Fractional reserve lending was first practiced a long time ago. Before banks, people who had gold (jewelry, ingots) could take it to the blacksmith who could melt it down to usable pieces for trade. Some people wanted to keep their gold in the safe keeping of the blacksmith. The blacksmith would give a receipt for the gold. People would trade their receipts for goods with others in the town. The blacksmith realized this and soon after started making receipts for gold not there. The towns people found out, he was killed for thievery.
In 1913 the Federal Reserve Act was passed by Woodrow Wilson. His chief advisor was a man named Edward House. House is responsible for the creation of the Council on Foreign Relations. House is the man who steered the country to where we are now. The central banks have most Americans slaving away for the almighty dollar, while at the same time most Americans do not know the usury attached to the dollar.
Some good books to read to get yourself informed of this situation are:
Behold A Pale Horse, William Cooper
Fruit From The Poisinous Tree, Melvin Stamper
The knowledge is out there, but you have to throw away all that you have been taught, swallow your pride and learn of the real history.
Nice to Steem you @markzuckerbergs, and thanks for the bibliographical references ! I'll much appreciate posts like this in the future SteemCyclopedia :-)
Another prominent contributor in building nowaday's fraudulent currency system was John Law, Finance Minister under the French Regent, who in 1615 invented "printed money" (the blacksmith's receipts you mention, generalized at the scale of a country), forcing all France inhabitants to convert their silver and gold coins to that monkey money.