Which is to say that it has nothing to do with the institutional structure of the Federal Reserve System and everything to do with the thorough corruption of the American political system.

After all, during the Great Compression of wealth distribution and the rise of the Great American Middle Class, in the era of tightly regulated banking operations engaging in the boring business of prudent lending to good credit risks ...
... it was exactly the same Federal Reserve system.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.