The financial crisis that began in U.S. in the fall of 2007 and subsequently affected large parts of the world, and was followed by massive bank rescues (so-called bailouts), also plays a major role in this context as well as criticism of Federal Reserve.
In Congress these views are represented mainly by Dennis Kucinich, who belong to the progressive left, and Ron Paul, known right-wing "Fed critic."
One of the harshest critics were Andrew Jackson, the country's seventh president, who said that the central bank concentrated the nation's financial strength in a single institution, that it made the rich richer, that it gave power to the bankers instead of Congress, that the country became controlled from outside (read: from British financiers) and the northeastern states were favored at the southern and western states expense.
At the end of November 1910, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department A. Piatt Andrew, and five of the country's leading financiers (Frank Vanderlip, Henry P. Davison, Benjamin Strong, and Paul Warburg) arrived at the Jekyll Island Club to discuss monetary policy and the banking system.
The Need Act, presented in the House of Representatives in September 2011 by Dennis Kucinich, is a proposed law that implies that "the creation of money by private financial institutions as interest-bearing debts should cease once and for all".