It's really about who has power to control the economy of the country: private individuals or the banks and the government. It used to be way over on the private individual side before the fed and the income tax flipped power over to the banks and the government side. Previously, you had Carnegie and Rockefeller running very large portions of the economy and the banks and government were much less powerful.
Today it's govetnment borrowing and the banks that make most of the money. Yes, the banks create money. It's called fractional reserve banking and the money multiplier and it's all legal all totally out in the open. Keynesian economists will tell you that the banks are the most important organizations in the entire economy because they create money to increase aggregate demand.
Meanwhile in China, the government prints money whenever it needs it and tells the banks what to do and who to lend to and they haven't had a credit bust since the 80s, even though The Economist has regularly been predicting one since the early 90s.