The sentiment here is certainly Jacksonian, though I'm not sure whether that's a good thing. However, I think the article conveniently omits and exaggerates certain facts in financial history. Sure the US technically operated for 83 years without The Central Bank... but that doesn't mean other institutions didn't serve similar functions. There were local banks that served as clearinghouses and guaranteed deposits. This was shortly followed by a "national bank" system, primarily to deal with both the Civil War and the fact that half of all banks were failing on a regular basis. However, even that couldn't deal with seasonal flow of funds that regularly caused liquidity crises like the Panic of 1907. I should note that several people attribute the Panic of 1907 to the very lack of a central bank/ lender of last resort, and they certainly give JP Morgan credit for acting in that capacity to stop the Panic. And even moving to the most recent crisis, sure the Fed probably had something to do with it.... by virtue of controlling a pretty significant driver of the economy. But what's the criticism? That they kept rates too low for too long? As opposed to looking at outright fraud being committed by mortgage originators (fraud that is much more directly linked to a liquidity crisis or crisis of confidence), it seems irresponsible to point the finger at what is a fundamentally reactionary institution. And we should want them to be reactionary... imagine a Fed that tried to time the market. Besides, we've absolutely had asset price bubbles which popped, yet barely affected the fundamental economy (the most recent being the tech bubble of 2000). And again, while one could point to the "too low too long" argument, the isolated nature of the tech bubble certainly points more to a one-off instance of animal spirits than some systematic central bank error. Frankly, I think you could have had a call money rate multiple times higher and people still would've been subscribing to Pets.com and piling into Cisco stock. Just like you could have had a fed funds rate that was higher in 2005 but Countrywide would still be originating toxic mortgages, and you'd still get a liquidity crisis.