I'm in the "Creature from Jekyll Island" camp-- the Fed was a deliberately insidious creation right from the get-go. It's nothing more than a simple extension of the thousands-years-old "money changers" scam: issuing certificates for more assets than you even have, while manipulating the market-- through interest rates, for example-- to intentionally cause liquidations among marginal players.

That said and on the other hand, the modern-day Fed really can't win; if they don't raise and try to "normalize" rates, they are shellacked by critics for creating malinvestment-- but if they do raise rates, it's said that they "don't care about the commoner." The solution of course is to not manipulate rates in the first place-- they're in a corner of their own painting. But now that they're there, they should be trying to "normalize" the rates!