Despite the general conviction that it was during the Great Depression of the 1930s that the relation between the State and the economy was fundamentally transformed, key steps towards the shift within this relation can already be traced many decades earlier. "Wildcat banking" from the period of the 1830s to the 1860s is an example of a specific form of regulation imposed on the banking industry. In the work we are attempting to refute the myth that wildcat banking is an example of unsuccessful operation of so-called free banking. It is failure of the regulation which is identified as the reason for instability of this form of banking operation. As far as effects of regulatory measures are concerned in general, this historical period (or experience) can offer valuable parallels with the cause of the current global economic crisis at the beginning of the third millennium. These similarities are discussed in the last chapter of our work.