No “families” or “foreign investors” own the Federal Reserve Banks, although in point of fact they are not owned by the Federal government. This article does a thorough job of refuting some of the leading conspiracy theories about “international bankers having taken over our financial institutions.”
Why, the International Satanic Jewish Communist Vatican Freemasonic Bilderberger Trilateralist New World Order Conspiracy Cabal, Inc., of course! Where wuz you raised?
The Federal Reserve system may be privately owned in a sense, but it certainly is a quasi-governmental institution at the very least. It’s controlled by a board appointed by the President and its powers and operation are to a large extent governed by Federal law.
One of the reasons it’s not directly controlled by the Executive or Legislative branches is that there is a very obvious benefit to NOT allowing the government to print up enough money to pay off the debt. A currency that’s got checks and balances all over its control will be more stable than one where the President might decide to just whomp up a few trillion greenbacks to fix the deficit/debt problems.
I wonder how different things would be if the Fed’s Board of Governors were elected officials? Not appointed by Congress or the president, but elected separately by the people. That would make public monetary policy, something most people rarely think about, an actual political issue – which it inescapably is – at regular intervals. Would money be looser or tighter than it is now? Food for thought.
Such a system would certainly interest me, but I was an Econ major.
I’m skeptical, though, that people would care much. After all, gigantic deficits don’t seem to faze the general public and they have direct say in who sets fiscal policy.
Congress used to have the Constitutional authority to coin money. Exactly how they did this before the FRS, I’m not clear. One of the arguments for the FRS act was that it removed monetary policy from the political arena, where Congressmen were vulnerable to do what was short-run expedient rather than long-run beneficial. Then again, in the 1929 Panic, the Fed tightened the money supply, which exascerbated the Crash, rather than loosened it, which could have resulted in banks being able to ride through it easier. While this may have been the result of a relatively new agency failing in its first major challenge, it has been interpreted as a result of deliberate conspiracy.
Part of my departure from my past Birchism is opposition to the Fed. However, I can’t blame the Conspiracy Buffs for their suspicion, as it emerged in the same year 1913 as the Progressive Income Tax, fulfilled one of Karl Marx’s ten planks for Communizing a nation, was championed at the secret Jekyll Island, GA meeting with Colonel Edward Mandell House & various Banking family representatives, and was presided over by the Warburg family, whose German branch held the same position over the Kaiser’s Germany’s national bank.
The thing that fascinates me about the questions on the Fed’s independence or accountability to We The People, or more broadly to International Banking Conspiracies in general, is the bit about
“Families”??
Whaddya mean “families”?
It’s 2005. The private stockholders of the Fed are corporations. The entities that move money around the world and have you and me and the girl next door over a barrel in in whatever continent we live in are corporations. Families, schmamilies.
Oh, and BrainGlutton/Cynical Gabe, don’t forget to toss in the descendants of Mary Magdalene, and the Reptiloid Aliens.
[Tin Hat ON]
No, he didn’t. The descendants of Mary Magdalene and the Reptiloid Aliens are the same people, and are the families behind the Bilderburg and the Trilateral Commission.
And they all spend New Year’s Eve at Hilton Head on the Renassiance Weekends.
They still have the authority to coin money and regulate monetary policy. They could theoretically overrule any decision the Federal Reserve makes. They could abolish the Federal Reserve tomorrow if they were so inclined.
But it must work better for them to have someone else to blame if things go wrong.
It still does. However, in an era of paper money, this power is thoroughly trivial.
By establishing United States Mints, to which one could bring bullion and have it minted into coins of specified specie content and value.
On the contrary, the primary goal of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was to increase the degree of political control over monetary policy. Before 1913, central banking was in private hands, and private bankers controlled the availability of credit.
Why, the International Satanic Jewish Communist Vatican Freemasonic Bilderberger Trilateralist New World Order Conspiracy Cabal, Inc., of course! Where wuz you raised?
You forgot Colonel Sanders, the Rockafellers and the Kaiser…
What’s that got to do with the price of dollars?