/pol/ - Politically Incorrect

>>13524648

The Federal Reserve Banks are the most recent institutions that the United States government has created to provide functions of a central bank. Prior institutions have included the First (1791–1811) and Second (1818–1824) Banks of the United States, the Independent Treasury (1846–1920) and the National Banking System (1863–1935). Several policy questions have arisen with these institutions, including the degree of influence by private interests, the balancing of regional economic concerns, the prevention of financial panics, and the type of reserves used to back currency.

A financial crisis known as the Panic of 1907 threatened several New York banks with failure, an outcome avoided through loans arranged by banker J. P. Morgan. Morgan succeeded in restoring confidence to the New York banking community, but the panic revealed weaknesses in the U.S. financial system, such that a private banker could dictate the terms of a bank's survival. In other parts of the country, clearing houses briefly issued their own money notes to carry on business. In response, the federal government created the National Monetary Commission to investigate options for providing currency and credit in future panics. The result was the Federal Reserve System, which established several Federal Reserve Banks to provide liquidity to banks in different regions of the country. The Federal Reserve Banks opened for business in November 1914

>>13524648

The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks were established as the operating arms of the nation's central banking system. They are organized as self-financing corporations and empowered by Congress to distribute currency and regulate its value under policies set by the Federal Open Market Committee and the Board of Governors. Banks gain access to the Federal Reserve system's services by becoming a member of a regional Reserve Bank and purchasing stock in it. The stock pays a dividend out of the Reserve Bank's earnings but grants no proportional voting power or ownership beyond the amount paid in, and it may not be sold or borrowed against. Each Reserve Bank has a nine-member board of directors, of whom six are chosen by member banks and three by the Board of Governors subject to qualifications defined in the Federal Reserve Act. If a Reserve Bank were ever dissolved or liquidated, the Act states that its surplus assets (after payment of debts and return of goy capital stock) would belong to the federal government.

Legal cases involving the Federal Reserve Banks have concluded that they are neither "private" nor "governmental" as a general rule, but may be treated as either depending on the particular law at issue. In United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation v. Western Union Telegraph Co. the U.S. Supreme Court stated, "Instrumentalities like the national banks or the federal reserve banks, in which there are private interests, are not departments of the government. They are private corporations in which the government has an interest." The United States has an interest in the Federal Reserve Banks as tax-exempt federally created instrumentalities whose profits belong to the federal government, but this interest is not proprietary. In Lewis v. United States,[9] the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stated that: "The Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of the FTCA [the Federal Tort Claims Act], but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations." The opinion went on to say, however, that: "The Reserve Banks have properly been held to be federal instrumentalities for some purposes." Another relevant decision is Scott v. Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City,[8] in which the distinction is made between Federal Reserve Banks, which are federally created instrumentalities, and the Board of Governors, which is a federal agency.

Regarding the structural relationship between the twelve Federal Reserve banks and the various commercial (member) banks, political science professor Michael D. Reagan has written that:

… the "ownership" of the Reserve Banks by the commercial banks is symbolic; they do not exercise the proprietary control associated with the concept of ownership nor share, beyond the statutory dividend, in Reserve Bank "profits." … Bank ownership and election at the base are therefore devoid of substantive significance, despite the superficial appearance of private bank control that the formal arrangement creates.

>>13524648

LOL, nice try.

>>13524665

wh.. wh… what do you mean? its not me

>>13524688

Nope, it wasnt me, it was somebody else

>>13524787

What can I say? I love my job

>>13524695