The Federal Reserve, the boys trace the story of banking from its ancient origins in Mesopotamian temples to the marble halls of Wall Street. It’s a tale of gold, greed, and government — and of how fear of financial collapse led a handful of powerful men to create something that would change the world forever.
We start at the beginning: when gold and silver were sacred, temples were banks, and the first loans were measured in grain. From there, Europe’s merchant families — the Medicis, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers — built fortunes and influence that still spark rumors today. As money moved across oceans and kings borrowed to fund their wars, the idea of a central bank was born — an institution that could steady economies… or secretly control them.
When the young United States tried to follow suit, chaos followed. The First and Second Banks of the United States ignited political warfare, with President Andrew Jackson declaring he’d “kill the monster” before it strangled democracy. For nearly eighty years after Jackson’s victory, America ran without a central bank — and paid dearly for it. Booms turned to busts, and panic became a way of life.
Then came 1907. Markets crashed, depositors rioted, and the nation teetered on collapse until one man — J. P. Morgan — stepped in to save the economy with his own fortune. The panic convinced Congress that the country needed a new kind of bank… one that wouldn’t rely on a single financier.
That’s when a secret train left New York for a remote island off the coast of Georgia. Its passengers were politicians and bankers, traveling under false names, carrying shotguns for cover, claiming they were going on a “duck-hunting trip.” What they were really hunting was control — over money itself.
Next time, in Part Two: the birth of the Federal Reserve, the conspiracies that have haunted it ever since, and why some people still believe the “creature from Jekyll Island” runs the world today.