
The Money Masters
Bill Still's long-form history of banking argues that control over the issuance of money, not elected office, has been the real seat of power in Western nations for centuries. The film traces that argument from the goldsmith bankers of London through the Bank of England's founding, the Rothschild family's rise, and the repeated fights over central banking in the United States, from the First and Second Banks of the United States through Andrew Jackson's veto fight to the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Narration walks through Lincoln's Greenback experiment, the panics of the late 1800s, and the private ownership structure of the Fed, using period engravings, photographs, and archival documents to back each claim. Historians and economists appear on camera to lay out competing readings of events like the Jekyll Island meeting where the Federal Reserve Act was drafted. Running well over three hours, it builds toward a specific policy argument: that Congress, not private banks, should control the money supply.