What would America look like without a Fed?

http://www.americanbankingnews.com/2009/09/02/what-would-the-united-states-look-like-without-the-federal-reserve/

Apologists for the Fed would note that the United States was in recession half of the time between the Civil War and 1914 and only 21% of the time since the Fed came into force.

However, the frequent down-turns before 1914 weren’t the result of a lack of a central bank, but more-so because of poorly thought government regulations, such as bans on branch banking making it so that banks could not survive localized economic trouble. The Federal Government also forced banks to trade notes at a discount whenever the bank offering the note was from another area.



After the adoption of a system similar to Canada’s failed, only then did reformers consider the establishment of a central reserve bank.

As a result, the Federal Reserve Act allowed for the creation of 12 new banks to do what other banks were prevented from doing themselves, establishing branch networks and issuing currency backed by commercial assets.