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Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics

The Origins of the Federal Reserve

The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics
Tags: Money and Banking, Money and Banks, U.S. Economy
Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics Murray N. Rothbard
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Volume 2, No. 3 (Fall 1999)

 The financial elites of this country, notably the Morgan, Rockefeller, and Kuhn, Loeb interests, were responsible for putting through the Federal Reserve System, as a governmentally created and sanctioned cartel device to enable the nation’s banks to inflate the money supply in a coordinated fashion, without suffering quick retribution from depositors or note holders demanding cash. Recent researchers, however, have also highlighted the vital supporting role of the growing number of technocratic experts and academics, who were happy to lend the patina of theirallegedly scientific expertise to the elite’s drive for a central bank. To achieve a regime of big government and government control, power elites cannot achieve their goal of privilege through statism without the vital legitimizing support of the supposedly disinterested experts and the professoriat. To achieve the Leviathan State, interests seeking special privilege, and intellectuals offering scholarship andideology, must work hand in hand. 
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