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America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve, by Roger Lowenstein
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Review
“As Roger Lowenstein tells it in ‘America’s Bank,’ an illuminating history of the Fed’s unlikely origin story, the central bank represented an ambitious — and not entirely successful — effort to resolve several long-standing tensions that lay at the heart of the American experiment in self-government: East Coast vs. the interior, urban sensibilities vs. rural ones, mercantile vs. agrarian interests, Wall Street vs. Main Street. It is still working out the kinks.”—Washington Post “The fun of the book — and its enduring value — lies in the rich details about the cranks, pawns and prophets who jousted with one another in the days of Teddy Roosevelt, William Taft and Woodrow Wilson.” – Forbes“Roger Lowenstein tells, vividly and compellingly,…the remarkable tale of the politics, disagreements, decisions and crises that culminated in the Federal Reserve Act…But Lowenstein, the author of several works on economics and finance, builds off it to describe the history of the era, the rise of the Progressive movement, the compromises and machinations that were critical to Congressional passage and the key figures in the drama of creating the Federal Reserve System.”—Robert Rubin, New York Times Book Review“Depicting the effort to create a central bank, Fortune contributor Lowenstein tells a gripping tale with a trove of vivid characters and period details; you can almost see the handlebar mustaches and smell the oyster stuffing. And the broader cultural conflicts he describes—-distrust of centralized authority, tension between Main Street and Wall Street—are just as relevant now as they were in the era of Taft, Teddy, and Woodrow Wilson.” – Fortune Magazine“Important and intriguing ….Lowenstein skillfully shows the connections between past and current events…. Readers seeking a comprehensive history of the Federal Reserve from its conception to modern times will find this work especially appealing.” – Library Journal“Lowenstein vividly recounts the key moments in this hard-fought battle, from the Panic of 1907 to the 1912 presidential campaign to Wilson’s impassioned declaration to a joint session of Congress. Captivating and enlightening, this book brings a pivotal time in American history to life.” -Publishers Weekly “His well-researched account for general readers takes us from Aldrich's secret meeting with leading Wall Street figures on Jekyll Island, off the Georgia coast, to plot banking reforms, to Woodrow Wilson's Princeton bedchamber, where the ill president persuaded Virginia Congressman Carter Glass of a key compromise to ensure creation of a national bank. Lowenstein doubts the Federal Reserve Act could be passed in today's volatile political climate, but he provides an unusually lucid history of our nation's central bank.” - Kirkus Reviews “America’s Bank, Roger Lowenstein’s lively account of the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, resonates today as we debate the conduct of monetary policy and financial regulation. Washington against the bankers, central authority against dispersed decision-making, rules against discretion, independence against accountability – it was all there, a century ago, resolved by political ingenuity into compromises that have stood the test of time.” - Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve "The Federal Reserve feels as permanent a part of American life as, say, Mount Vernon or Monticello, but as Roger Lowenstein argues in this engaging and illuminating book, the central bank is, historically speaking, a relatively recent arrival. With grace and insight, Lowenstein takes us inside the creation of the Fed, a story of twists, turns--and lessons for our own time."- Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson and American Lion “A highly engaging historical account of the personalities and politics behind the creation of the Federal Reserve.”- Ben Bernanke, former chairman of the Federal Reserve “Set in the waning years of the Gilded Age, America's Bank tells the fascinating story of how an unlikely and often fractured coalition of Wall Street bankers and progressives, Southern Democrats and establishment Republicans came together to tame a chronically unstable financial system and create the Federal Reserve. Incisive and brilliantly researched, this is an important and original book about one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in our history with lessons aplenty for today.” - Liaquat Ahamed, author of Lords of Finance “The birth of the Federal Reserve is a fascinating and almost unknown story, with lessons even for today. In the hands of a master storyteller like Roger Lowenstein, it is also a page-turner." - Alan S. Blinder, American economist and the author of After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead “Roger Lowenstein has accomplished a small miracle in America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve. A masterful story-teller, Lowenstein has made sense of the Federal Reserve System for those of us who never quite understood how it worked or where it came from, and done so in a taut page-turner that is hard to put down. (I read it in two sittings.) His book provides new insights into progressive-era reform; explains why, then and now, credit is more important to the economy than cash; and reintroduces us to three presidents and the remarkable group of bankers, businessmen, and congressmen who left their mark on one of the twentieth century’s most important pieces of legislation, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.”- David Nasaw, author of The Patriarch and Andrew Carnegie
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About the Author
ROGER LOWENSTEIN reported for The Wall Street Journal for more than a decade. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg , The New York Review of Books, Fortune, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications. His books include Buffett, When Genius Failed, Origins of the Crash, While America Aged, and The End of Wall Street. He has three children and lives with his wife in Newton, Massachusetts.
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Product details
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (October 18, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780143109846
ISBN-13: 978-0143109846
ASIN: 0143109847
Product Dimensions:
5.5 x 0.8 x 8.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
71 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#159,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This is a much more substantive book than either "The Creature from Jekyll Island" or "Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World" which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2010.However, I was very disappointed that it failed to mention the 1918 Amendment to the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. The 1918 Amendment was at least as important as the creation of the Federal Reserve since it was the genesis of the Federal Reserve's "Open Market Operations," and essentially converted the Federal Reserve from a banker of last resort to a policy-making body. And, how the Federal Reserve became a policy making body with the power to create money, yet not subject to the same checks and balances of power that apply to our three branches of government, is perhaps of far greater significance than the creation of the Federal Reserve as merely a lender of last resort.To put this into perspective, readers should consider the following that, in my view, should have been included in the Epilogue to Roger Lowenstein's otherwise excellent book. WWI broke out shortly after the Federal Reserve was created, and after the war the government found itself in debt. Although modest relative to the mountains of debt that have been accumulated since that time, the government was anxious to keep the interest rate on that debt as low as possible. Therefore, in 1918 it modified the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to allow banks to also pledge government securities as collateral for the loans that they sought from the Federal Reserve. In addition, the banks would be permitted to borrow from the Federal Reserve at a lower rate if they pledged such government securities as collateral rather than commercial paper.Since banks back then were still in the business of making loans, and they could generate larger profits from these loans if amounts available for lending could be borrowed from the Federal Reserve at a lower interest rate, demand by banks for government securities quickly soared. Almost as quickly, the Federal Reserve learned that the terms at which government securities were made available to banks could influence their lending behavior by even more than fluctuations in the demand for loans by private sector borrowers based upon natural market forces. In other words, a relatively small group of individuals could now exercise tremendous control over the economy simply by manipulating the supply and demand for government securities rather than acting merely as a “lender of last resort†responding to fluctuations in private sector demand for loans and deposits. This was the genesis for what are now known as “Open Market Operations,†which we take for granted as being an important and necessary monetary policy tool available to the Federal Reserve.Putting this newly acquired power to work, primarily under the influence of a single member, namely Benjamin Strong, the head of the New York Regional Federal Reserve Bank, the Federal Reserve coordinated its activities with central banks in England, France, and Germany to restore the gold purchasing power of the British Pound to its pre-World War I level. This was achieved by causing interest rates in the United States to remain artificially low, so that cash available from other parts of the world would flow to England rather than the US in order to earn higher interest rates, thus bidding up the value of the British Pound in the process. These policy decisions obviously had little to do with the natural forces of market supply and demand, but it was hoped that this return to the status quo would somehow stabilize the world financial system. The low interest rates and easy money policies being pursued in the US did, in fact, lead to a robust period of economic growth known as “the Roaring Twenties.†But, the price to be paid for resisting natural market forces was excessive debt and a stock market bubble.In response, rather than allowing the economy and financial markets to achieve a true state of equilibrium, additional market-distorting government and central bank interventions were introduced instead. These shifting, sometimes contradictory policy decisions and interventions created confusion and uncertainty, which wreaked further havoc on the economy and markets for over a decade. In effect, the growth and stability of our economy became increasingly subject to the policy decisions of the federal government and the Federal Reserve, rather than the direct market forces of supply and demand operating within the private sector. However, a more “stable disequilibrium†was eventually achieved, subject to the “mere†expense of growing mountains of debt, and increased reliance upon the centralized policy decisions taken by an increasingly powerful federal government and “Federal†Reserve."
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary,†James Madison famously wrote. The same could be said of bankers. If bankers were angels, there would be no need of a central bank. Creation of the nation’s central bank—the Federal Reserve—is the subject of Robert Lowenstein’s informative and highly readable book, but the underlying theme is of trust, as in, who do you trust? Since the beginning of the American republic, Americans trusted neither governments nor banks, particularly central governments and central banks, such as ruled the British Empire from London and governed the affairs of the American colonies—until ties were severed by the American Revolution. After the Revolution, the original 13 states struggled politically and financially until the enactment of the Federal government in 1789 and the establishment of the nation’s first central bank in 1791, the Bank of the United States. Both worked exceedingly well, so much so that Thomas Jefferson feared a new monarchy in the making and ran for president determined to reduce the power of the federal government and do away with the bank altogether. In spite of Jefferson’s antipathy, the central bank proved necessary as a lender of last resort and survived for another 36 years—until the presidency of Andrew Jackson. By then, the bank had become the object of intense hatred by Jackson as well as by working Americans. De Tocqueville, touring America at the time, was plainly bewildered. To him, as to most Frenchmen, the Bank of France seemed a natural outgrowth of the French national government. But in the U.S. the central bank reawakened Americans’ primal anxieties, the colonials’ fear that their hard-won liberties would be crushed by a far-off monarch and his scheming money men. Jackson destroyed the bank and was hailed as a hero for the next 80 years, despite a series of financial panics, bank runs, money shortages, and full-blown depressions that might have been averted or lessened had there been a lender of last resort—a central bank.In 1907, after a particularly nasty panic that was arrested only by the deep pockets of J.P. Morgan (acting as a lender of last resort) opinion began to change. Two politicians and four Wall Street bankers decided it was time to do something about it. Secretly, they boarded a train for a rural island off the coast of Georgia, to a private resort known as the Jykell Island Club. The politicians were Nelson Aldrich (a U.S. Senator), and A. Piatt Andrew (the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury). The Bankers were Henry Davidson (J.P. Morgan and Company), Paul M. Warburg (Kuhn, Loeb and Company), Benjamin Strong (Bankers Trust of New York), and Frank A. Vanderlip (National City Bank). Why a secret meeting? Because Senator Aldrich—the head of a joint Congressional committee studying the bank issue—needed help. If it were known that he was calling on Wall Street bankers to help him prepare his report and bill, it would’ve been fatal. After all, everyone knew bankers couldn't be trusted. Yet these particular bankers were well educated, convinced change was necessary, and possessed the very insider information Senator Aldrich needed to write an effective bill. What they worked out closely approximated what would become the Federal Reserve Bank. A spate of obstacles lay in the bill’s passage, including famed populist William Jennings Bryant (a noted bank basher and Jacksonian Democrat), a nation of Americans still radically opposed to a central bank, bankers in general, newspapers and politicians—in effect, nearly everyone. But things were changing. Progressivism was on the rise—antitrust laws were in force, women were campaigning for the vote, and a bill for the direct election of senators was before Congress. While opposition to a central bank remained strong, everyone knew something needed to be done to prevent another run on banks.Enter Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was a Democrat and a good friend of William Jennings Bryan. Unbeknownst to Bryan, Wilson favored a central bank. Despite being a member of the party of Jefferson and Jackson, Wilson thought highly of Alexander Hamilton, the founder of the Bank of the United States. He labeled Hamilton as “one of the greatest figures in our history.†And Jefferson? “A great man, but not a great American.†At the time Wilson wrote these words, he was the president of Princeton University. By the time Congress was looking into the possibilities of a central bank, Wilson was governor of New Jersey. In 1912, he ran for president. With the much-needed support of Williams Jennings Bryan (coupled with division within the Republican Party), he was elected president. He appointed Bryan Secretary of State and gradually brought him around to supporting a central bank. Congress, meanwhile, was having trouble hatching out a bank bill that would pass both houses. They were about to adjourn for the summer when Wilson intervened. Exercising his power as president, he ordered Congress to stay in session until they had a bill ready for his signature. All that long, hot summer and into the fall Congress wrestled over the bill, considering input from a variety of sources, including President Wilson. On December 23, Congress presented a bill for the president’s signature, which he signed into law.According to Vanderlip, the Federal Reserve Bill, despite undergoing a variety of back-and-forth changes, still looked very much like the original bill that had been drafted on Jykell Island. The Federal Reserve would be comprised of a central bank in New York and 12 branches spread across the country. There would be a seven-member Federal Reserve Board appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. The Board would oversee the district banks, generally regulate the banking system and set national monetary policy. Each of the 12 branches would have its own board of directors. There would be a single national currency, backed by one of the 12 branch banks and would be redeemable in gold. Indeed, for the first time, the United States government would begin printing paper money, which before had been the domain of state banks.There is much more to Mr. Lowenstein’s book, especially about the wild and woolly state of banking and paper money in all its forms, prior to the creation of Federal Reserve System. Prior to the Fed, any strain placed on the American banking system—if it can be called that—might cause the financial collapse of hundreds of banks overnight and the nation tumbling into yet another recession. Indeed, prior to the Fed, the American economy had nothing behind it to prevent a recession, which is tantamount to a wire walker working without a net. Mr. Lowenstein’s book reads like a novel, and like a novel, has its share of heroes and villains. Five stars.
Lowenstein is one of the best authors of financial and economic history today so it's very unlikely anyone else could have done a better job with this topic. His research was broad-ranging and he presents a clear picture of the political battlelines of the time. But even for those of us whose job includes watching the Fed, this is not exactly a page-turner. Lowenstein's When Genius Failed was a cracking read and deserves a general audience. But I can't imagine the casual reader will be very spellbound by this tale. Those interested in e.g. Woodrow Wilson or William Jennings Bryan will be more satisfied with specific political biographies. Again, it's not necessarily the author's fault, but I was happy to finish it and move on.
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