This year, Jerome Powell delivered gave the markets an early Christmas present. On December 13, the institution he chairs, the Federal Reserve, hinted that it would cut interest rates three times by 2024 – meaning that the cost of financing the American economy would fall. This prospect was received with euphoria by the stock markets, which were not expecting so much.

As the year draws to a close, the Fed has another reason to celebrate: its 110^th anniversary. On December 23, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the law creating what would become the world's most powerful financial institution.

Looking at its history also means delving into that of the United States: the construction of its federalism, tensions between states and the federal government, banking crises, but also the way it gradually built up its financial hegemony. "At the beginning of the 20^th century, the country had no central bank: President Andrew Jackson abolished the previous one in 1837," said Jean-Marc Daniel, an economist at ESCP Business School. This is partly due to the strong antagonisms between the agrarian regions of the West and South, indebted and in favor of a weak currency, and the more industrialized regions of the East and North, creditors who demanded a strong currency.

In the absence of centralized credit regulation, one banking crisis followed another, like the one in 1907. Triggered by an attempt at stock market manipulation on copper mines, its mechanisms were in some ways similar to the 2007 crisis. Panic spread, depositors rushed to the counters to withdraw their savings, and banks closed one after the other. Faced with the absence of a central bank able to come to their rescue, financial magnate John Pierpont Morgan intervened himself to provide liquidity to the most fragile establishments.

In 1910, a group of financiers and politicians met on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia, and agreed on the need to create a "lender of last resort." In other words, an institution capable of supporting banks in the event of a panic – and putting an end to the domino effect. The Fed was created three years later.

"It was also the fruit of the work of a commission that closely studied European monetary institutes," said Eric Monnet, a specialist in economic history at the Ecole d’Economie de Paris. "At the time, owning a central bank was considered one of the attributes of the modern state: The United States followed the movement." Building the Fed also gave them a foothold on international markets, which at the time were financed in pounds sterling. "This was part of the expansion of American banking power," said Monnet.

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