This March was eventful in the world of finance, to say the least. We saw multiple banking crisis without even making it to the middle of the month.

The financal system is quite convoluted if you are new to it. I still consider myself fairly new, although way better informed over the last few years.

The panic of 1907

The roots

Where does our modern banking system come from?

Let's set a timeframe to this -- we will look at the modern banking system, which starts in 1910 with the secret meeting at Jekyll Island, which laid the foundation for the US Federal Reserve ("the Fed"). Over the course of 9 days, 6 men laid out the future of centeral banking as we know it, and it was all done in secret. These private interests (+ Nelson Aldrich, the Senator who got them together).

What they drafted came to be known as the Federal Reserve Act, which essentially legalized the cartel of the Big 4 American banks that we live with today.

In the words of Paul Warburg (one of the 6 people at the Island)

"Picture a party of the nation's greatest bankers stealing out of New York on a private railroad car under cover of darkness, stealthily traveling hundreds of miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch, sneaking on to an island deserted by all but a few servants, living there a full week under such rigid secrecy that the names of not one of them was once mentioned lest the servants learn the identity and disclose to the world this strangest, most secret expedition in the history of American finance."

This was a true cartel, supported by the government, and treated as an overall 'good' thing, to 'protect the consumer'.