Federal Reserve Act signed
Created the US central bank and completed the architecture of the gold-backed dollar. The Federal Reserve could issue Federal Reserve Notes (the dollar bills that still circulate) redeemable for gold at $20.67 per ounce. The final institutional piece of the pre-Depression gold standard, and the law that makes most subsequent US monetary history possible.
The 1913 Act completed a design that had been debated since the Civil War and that had failed to pass Congress twice (1841 and 1869). It also sealed a 100-year political argument over whether a central bank was constitutional. After December 23, 1913, that argument was legally settled. Politically, it still isn't.
04 · Gold Standard
In the late 19th century most major economies agreed to peg their currencies to gold at a fixed rate. Currencies became effectively interchangeable. The arrangement imposed discipline — you couldn't print more money than you held gold — but it also made economies brittle: a gold outflow forced an immediate contraction in money supply, regardless of real-world conditions.
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