Atlanta Fed publishes 1,300-page history of the Fed

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has published an almost 1,300-page account of the founding and development of the Federal Reserve and its precursors, spanning the years from 1832 to 1968.

The book, available in full online, outlines the challenges, setbacks and successes of the central bank and its 12 district branches, with a particular focus on the Atlanta Fed.

One account highlights the pushback the Fed’s founders faced when proposing an early form of the district bank structure present in the US today. “The plan was not acceptable to the people at large,” it says.

A “noted banker” at the time, Paul Warburg, said: “The view was generally held that centralisation of banking would inevitably result in one of two alternatives: either complete government control, which meant politics in banking, or control by ‘Wall Street’, which meant banking in politics.”

Dissatisfaction with the proposal led to an “almost fanatic” belief that the only way to protect the country’s credit system was to seek complete decentralisation of banking, the book says.

Similar concerns to Warburg’s have coloured the central bank’s history and remain relevant today. At various points, the Fed has come under pressure from politicians, notably former presidents Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, who put pressure on then Fed chairs William Martin and Paul Volcker, respectively, to keep rates low. More recently, president Donald Trump’s frequent Twitter tirades call for more monetary easing.