BTW, this is what I email people when they tell me the FED is a private corporation, etc…:
I want people to know the real answer to this because it often comes up. Is the FED really a private corporation owned by the banksters?
No. The heart and sole of the Federal Reserve is the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which controls the monetary base - the total size of outstanding federal reserve notes plus commercial bank reserves held on account at a Federal Reserve Bank. This is the institution that can monetize or demonetize debt, changing the size and structure of the Federal Reserve Banks’ balance sheets.
The FOMC consists of 12 voting members. 7 are the Board of Governors of the FED, all selected by the president and approved by the senate, serving 14 year terms. 1 is the President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The other 4 are 4/11 remaining Federal Reserve Bank Presidents, rotating yearly. So, 7/12 most important members of the FED are chosen directly by the President and approved by Congress. Already, we see it is publicly, not privately, controlled.
The Reserve Bank Presidents are chosen by the Board of Directors of that Federal Reserve Bank. These boards consist of 9 members, 6 chosen by the member banks, and 3 chosen directly by the federal, presidentially-appointed Board of Governors.
Member banks are each divided into 3 classes depending upon their size. Each class selects 2/6 bank-selected directors.
If we were to assume that any one class of private banks, such as the largest, shares the policy direction of the government, every Reserve Bank President would likely be pro-government. The entire FOMC would be controlled in government interest.
Member banks have no legal option to avoid the system. All nationally chartered banks must be a member of the FED by law. The FED’s currency is legal tender, making banking in a alternate currency impractical.
Many are confused by the fact that member banks must purchase shares of their regional Federal Reserve Bank to become members. This is more akin to a fee. The “stock” is not publicly traded and has no market price. Banks pay 6% of their capital base to purchase this stock, so it costs relatively the same for any bank, regardless of size. The dividends paid on the stock are miniscule. Most of the Federal Reserve Banks’ profit (most of which comes from holding government bonds) is actually paid to the government. And as we just demonstrated, owning shares does not give anyone much control over the whole system. Most member banks are corporate entities with thousands of owners…and there are thousands of member banks, all with relatively the same voting power.
There is no inner sanctum of Class C international super banks that run things from behind the scenes, handing themselves trillions of dollars. If so, they’d have to have secret influence over the President and Senate, not simply “ownership” of the FED. Maybe they do, but that is a completely different argument. I just wanted to point out the FED is not a private corporation, as we know them. Its stock cannot be freely traded and is valueless to the market, pays a miniscule dividend which is usually much smaller than the cut the government takes, and offers its owners little control of the overall system. Futhermore, its “owners” are thousands of commercial banks, many of which are each owned by thousands of corporate stockholders. Finally, banks tend to have equal voting power, independent of size, in this system, with free access to join.