Two Failed Central Banks Before the Fed Ever Existed
The Federal Reserve was not the country's first attempt at a central bank, it was the third, arriving only after the First and Second Banks of the United States were each killed for political reasons and the country spent 77 years without any lender of last resort at all. That history of repeated failure and repeated financial panic is why the 1913 Federal Reserve Act split power across 12 regional banks rather than concentrating it in one place, a design choice still shaping the System's structure and its legal disputes today.
The Second Bank of the United States in Philadelphia, chartered in 1816 and closed after Andrew Jackson's 1832 veto of its recharter, one of two earlier central banks that preceded the Federal Reserve by nearly a century.
Sources & Further Reading
- Federal Reserve History (Federal Reserve Board / Richmond Fed), Federal Reserve Act Signed into Law
- Federal Reserve History, The Treasury-Fed Accord
- Federal Reserve History, The Panic of 1907
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, About the Fed
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Board names Jerome H. Powell chair pro tempore
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, FOMC Statement, June 2026
- Supreme Court of the United States, Trump v. Cook, No. 25A312 (June 29, 2026)
- NPR, Supreme Court says Fed's Lisa Cook can stay in her job for now
- NPR, Senate confirms Kevin Warsh as next chair of the Federal Reserve
- CNBC, Powell confirms he will step aside at the end of his term as chair
- CNBC, Powell asks inspector general to review $2.5 billion renovation
- SCOTUSblog, The Supreme Court and whether the Fed is special
- Just Security, The Federal Reserve Exception to the Slaughter Rule
- Government Accountability Office, Federal Reserve System: Audit Requirements and Restrictions
- Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey, Second Bank of the United States
This page draws on the Federal Reserve Board's own historical essays and press releases, the Supreme Court's June 2026 opinion in Trump v. Cook, Government Accountability Office reports on the Fed's audit requirements and its 2011 emergency lending audit, and contemporaneous reporting on the 2025-2026 Fed chair transition and removal-power litigation from NPR, CNBC, and SCOTUSblog. Historical building photographs are from the Library of Congress's Historic American Buildings Survey and the Federal Reserve Board's own archives.