The Fed seeks to manipulate the currency. One of the purposes of the legislative act creating the Fed was "to furnish an elastic currency." It succeeded. During the first full calendar year of the Federal Reserve's existence, the currency inflated at a greater rate than during the previous century and a quarter of the Republic's existence. In other words, inflation was worse in that first year than it had been in the entirety of the previous 125 combined.

There is no direct democratic accountability with the Federal Reserve. Voters can't unseat board members as they can congressmen. Coining money is constitutionally the duty of Congress, but congressmen meekly gave it up to the Federal Reserve--whose board is comprised of presidential appointees--in 1913. They would later hand over war powers and even quasi-legislative functions through the misused executive order. But the Fed was one of the first abdications of power by elected congressmen, who became more concerned with getting elected than with representing the people who elected them.

The term of office for a Fed board member is fourteen years, as opposed to two years for a member of the House of Representatives. They are immune to removal, so they answer to, well, no one. But since the president gets to appoint them, subject to senate approval, let's blame presidents (Isn't that what congressmen wanted us to do when they abdicated their responsibility?) for the Federal Reserve's near-hundred-year war on stable money.

Using MeasuringWorth.com, I crudely calculated the inflation rates under individual presidents. Since the site calculates inflation on a yearly basis, and presidential terms of office--regularly starting in March and then, beginning in 1936, in late January, and irregularly starting upon death or disgrace--don't conform to calendar years, the figures undoubtedly are off ever-so slightly. Nevertheless, they give a good feel for inflation under the various post-progressive era presidents.

Woodrow Wilson 11.09
Jimmy Carter 10.77
Richard Nixon 6.11
Gerald Ford 6.10
Harry Truman 5.71
George H.W. Bush 4.20
Ronald Reagan 3.83
Lyndon Johnson 3.40
Franklin Roosevelt 2.82
George W. Bush 2.63
Bill Clinton 2.54
Dwight Eisenhower 1.47
John Kennedy 1.16
Calvin Coolidge 0.04
Warren Harding -2.35
Herbert Hoover -7.27

Alas, even presidents do not know in advance the policies their appointees will pursue and can't be held responsible for board members serving during their presidential terms who were appointed by previous presidents. So we're left to blame people whose names we don't know, whose faces we've never seen, and whose jobs we can't take away. And this was perhaps the idea of progressive-era reformers: empower unelected technocrats, geeks, and managers, and emasculate elected officials, which is another way of emasculating the citizenry.

I think that isn't an unreasonable view of their motives. A year ago I was reading a lot of John Dewey and about the Progressives generally and their unwavering belief in the progress of humanity if only the social "scientists" could take control of the masses is striking. I don't know if it is simply a tyrrannical impulse, a semi-natural desire on the part of "smart" people to want to control the dummies, or just the standard Leftist enlightenment hubris and scientism at work. The only major differences between the Progressives and the commies that I note is the Progressives open elitism as well as general reluctance to support overt violent means of achieving their goals.

Bruce,

I believe the urge to control others is in all of us. That's why we have laws. We want to restrain people from overstepping their bounds. But there is also a sort of frustration of dealing with humans, that can eventually have us thinking about how we can force the issue. The more self-possessed we are the more we're going to want people moved out of our way.

It's just that the smart people think that it's smart because they're smart. And they also write books about it, because again, they think it's a smart thing, and they've noticed other smart people who share the same frustration--so it must be smart (because only the smart people can articulate it in such a way).

And in a way that no technocrat has objected, it can't be helped but note that not only do smart people have more sway in our government than dumb people (an inequity), but they promote it as if you would want nothing but. Not all equal access to government is equal. To the extent that the people who used to be concerned about equal access to government now get cranky every time the dumb hoi polloi decide to vote on something and mess up the nice, clean concepts are judges are trying to forge to progress us.

But, like I said, I think it's in all of us. It's just more pronounced, more theorized, and does not have as high a barrier of entry. And it's more documented because they thrive on making their thoughts documentable.

Sea King,

Augustine calls the impulse "libido dominandi" Nietzsche calls it "will to power," and I agree that the impulse is in all of us as fallen creatures prone to pridefulness. I shot off my comment above quickly and didn't let it reflect my acknowledgement of the all encompassing scope of this temptation/failing.

One new development of the modern period is the disjunction between wealth and education w/ the rise of the bourgeoisie. So you have a decline in classical politics aristocratic argument to rule (that wealth/land goes w/ wits and a right to rule) replaced w/ a bourgeois technocrat, advanced degree (mostly law and business degrees, but also academics) argument for a "right to rule." Aristotle calls these group arguments to rule "regime arguments" and what rule by the middle class entails as far as regime arguments go, particularly when the other two groups (the wealthy and the mob) are largely shut out.