Banking: Fight over the Federal Reserve

In a Washington hearing last week, the chairman of the House Banking Committee stared at one of the nation's top managers of money. Grumbled Texas Representative Wright Patman: "You can absolutely veto everything the President does. You have the power to veto what the Congress does, and the fact is that you have done it. You are going too far."

The object of Patman's wrath was ascetic-looking Alfred Hayes, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and a ranking member of the U.S.'s powerful central banking system. For three decades, Wright Patman has fumed and fussed that the Federal...