http://mises.org/podcasts/origins-federal-reserveWhere did this thing called the Fed come from? Murray Rothbard has the answer here—in phenomenal detail that will make your head spin. In what reads like a detective story, he has put together the most comprehensive and fascinating account based on a century’s accumulation of scholarship.The conclusion is that the Federal Reserve did not originate as a policy response to national need. It wasn’t erected for any of its stated purposes. It was founded by two groups of elites: government officials and large financial and banking interests. Rothbard adds a third critical element: economists hired to give the scheme a scientific patina.This excerpted chapter from Rothbard’s History of Money and Banking is as scholarly as it is hair raising. This is one economic historian who fears not naming names and assigning blame.enMurray N. RothbardSerialnohttps://cdn.mises.org/images/2026-06/The-Origins-of-the-Federal-Reserve_2400.jpghttp://mises.orgMises Institutemisesmedia@gmail.comhttp://mises.org/podcasts/origins-federal-reserve/progressive-movementMurray N. RothbardFri, 26 Jun 2026 13:51:21 -0500145323Rothbard frames the 1913 Federal Reserve Act as part of the Progressive drive from laissez-faire toward centralized statism. Having failed to cartelize through the free market, big business turned to government to do the job—with intellectuals supplying the ideological cover.

]]>noThe Fed, U.S. History1http://mises.org/podcasts/origins-federal-reserve/unhappiness-national-banking-systemMurray N. RothbardFri, 26 Jun 2026 13:52:21 -0500145324Why the nation’s big banks grew dissatisfied with the post–Civil War National Banking System: an inflationary but rigid structure that lacked an “elastic currency” and pyramided credit on Wall Street, fueling the search for a central bank to coordinate inflation.

]]>noMoney and Banks, The Fed, U.S. History2http://mises.org/podcasts/origins-federal-reserve/beginnings-reform-movement-indianapolis-monetary-conventionMurray N. RothbardFri, 26 Jun 2026 13:53:21 -0500145325The first organized big-business push for banking reform. Rothbard recounts how the 1896–97 Indianapolis Monetary Convention, backed by Morgan- and Rockefeller-tied elites, enlisted economists to press for the gold standard and a centralized, more “elastic” banking system.

]]>noMoney and Banks, The Fed, U.S. History3http://mises.org/podcasts/origins-federal-reserve/gold-standard-act-1900-and-afterMurray N. RothbardFri, 26 Jun 2026 13:54:21 -0500145326The reformers’ first victory—the Gold Standard Act of 1900—and the maneuvering that followed, as Treasury secretaries Lyman Gage and Leslie Shaw used government deposits to aid the banks and inch the country toward central banking.

]]>noMoney and Banks, The Fed, U.S. History4http://mises.org/podcasts/origins-federal-reserve/charles-conant-surplus-capital-and-economic-imperialismMurray N. RothbardFri, 26 Jun 2026 13:55:23 -0500145327Enter Charles A. Conant, theorist of “surplus capital.” Rothbard shows how Conant’s claim that mature economies must export capital abroad linked banking reform to economic imperialism—a theory that traveled from pro-imperialists to Wilshire, Hobson, and Lenin.

]]>noMoney and Banks, The Fed, U.S. History5http://mises.org/podcasts/origins-federal-reserve/conant-monetary-imperialism-and-gold-exchange-standardMurray N. RothbardFri, 26 Jun 2026 13:56:19 -0500145328The theory put into practice: imposing the gold-exchange standard on U.S. dependencies and client states—Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Mexico, and others—administered by a cadre of economists and academics and tying client currencies to the dollar.

]]>noMoney and Banks, The Fed, U.S. History6http://mises.org/podcasts/origins-federal-reserve/jacob-schiff-ignites-drive-central-bankMurray N. RothbardFri, 26 Jun 2026 13:57:27 -0500145329Around 1906, Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb and his relative Paul Warburg launch the explicit campaign for a US central bank, rallying the American Bankers Association and its leading commercial bankers behind banking reform.

]]>noMoney and Banks, The Fed, U.S. History7http://mises.org/podcasts/origins-federal-reserve/panic-1907-and-mobilization-central-bankMurray N. RothbardFri, 26 Jun 2026 13:58:22 -0500145330The Panic of 1907 becomes the catalyst. Rothbard traces the response—the Aldrich-Vreeland Act and the Aldrich-led National Monetary Commission—as elites studied European central banks and mobilized expert and business opinion toward a central bank.

]]>noMoney and Banks, The Fed, U.S. History8http://mises.org/podcasts/origins-federal-reserve/final-phase-coping-democratic-ascendancyMurray N. RothbardFri, 26 Jun 2026 13:59:33 -0500145331With the Democrats ascendant under Wilson, the reformers repackage the Aldrich Plan as the ostensibly decentralized, government-supervised Federal Reserve—essentially the same central bank under a new name, with Morgan-allied interests securing control.

]]>noMoney and Banks, The Fed, U.S. History9http://mises.org/podcasts/origins-federal-reserve/conclusionMurray N. RothbardFri, 26 Jun 2026 14:01:33 -0500145332Rothbard’s summation: the Federal Reserve was a government-sanctioned cartel engineered by the Morgan, Rockefeller, and Kuhn, Loeb interests to enable coordinated inflation—achieved only with the legitimizing support of technocratic experts and academics.

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