Birth of a Monster?

On December 23, 1913, the United States Congress passed and President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Federal Reserve Act. This Act created the Federal Reserve System, with control over the money and banking system in the United States (and after World War II, as the U.S. dollar became the reserve currency, the entire world). But, much of the history of how the Federal Reserve came to be and what it consists of at its core has been lost to the current generation of Americans. We, the current generation of Americans, owe it to ourselves and our posterity to learn the lessons of the past and to reacquaint ourselves with the nature of this beast.