The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States. There are about 200 countries in the world, and only about ten do not have central banks. The few that don't are all micro-states like Monaco and Palau. Monetary policy is economic policy that controls a state's supply of money. The central bank is the instrument that allows a state to use monetary policy, and 75% of economists support the use of monetary policy, while only 12% oppose it. Skeptics criticize the Federal Reserve because the government does not have much control over it. That is to say, the members of the Federal Reserve Board are unelected and ostensibly "unaccountable." However, it is very well established that the more insulated a central bank is from incompetent politicians, the lower its currency's inflation rate will be over time. If you want to know what happens when a central bank is not independent from the government, see Zimbabwe. The Federal Reserve is a fantastic institution that has warded off the consequences from severe economic downturns. All well-educated Americans should admire it. However, there are so many cranks and conspiracy theorists who have a problem with it. Why is the Federal Reserve the victim of these attacks and not more widely celebrated?
Part of it is historic American distrust of central banking that dated all the way back to the Revolutionary War, but part of the conspiracy theories are derived from the fed's shady origins. The initial bill for the creation of the Federal Reserve was drafted in secret in 1910 between Senate Republican Nelson Aldridge and representatives from JP Morgan, Rockefeller, and Kuhn Loeb & Co., which were at the time the most powerful financiers in the entire country. It would be as if Chuck Schumer introduced the biggest monetary reform in US history with a bill that he drafted in a secret meeting with executives from JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. This, combined with Aldridge's strong ties to Wall Street, infuriated many southern Democrats who alongside their preexisting doubts about central banking, were also upset about the notion of their financial system being developed by "Wall Street bankers and other east coast elites". Ultimately, the bill passed and our federal reserve has been a remarkable institution, but the conditions of its origin make it ripe for anybody who has a (usually antisemitic) bone to pick with the relationship between the government and our financial system.