Central Banking and the Incidence of Financial Crises 20 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Fall 2013 | www.MoAF.org By Richard Sylla with some inconsistency, the critics have for the protection of its rights and claimed that the central bank has too interests, and the latter facilitates The centennial anniversary in 2013– much power and that its quantitative eas- and extends the operations of com- 2014 of the founding of the Federal Reserve ing policies have proven ineffective. Con- merce among individuals. Industry System, America’s central bank, is a fitting gress responded to the first charge by is increased, commodities are multi- occasion to consider the question: Why do reining in some of the Fed’s powers in plied, agriculture and manufactures we have a central bank? To many people, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. But that did flourish, and herein consist the true the answer is far from obvious. Here I want not go far enough to please a vociferous wealth and prosperity of a state. Most to discuss in particular one good reason why critic of the Fed such as former congress- commercial nations have found it nec- we have a central bank, namely that our man Ron Paul, who in 2009 published a essary to institute banks, and they have history as a nation shows that central banks book entitled End the Fed, a not-so-thinly- proved to be the happiest engines ever reduce the incidence of financial crises. veiled policy recommendation. invented for advancing trade. Venice, Genoa, Hamburg, Holland and Eng- The Fed and Its Critics Deja Vous land are examples of their utility. in the Recent Crisis Remarkably, Hamilton had not been If the Fed’s actions during the recent crisis to Europe (and never would), and when During the financial crisis of 2007–2008, were unprecedented, Ron Paul’s recom- he wrote Morris neither the colonies nor the Fed acted dramatically to prevent mendation to get rid of it was not. Early in the new nation had ever had a modern a financial meltdown. It made currency US history, Americans got rid of not one, bank of any kind. Shortly after Hamil- swaps with other countries’ central banks but two central banks. So our country has ton’s letter, Morris would recommend to alleviate dollar shortages overseas. It some experience in ending central banks. that Congress create the country’s first made loans, often termed “bailouts,” to It also has even more experience in creat- modern bank, the Bank of North America. US and foreign financial institutions to ing new central banks. We have created It opened at the beginning of 1782. prevent them in one way or another from three, and ended only two. Ten years later, Hamilton persuaded failing. It more than doubled the size of its Congress chartered our first central Congress to charter, and President Wash- balance sheet in 2008–2009 by purchasing bank, the Bank of the United States, in 1791 ington to approve, his far larger Bank of government and mortgage-backed securi- on the recommendation of the first Secre- the United States (BUS). The BUS, along ties with the intent of providing ample tary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. with a restructured national debt and the liquidity and keeping interest rates low A decade earlier, while he was serving as specie-based dollar, became a component to promote recovery from the economic an officer in the Continental Army, Ham- of the new nation’s financial architecture. recession triggered by the financial crisis. ilton had already (at age 24) made himself Owned 20% by the United States, the BUS In the aftermath of the crisis, the Fed an expert on modern finance in a new lent to the government and to the private again has nearly doubled the size of its nation whose financial arrangements were economy, established a branch network balance sheet through further securities decidedly pre-modern. In 1781, during what throughout the nation giving the country purchases, termed “quantitative easing.” turned out to be the late stages of the War nationwide banking facilities and acted Despite these actions, the recovery from of Independence, Hamilton wrote a long to regulate the expansion of credit by the crisis has been protracted and rather letter to Robert Morris. Morris had just state-chartered banks. Economically, by anemic. So the Fed announced in Septem- been appointed by Congress to clean up the all accounts, the BUS was a great success. ber, to Wall Street’s and others’ surprise, financial mess created by over-issuing paper Politically, it was a different matter. that it intended to keep on pursuing its Continental currency to the point that it Those who opposed its creation in 1791 low interest policies as long as unemploy- became worthless. That problem had virtu- continued to regard it as unconstitu- ment remained too high and inflation ally destroyed the credit of the United States tional. Two decades later, when the BUS’s showed no signs of rearing its ugly head. with foreign supporters of the American 20-year charter came up for renewal, they The Fed’s unprecedented actions have cause and with its own citizens. were joined in the opposition by state produced a backlash. Its critics charge the Hamilton’s solution, based on European legislative and banking interests. If these central bank with creating the financial precedents, was to create a national or cen- interests could get rid of the central bank, crisis by keeping interest rates too low tral bank — one he already had termed the they would get rid of a competitor and a from 2001 to 2006, thereby underwrit- “Bank of the United States” — that would regulator, and they would likely get the ing the housing bubble that collapsed in create a sound currency, attract foreign US government’s banking business. It was 2007 and 2008. In recent years, possibly loans, lend money to Congress to finance a win, win, win proposition. Despite the the war effort and stimulate the growth of support of President Madison, who had the American economy. He told Morris: opposed the BUS as a congressman in Illustration titled “Run on the Union Trust The tendency of a national bank is 1791, and also that of Treasury Secretary Company,” from the October 11, 1837 to increase public and private credit. Gallatin, the BUS lost its bid for re-char- issue of Harper’s Weekly. The former gives power to the state tering by one vote in the Senate. www.MoAF.org | Fall 2013 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 21 That was in 1811. A year later came the New York City national banks, which in War of 1812 with Great Britain, and with- that sense served as the central reserves of out a central bank the Treasury encoun- the expanding US banking system. tered a host of problems in financing the The financial panic of 1907, a major war. Chastened, when the war was over Collection of the Museum of American Finance embarrassment because the United States Congress chartered a second Bank of the by then had become the world’s leading United States in 1816, an enlarged ver- and most dynamic economy, revealed that sion of the first BUS. Like its predecessor, none of the substitutes for a central bank, the second BUS was an effective central or even all of them together, could prevent bank for most of the period of its 20-year or do much to alleviate such panics. In the charter. It stabilized domestic and foreign panic’s wake, Congress studied the world’s exchange rates, managed a rapid down- financial systems and determined to create sizing of the US national debt, established a new central bank, the Federal Reserve. an even larger nationwide branch network President Woodrow Wilson signed the than that of the first BUS, and presided bill late in 1913, and the Reserve Banks and over a happy period of marked, non- Collection of the Museum of American Finance System came on stream a year later. inflationary economic growth. But such achievements were not suf- Are Central Banks a Bad Idea? ficient to placate the second BUS’s political foes, who resurrected the very same coali- Economists, like other social scientists, tion of principle (a strict construction of find it difficult, if not impossible, to rep- constitutionality) and interest (state banks licate the controlled laboratory experi- had much to gain from ridding themselves ments that foster so much progress in the of a competitor and regulator) that had natural sciences. But history can help, for been raised in 1811 debates on re-chartering it demonstrates a variety of experiences. the first BUS. The political opposition to In the case at hand, we have a country, the the second BUS had a powerful cham- © Rudy Sulgan/Corbis United States, which had three periods of pion in the popular President, Democrat The three central banks in the nation’s history central banking in its history, and a couple Andrew Jackson, who said he had long- (top to bottom): The Bank of the US, the Second of periods without a central bank. standing suspicions about banks and bank- Bank of the US and the Federal Reserve. One of the main arguments given by ing in general since he had read about the proponents of central banking is that a 1720 South Sea Bubble crisis in England. central bank can prevent financial crises Jackson’s Whig Party opposition from occurring, as well as alleviate the attempted to embarrass him before he Fed, opened for business, the United States negative economic effects of such crises if came up for re-election in 1832 by pushing was without a central bank.