It all sounds so reasonable and rational until you realize that finance least of all is idealistic.

The Federal Reserve was actually created in order to save the big New York banks from their greed-driven mistakes, and that is the Fed's principal activity. In recent decades the Fed has gone beyond merely saving the big banks from their mistakes to helping the big ones concentrate more banking into their hands.  The Fed causes banking crises and then provides funds for the big banks to absorb the troubled regional banks.  The Fed's current policy of raising interest rates after a decade of negative interest rates has the entire banking system insolvent. This resulted in runs on the banks, which the Fed did not save by expanding reserves, instead permitting failure and acquisition.  Obviously, what I had been trained to teach was false.

This is true of so much of what is taught in every subject.  

This bit of history is only a prologue to my expose of the Fed.  The Federal  Reserve has the sole responsibility for all inflation, depression, and recession since its creation.  Until the Fed's creation, the purchasing power of the US dollar was essentially constant over massive periods of time.  Since the creation of the Federal Reserve (1913), today's dollar is a small fraction of the value of a dollar in 1912.  I recently published a menu from 1914, around the time when my parents were born, showing restaurant prices ranging from 10 to 25 cents. Today you cannot purchase anything for 10-25 cents.