Founding of the Federal Reserve System

The Federal Reserve System was created by the Federal Reserve Act, which President Woodrow Wilson signed into law on 23 December 1913. It followed decades of recurring banking panics in the United States, most recently the Panic of 1907, which convinced Congress that the country needed a central authority able to act as a lender of last resort and manage the elasticity of the money supply. The Act created a system of regional Reserve Banks overseen by a central Board in Washington, a structure meant to balance central control with regional representation across the country's banking system.