Central Banks were made flesh in the form of the Bank of England. The US ( rather belligerently ) avoided this model for a variety of reasons, but mainly becaus

Central Banks were made flesh in the form of the Bank of England. The US ( rather belligerently ) avoided this model for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it was England, back when that was a marque of corruption ( the last President who was also more or less in the Revolution was roughly Jackson ). Jackson also used this strategically to stab at his enemies, who were of considerable number. The Panic of 1907 was no joke; the Fed is Our Robotic JP Morgan, who forced the network of haircuts and liquidity support needed to end that. It's not clear to me that the accusations of moral hazard hold that much water. Calomiris and Haber wrote the excellent "Fragile by Design", which examines the difference between the Canadian and US financial systems. I'm far from an expert, but this seems the most fruitful examination so far - everybody was operating on towers of just-so stories. "Break the banks up" and "jail them" most likely would have accomplished very little. It's less corruption than it is Dunning-Kruger, less Mr. Burns than it is Homer Simpson. Socializing the losses has little actual cost - no matter how fictional you think this is, it's even moreso - and the big profits in the end were made by Micheal Burry and the others who shorted those markets. If money is a convenient fiction, then the Fed balance sheet is five degrees of separation from that fiction. Japan? Demographic collapse. Deutsche bank? Uh, Euro problems. What has gone well with the Eurozone? IMO? The US used to be planted thick with $10, $20, $40M per year topline companies. They went the way of the dodo bird because who wants that? Just making a living? Nah, we wanna make a killing. Make a better product? No, use finance to edge the competition out, even ( perhaps especially ) if it cripples the company doing it. That's culture rot. People did this sort of thing in, say 1950. Just not everybody. I do want to work. This is widely disbelieved; it's probably cost me jobs, incredibly. After all, we're supposed to use real work as prep for the rent-seeking Olympics, right? If you're still doing Real Work(tm) at 30, you're a looser ( sic ). Oh, and we're going to dumb Real Work down for you because we don't trust you. But even more profound is the observation that actual production, distribution, sales and support are on rails. Stuff costs ( in cases, way ) less than it used to. There are no bears to eat us, so we make up methods and practices to stroke our narcissism. My daughter the evolutionary biologist has a slightly dissonant phrase for this - "not enough lions."