Who owns the Fed? No, really who owns the Federal Reserve?
Inevitably while exploring the nature of our frail financial system one gets awfully suspicious of the big bad federal reserve, an institution created by several bankers and politicians at the turn of the century in order to avoid banking panics. Several core tasks of the Federal Reserve were to preserve and maintain the health of the American economy and avoid banking panics the likes of 1908. A secondary and rather subjective task was to preserve the integrity of the US Dollar. After eleven recessions, a great depression and the current financial crisis one would agree that the Fed failed. Worse yet, since 1913 (The Fed's creation) the dollar has lost 95% of it's value, so that is another second failure. A catastrophic failure of such proportion would send most private corporations into exile and permanent banishment, but since the Fed is the creation of Congress and the Fed's members are partially appointed by our Government - continued failure can be ...