The commission, chaired by Rhode Island senator Nelson Aldrich, called for one central institution, with fifteen branches across the country, to issue currency and discount commercial paper. However, thirty-nine of the institution's forty-two-member board of directors would be bankers, which aroused the long-standing fear of some about the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few large banks.
In what follows, I will review the situation after the Lehman shock – the financial crisis following the September 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers – which is the starting point of the current recovery phase of Japan’s economy and also an underlying cause of the European debt crisis, and talk about developments thereafter.