[Apollia]

Originally Posted by Still Growing

Apollia,
The private Federal Reserve Banks (specifically NY), have special rules that apply to them. They are not a gov't agency but they are also not a typical shareholding company. They aren't a public corp, they aren't a gov't entity, not a C corp, LLC or any other.

It seems that they have some special designation that gives them privacy.

Wow, I didn't know that. That definitely sounds very shady and unfair, and like some kind of trick to dodge existing laws and regulations for corporations and government entities.

In addition they do not have to show their P&L to the Board nor to the public.

That is shocking. I don't understand how the Board could properly oversee them if the Board is kept in the dark about even the profit and loss statement.

Also, I think the public itself really has a right to know this stuff. If I'm not mistaken, little to nothing that (for example) Congress does is secret. The activities of Congress are published on the web and also frequently televised by C-Span.

Even though the "Federal" Reserve is apparently not an official part of the government, it has so much power it practically is a part of the government. I can't think of any reason why they would require such secrecy unless they were doing things that would outrage the public if the public knew about them.

I think in a democracy, government ought to be as transparent as possible, since it's supposed to be "by the people, for the people", but if the people have no idea what is going on and no way (or supposedly no right) to find out, they can't participate as well in the democratic process due to lack of knowledge.

So they are supposedly regulated by the Board of Governors however they have a non compete agreement that has no expiration date I believe.

Terrible... so they can just keep on doing the lousy job they're doing and there's no way to vote them out of office or even nominate some other weirdly-designated quasi-private corporation to take over their job.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 gave them these privaledges.

For anyone interested, here's a link to the text of the Federal Reserve Act.

It's awfully long... but someday, I'll get around to reading it.

If you do research on it you'll find that there was market manipulation and some insider dealing when they got the contract.

Not surprising...

It was passed in Congress right before Christmas break when nobody was there.

That seems very sneaky of whoever was responsible for that, as well as irresponsible of Congress. Whenever Congress votes on anything, everyone should be there.

Another interesting fact, over $75 billion of Iraq's oil money is sitting right now in the private bank of NY. Only recently did they start paying interest on it back to Iraq. Its interesting that the Fed bailed out AIG for $70 plus billion and the money they have in their account from Iraq is a similar amount. Its a coincidence however I find it ironic.

I don't understand the situation well enough to understand the irony, but, I'll take your word for it.

On the news you keep hearing "The Fed bailed out AIG" however who is the Fed? If you took a national poll on who the money came from I bet less than 1% would said it was from a private bank called The NY Fed.

I wouldn't have known either. (Though I already had heard in the past that the Fed is private).

In history class in high school and college here in the US there was no education on the true system. My good friend has a bachelors in Economics, is working on his law degree and spent time as a congressional aid in DC and he was floored when he discovered this. It kind of shook his economic foundation that his belief system was based on as you can imagine.

Wow.

Do you believe we are being intentionally deceived?

I think we're probably at least being intentionally left in the dark/undereducated.

Also, I think in general the average person (including the average educator) just doesn't consider economic topics important, or regards them as so mysterious and baffling they'll never be able to understand them, so why even try, and best to leave it up to the "experts".

Thanks for all the fascinating info.

Best wishes,
Apollia