It used to be, during the dark days of the Cold War, watching the Kremlin and trying to read meaning into every nuance, tea leaf and coming and going, was elevated to an art form.

Today, it’s the same for the Fed.  Every meeting, every utterance of the Fed Chair and Fed Governors is parsed and analyzed and poured over for some hint of what the Fed will do and what it might mean for the markets, for the economy and for the politics of the country.

But it wasn’t always so.  In the aftermath of the 1907 financial panic, Congress created the Federal Reserve.  They did so for reasons not dissimilar to the state of our transitional economy today. But they did so in a spirit of compromise and national unity that seems a very far cry from anything that might happen today.

Putting all of this in its proper perspective is Roger Lowenstein in his new book America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

My conversation with Roger Lowenstein: