers and accept the
principle (anathema to southern Democrats) of federal control.
Weaving together a raucous era in American politics with a storied
financial crisis and intrigue at the highest levels of Washington
and Wall Street, Lowenstein brings the beginnings of one of the
country's most crucial institutions to vivid and unforgettable
life. Readers of this gripping historical narrative will wonder
whether they're reading about one hundred years ago or the
still-seething conflicts that mark our discussions of banking and
politics today.
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