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RD-DD1843 [2017-06-19 12:17:38 +0000 UTC]

In 1909 or so, the "Boss of the U.S. Senate", Rhode Island Senator Nelson Aldrich had been working with Wall Street banker Paul Warburg on the concept of a central currency controlling bank to protect our money's stability.  This was in the wake of the 1907 "Banker's Panic" which led to several New York Banks being destroyed (in this case with the assent of master banker J. P. Morgan) because they were too weak to be saved by aid from stable  U.S. banks like Morgan's.  President Theodore Roosevelt had formerly called Morgan one of the "great malefactors of great wealth" in the U.S., but suddenly he showed no idea of how to handle financial panics, and had to allow Morgan to handle it (which TR must have loved, as did Morgan, from different perspectives).  Aldrich was a multi-millionaire with high contacts in Wall Street (including Morgan) and so better aware of the necessity for protecting the currency's value.  He and Warburg remembered that the First and Second Banks of the United States had performed such an action in the first forty five years of our country's existence, until President Andrew Jackson (who hated banks) destroyed the Second Bank in the "Bank War" of 1831 - 1837.  After that our currency was not as strong as it had been.  So he pushed Warburg's plan for a central clearing bank to be created.  It was a major policy issue for a few years, and never was passed in the Taft administration due to suspicions that Aldrich and Warburg were doing this only for their pals on Wall Street.  This may have been true, but the seed was laid.  Aldrich, in 1913, left the Senate due to changes in the election of U.S. Senators in the Constitution, and the new administration of President Woodrow Wilson looked over the idea again.  Under the auspices of Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo, and Virginia Senator Carter Glass, the Federal Reserve System was created making the government (rather than the banking industry) the ones who controlled the currency system. 

Aldrich's daughter married John D. Rockefeller Jr.  Their son was future New York Governor and U.S. Vice President Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (who looked a little bit like his grandfather, withouth the moustache).

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