Excerpt:
"Before the Fed, the number of nonnational banks was growing steadily, as was their percentage of total bank deposits. By 1896 the number of nonnational banks had grown to 61 percent and their share of deposits to 54 percent; by 1913 those numbers had increased to 71 percent and 57 percent, respectively. Thus, Wall Street power was waning. It was also being diminished by a new trend in which businesses financed growth from profits rather than borrowed funds. Bank interest rates were too high for many ventures.

Then there was the long-standing problem with depositors. They would leave their money with a bank, believing it was available on demand, and the banks would turn around and loan it out. If enough customers lined up to withdraw their money, the bank could only close its doors (or get an exemption from government).

So, from Wall Street’s perspective, there were the problems of competition from nonnational banks, industry’s preference for thrift over debt, and the public’s irritating tendency to panic and run on banks.

To address this situation, four representatives of J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Kuhn, Loeb, along with Senator Nelson Aldrich and assistant secretary of the Treasury A. Piatt Andrew, met secretly at Morgan’s retreat on Jekyll Island, Georgia, in November 1910. The bankers accounted for an estimated one-fourth of the world’s wealth.

Led by Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb, they devised a banking cartel that was written into law in late 1913. The money powers—Wall Street—sold the plan to the public as a means of controlling the vast power of Wall Street.

How was Wall Street shackled? It wasn’t. By appointing Wall Street bankers to the Federal Reserve Board and to the most important post in the new system, governor of the New York Fed, they increased Wall Street’s influence.

The original manifestation of the Fed included these developments:

The Fed monopolized the issue of all banknotes; national and state banks could only issue deposits, and the deposits had to be redeemable in Fed notes and gold.
All national banks were drafted into the Fed, and their reserves had to be kept as demand deposits at the Fed.
As banks around the country sent their depositors’ gold to the Fed, they received Fed notes in return. Thereafter, when the public made withdrawals, they were handed Fed notes instead of gold coins. The disuse of gold coins not only encouraged inflation, but it also made confiscation easier later on.
With the centralizing of gold and bank reserves, the Fed doubled the inflationary power of the banks by reducing the reserve requirement from 5:1 to 10:1. With more credit available, the banks could lower their interest rates.
...
The Federal Reserve was not a sound institution that became corrupt. It was always a corrupt institution and has only grown more corrupt.

Ron Paul has the right approach—End the Fed. Get it out of our lives and restore monetary freedom—the right to choose a medium of exchange."