Review: America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve by Roger Lowenstein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This bit of political and financial history was more interesting and engaging than I expected. I had not known or forgotten that we are in the third and this time expectedly permanent central bank system here in the U.S. The First Bank of the United States, famously pushed for by Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, lasted 1791–1811and was a present absence in the need to finance the War of 1812. The Second Bank of the United States (1816–1836) which James Madison signed the charter of, was a reaction to runaway inflation that had plagued the country during the five-year interim between national banks. Populist Andrew Jackson, who became president in 1828, denounced the bank as an engine of corruption. His destruction of the bank was a major political issue in the 1830s and shaped the Second Party System, as Democrats in the states opposed banks and Whigs supported them. Most of the book is about the 1907 - 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve System we now have. This includes the cabalistic genesis on Jekyll Island, GA to the The United States presidential election of 1912 and its rare four-way contest between incumbent President William Howard Taft (renominated by the Republican Party with the support of its conservative wing), former President Theodore Roosevelt and his own Progressive Party (nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party"), Democrat Woodrow Wilson finally nominated on the 46th ballot of a contentious convention thanks to the support of William Jennings Bryan, and Eugene V. Debs running for a fourth time as the nominee of the Socialist Party of America.

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