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America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create The Federal Reserve By Roger Lowenstein Penguin Press, 2015 335 pages, $29.95
Even readers familiar with the origins of the America's third central bank will benefit from Roger Lowenstein's America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create The Federal Reserve System. They will especially appreciate his decision to devote equal time to the financial crises that convinced reformers of the need for some kind of central bank, and the legislative maneuvering that finally led to passage of the Federal Reserve Act.
Lowenstein first tells how financial panics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries prompted would-be reformers to push for changes in the way the nation's fragmented and unorganized banking system allocated credit and managed (or didn't manage) the supply of money. After the election of 1896, a group of academics, bankers and industrialists (operating as the Indianapolis Monetary Commission) proposed a set of reforms that...