Talk:Federal Reserve System/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

History Section

The History section still smacks of conspiracy theory. In particular, the gratuitous mention of some people's being Jewish has the stench of "the Jews are manipulating the economy to steal our money" hatefulness. Could somebody with knowledge of the history fix this? Josh Cherry 19:47, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The gratuitous and patently transparent reference to religion in this article is not only crass and offensive, but is emblematic of a superannuated view of world events more suited for the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion than a teaching encyclopedia for the general public.

The "FED and the BCE" section said:

>while the BCE has only to fight inflation. 
This is not true : the ECB can contribute to growth when inflation is low.

from the BCE website:

Objectives 
"The primary objective of the ESCB shall be to maintain price stability". 

And: "without prejudice to the objective of price stability, the ESCB shall support the general economic policies in the
Community with a view to contributing to the achievement of the objectives of the Community as laid down in Article 2."
(Treaty article 105.1) 

The objectives of the Union (Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union) are a high level of employment and sustainable and
non-inflationary growth.

in other words, this entire section of the article was basically wrong and therefore has been deleted.

>>>Which means it was close enough to being 'right' thus 'passable'.<<<< bye, bye his-story, hello truth

19th century

"Americans at the time knew of the destruction to the economy the European central banks had caused to their respective countries and to countries who became their debtors. They saw the large-scale government deficit spending and debt creation that occurred in Europe."

Which countries and which central banks? David.Monniaux 08:50, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Who owns the fed?

Does the Federal Reserve need to "claim" anything about its owners? Throughout this section, the author seems to use subtle undertones and "chatty" commentary, to promote his view that the organization is illegitimate. I don't think this is NPOV. Certainly the authority of the fed is derived from laws written by Congress. These laws should be enumerated with, perhaps, sections concisely quoted and links to their precise definition from official sources. In general, I did not find this section encyclopedic at all. It sounded more like someone with incomplete knowledge was providing his condensed perspective on the matter. I don't think this perpective should be deleted, however, but outlined in proper context.

How about this as a statement as to who owns the fed? On April 19th, 1982, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Lewis vs. US wrote: "Each Federal Reserve Bank Branch is a separate corporation owned by commercial banks in its region." The context in which that statement by the court was made makes the statement even more critical of the fed, given that the context in question was that Mr. Lewis had sued the federal government because he had been damaged by a fed employee driving a fed vehicle while on the job, and the court had dismissed the case and the federal government on the basis that the fed is not part of the federal government. Xode

Well, what do you mean, "Who owns the fed?"

Dear fellow editors:

On the question of "Who owns the fed," I contend that the term "fed" is ambiguous in the absence of elaboration. The following entities are separate from each other and, together with various other entities, comprise the "Federal Reserve System":

1. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System;
2. Federal Open Market Committee;
3. The Federal Reserve Banks (e.g., the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, of San Francisco, of Dallas, etc.);
4. "Member banks" in the Federal Reserve System.

When someone says "Federal Reserve" or "the fed" some people are going to think about the entire "Federal Reserve System," not a specific Federal Reserve Bank (e.g., the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, of Dallas, etc.) or even the Federal Reserve Banks generally. The use of the phrase "Federal Reserve" without the suffix "System" or "Bank" is unfortunately very common, and it may sometimes be a source of confusion.

The court in Lewis v. United States, 680 F.2d 1239 (9th Cir. 1982) (noted above) stated: "Each Federal Reserve Bank is a separate corporation owned by commercial banks in its region." The court noted that "the fact that the Federal Reserve Board [and here the court probably meant "the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System"] regulates the Reserve Banks does not make them federal agencies under the [Federal Tort Claims] Act."

To make things more confusing, the court also noted that the "Reserve Banks are deemed to be federal instrumentalities for purposes of immunity from state taxation."

In other words, what the court was talking about in Lewis was not the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, not the Federal Open Market Committee, not the member banks of the Federal Reserve System, and not the "Federal Reserve" or the "Federal Reserve System" as whole -- but only the Federal Reserve Banks themselves (in the Lewis case, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco).

So, we have at least two sources of confusion. One is the indiscriminate use of the term "Federal Reserve" without making clear whether we're talking about the entire Federal Reserve System or, alternatively, just the Federal Reserve Banks or, alternatively, the member banks, or some other part of the System.

The second source of confusion is that a Federal Reserve Bank, like other "things" can be considered one "legal thing" (to use a non-technical term) for purposes of one law such as the Federal Tort Claims Act and another "legal thing" for purposes of another law, such as a state tax law. The concept of things being treated one way under one law and another under another law is very familiar to lawyers, judges, etc.

So, the question is not "Who owns the fed", but rather a series of questions, such as:

Who owns the Federal Reserve Bank of (fill in the blank, e.g., "San Francisco")? Answer: Each Federal Reserve Bank is technically owned, in the form of shares of stock, by the member banks in that region of the country.
Who owns the member banks? Answer: The shareholders of the member banks, whoever they happen to be.
(Note: Ownership of shares in a Federal Reserve Bank is perhaps not completely analogous to ownership of shares in ExxonMobil, etc. Ownership of shares in a member bank is more comparable to owning shares of ExxonMobil -- i.e., you or I could theoretically own shares in ExxonMobil or in a member bank.)
Who owns the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System? The answer, obviously, is that no one does, as the Board is really a government entity. See 12 U.S.C. § 241.

Thus, some parts of the Federal Reserve System (such as the member banks) are privately owned and at least one part (the Board of Governors) is a governmental entity. We can argue or split hairs about whether the Federal Reserve Banks (e.g., of San Francisco, Dallas, etc.) are "governmental" or "private." But the important thing is to understand that the Federal Reserve System is composed of various parts, each part having different characteristics -- and it's therefore important that we be clear about what we mean when we say "the fed."

Yours, Famspear 23:00, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Famspear thank you for your explanation. If you could get this info out on the main page under the organization section I think it would be of great help to newbie federal reserver system researchers. I'll take a shot at it if I don't see anything in a couple of days, but I'm not yet very knowledgable about this subject and you seem to know about the subject.--Herda05 03:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Dear Herda05: Thanks. I do not consider myself an expert on the Federal Reserve System. I've been pretty swamped the past few weeks, so I would encourage you to give it a stab. My interest lies more with tax law, anyway. Yours, Famspear 20:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Quotes from lawmakers during the passage of the Federal Reserve Act

  • To clear up any confusion about this issue, I will quote the congressman Louis T. McFadden, chair of the House Banking and Currency Committee. He said the following during a speech before Congress on June 10, 1932:
"Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks. The Federal Reserve Board, a government board, has cheated the Government of the United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and the iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve banks acting together have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.
Some people think the Federal Reserve banks are United States Government institutions. They are not government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders. In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man's throat to get a dollar out of his pocket; there are those who send money into states to buy votes to control our legislation; and there are those who maintain an international propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us and wheedling us into the granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime."
McFadden, Wiki says, "In 1932, he motioned to impeach President Herbert Hoover and also introduced a resolution bringing about Conspiracy charges against the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. In 1933, he introduced House Resolution No. 158, Articles of impeachment for the Secretary of the Treasury, two assistant Secretaries of the Treasury, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and the officers and directors of its twelve regional banks." Quite a loveable fellow. He was defeated for reelection in 1932. All in all, rather more sensible, balanced, thoughtful and theoretical than some of the vehement critics of the Fed we keep hearing from. His successor, by the way, is now in reelection trouble because he tried to strangle his mistress. Rjensen 08:09, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

"Quite a loveable fellow." is this irony or what? John Smith (nom de guerre) 08:04, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The irony is that Mr. McFadden was the chair of this committee for the previous 12 years to this speech and did nothing to correct any of the "deficiencies" he highlighted in his speech.Stanleywinthrop 21:00, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

POV and quality issues

This article in its current state is awful. The section on how money is created implies that the existence of fiat money is one massive conspiracy. If someone wants to create an article of criticism of fractional reserve banking, go ahead, but the mocking that goes on in the section explaining it in this article is rediculous. Tom3 01:28, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm starting to work on it now. The problem with the Fed conspiracy theories, they are usually the most misinformed of all conspiracy theories, mostly by way of a process that is similar to the childrens game telephone. Some people make more valid criticisms of the Fed, such as the possibility of a hidden inflation tax, or the large foreign central bank ownership of treasury bonds, and then people hearing them get the issues confused and turn it into "foreign interests owning the fed", or other such things. I'm goign to keep the conspiracy theories in their own section, but I am cleaning up parts that obvious conspiracy theorists put into the body of the article. I should warn everyone that I've seen a large anti fed bias in a lot of other articles, a meme almost as big as game theory is throughout wikipedia.

However, I am ignorant about many topics. I need people to create these sections:

  • Life before the fed (how did normal banks work back then, what was the state of economic cycles back then? what was inflation like? etc.
  • I know that Volkner, in the 80's, changed something with the way Fed sets interest rates or something, so that its floating. This had a major and fundamental impact on the way the bond markets worked for example. I believe the change was that the Fed would only tamper with the fed funds rate, instead of tampering with that AND the reserve ratio. I am not sure though, but this is an important historical development for the Fed, and shold be talked about.
are you referring to the abandonment of strict money supply targeting? The Fed started focusing primarily on interest rates under Voelker. Feco 03:44, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
  • A series of articles have been provided here by the NESARA Institute that goes through the history of what life was like before the Fed, and what led to the creation of the Fed. http://nesara.org/articles/abstract.htm. Click on "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" to go through the series. In order to understand the history, it is good to start with the basics of what money really is; and I think they have hit the nail smack dab on the head with this one. The entire site is full of good articles that can be gleaned from to use here since the entire site is public domain. inigmatus 17:09, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Proposed Merge

I added a mergefrom tag to this article. It's not standard practice to split a criticism section from the main article about a topic. In this case, it's a recipe for POV forks and other problems. By merging the criticisms back into the main article, more editors will be able to work on it, and we'll hopefully see NPOV much more quickly. Feco 03:42, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

since no objections surfaced here (and one supporter agreed on the Criticism page), I made the merge. I left all of the content as-is... I figure it should sit for a few days before a major post-merge cleanup. Feco 06:10, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
When it was split off sometime last year, the main thought was that it was "close to conspiracy theory", since for example European central banks perform the same functions without being accused of anything. The claims and criticisms are so long compared to the main parts that they could overwhelm them, possibly lowering the "encyclopedic standard" of the article. There are sometimes special pages like the page Apollo_ moon_landing_hoax_accusations for the accusations concerning Project Apollo.
There could be a page with a title like "Reform Proposals for the Federal Reserve". Listing all 23 here seems to long. Whoever wrote them could have condensed the list to about 8-10 items. Foreign banks should cease to hold federal reserve accounts, federal reserve notes, and dollar denominated assets seems a bit utopian; many other criticisms are aimed at banks' special position. It would be better to have more detailed information about the goings on at the Fed--J heisenberg 11:27, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
I think it's fine to have a section about criticisms of the Fed in particular on the main Fed page, but let's move the general criticisms of fractional-reserve banking to Fractional-reserve banking, since it is not specific to the Fed but to the generic idea of fractional-reserve banking. Afelton 15:06, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

Interest rates and elections

With regard to this:

Finally, there is a theory that the Federal Reserve is not neutral with regard to U.S. elections and tends to lower or rasise interest rates to benefit or harm certain candidates. Alan Greenspan has described himself as a conservative, even going so far as to laud Ayn Rand's brand of economic individualism. Under his watch, interest rates have consistently been lowered when a Republican president was up for election, and raised prior to Democratic presidents being up for election. Interest rates rose steadily before the 2000 election and were reduced to 40-year lows before the 2004 election.

Didn't the Federal Reserve engage in tight monetary policy in the run up to the 1992 presidential election? I think that should be mentioned. Also, what was the case in 1996?

I'm not sure the pattern has been so consistent. -- WikiAce 22:14, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree, I don't think there is a lot of evidence on this. In 1995 and early 1996, the Fed lowered rates [1]. Maybe it would be more appropriate in the Alan Greenspan article, since the "evidence" is predicated on his personal politics. -- Afelton 23:17, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

accuracy

There is a section about the Federal Reserve at Jekyll Island. The article originally said that the 1912 US presidential election was stolen and that JFK was assassinated because of the Fed Reserve. At one time there was an NPOV on the article, but it was toned down and NPOV was removed. However, I put {accuracy} on it because some of it seemed dubious to me, especially in earlier versions of the article. I don't know much about the FR, so could some people more familiar with it go to Jekyll Island and check:

accuracy
NPOV
should the material be there or somewhere else, since Jekyll just happened to be the site of the meeting

Thank you, Bubba73 (talk) 18:05, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Removal of section "Possible Reforms for the Federal Reserve System"

As they say somewhere, "be bold". I have removed this entire section despite it carrying the NPOV tag. I have looked back in the history of the article and it has been tagged as such for a couple of months at least, but nobody so far has properly discussed it on here. Why did I remove this section? Because it was very blatantly POV - in fact, it's just someone's manifesto and so has no place in Wikipedia. If anyone thinks I'm wrong, just revert (but please don't label me as a vandal).--217.43.64.169 04:50, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Having attempted to remove the section, someone (Jossifresco) has reinstated it. So, it seems we have to discuss this. Any takers?--217.43.64.169 04:56, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree completely, it reads like a manifesto. It proposes to discard all safeguards to the banking system that have been built up over the centuries (not just in the US but also elsewhere) - a rather extremist view. The section should just go, and criticisms should go to the appropriate places. For instance, the suggestion to abolish capital requirements for banks, should be discussed there. It is not just a US regulation, but all free economies around the world apply this. And it's not even the Fed who monitors this, but the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Completely unsubstantiated allegations on corruption also have no place in Wikipedia. I doubt how long a phrase like various conspiracy theories claim that either [..] or secret persons steal [..] money would survive in any other entry - completely without sources. - DocendoDiscimus 07:53, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Good, DocendoDiscimus, you agree...that it's POV. Do you, or anyone, agree it should therefore be removed? We all know that POV writing routinely gets zapped day in, day out without a murmur of protest. Or is the NPOV tag some sort of special shield that can protect POV writing even as blatant as this? My point really is that there was no debate going on about this for over two months, and all the while it continues to sit here. It hardly inspires confidence in Wikipedia. What do we have to do to get it removed? PS: As you may have guessed, I'm User:217.43.64.169. I already have another WP account, but I didn't log in with it as I don't wish to do so from this computer. I've created this new account so that I'm now instantly respectable. ;) --Billie Bouillabaisse 09:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes it should be removed (that's what I meant with 'it should go'). Deleting it all at once is going to get someone putting it back, considering it's vandalism. Still, arguing about why each individual point is POV (or irrelevant to a Fed entry) is going to take ages. I'll get rid of it again, and when someone wants to put certain points back in then I'd be happy to discuss them on a case by case basis. - DocendoDiscimus 10:58, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I fully agree with the removal. About the "What do we have to do to get it removed" question: as you have experienced, you can just 'be bold' and remove it. Unfortunately last time it was (probably accidentally) seen as vandalism. I hope this time that change will 'stick'! --JoanneB 11:08, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
By the way, as 'shallow' as it may sound, Billie is right about the 'instant respectability' that comes with a username instead of an IP. Someone on RC Patrol, a 'vandal fighter', will probably regard a large deletion by an anonymous IP different from one by a registered user. I guess they (we) are biased by experience that way... --JoanneB 11:11, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
JoanneB: yes, I should have registered first, as I have under my usual WP account often done indiscriminate "whack-a-mole" vandal hunts--Billie Bouillabaisse 11:16, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
DocendoDiscimus: sorry, my eyes must've skipped over your "it should go". Anyway, thanks for doing that. The article feels a whole lot better now!--Billie Bouillabaisse 11:16, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Great, all we need to do now is clean up the criticism section (as Afelton suggested earlier), and we are NPOV! oh, and JoanneB: bedankt. - DocendoDiscimus 11:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
OK, I took another crack at it. Do you think it's close enough to NPOV? (I still left the tag on for the moment). --Afelton 15:13, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Federal Reserve Bank merge?

Any reason Federal Reserve Bank is a separate article? Afelton 22:44, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

No reason that I can see. Speedy merge? DocendoDiscimus 23:41, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Can we also look at merging in Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, and so forth? -James Howard (talk/web) 23:47, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but being the person who created several of them, let me just mention a few of the different pieces of information in each article.
  • Geographic coverage
  • Leadership
  • Idiosyncratic stuff: the KC's Jackson Hole symposium, STL data, etc.
So I am amenable to merging them but think that we would either lose this information or clutter up the main page too much. However, I agree that right now they are pretty short and stubby (except for New York). Maybe we could combine them all into one article -- Federal Reserve Banks, for example? Afelton 01:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Back the merge for Federal Reserve Bank, but no reason to merge each individual FRB in as well. The Land 16:51, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Agree with The Land. DocendoDiscimus 17:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, it's done. Didn't actually take much from the other page except the idea of linking each bank to its home page. Afelton 18:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Comments on some recent changes

I recently (11-15-05) made two changes to this article. First, I inserted a paragraph explaining, from an economic perspective, the value of central bank independence. I also substantially rewrote what I thought was a rather scattershot criticisms section. I realize there are ongoing arguments with regard to that section, and I hope I managed to improve the overall quality while maintaining a fairly neutral POV.

Thanks.

Looks good to me, although I still think the "political interference" paragraph is a bit too focused on Alan Greenspan and could be shortened. That's not a huge deal though. I am going to move the graf about independence to the "Influence of Gov't" subsection. Thanks for the work. --Afelton 02:18, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

External links section

There are currently a LOT of links to critical web sites. Do we really need this many? It seems like a lot of them have similar criticism. Can we just cut it down to the 5-10 range? That would give people a fair overview of types of criticism of the Fed without it overwhelming the article. --Afelton 06:03, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Changes to the Criticisms Section

I have substantially rewritten the criticisms section. The previous entry was too focused on problems with fractional reserve banking and inflation; these criticisms are not Fed-specific.

Let me just say that I understand that this is a controversial subject, and I hope I have managed to be relatively NPOV. (GMCViolin 1-09-06)


Rubuttal to criticisms.

There needs to be a paragraph pointing out the growing consensus that the Fed has improved its practices over its 90 year history, particularly in the last 25 years or so. Empirically, it has become effective at regulating inflation and promoting steady economic growth. In the 25 years since the early 1980s, there has been moderate inflation, and only two recessions, both of them brief and mild. This is due to their finally assimilating Keynesian economics, and coming to understand that their actions require about a year to take affect. As a result, there are few compelling criticisms based on recent performance-- most of the criticsms are based on mistakes made before the last 25 years, such as worsening the great depression, failure to tame the business cycle in the 1950s and 60s, and driving inflation in the 1970s. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.83.146.244 (talk) 16:45, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Interest rates section

"The discount rate is often higher than the fed funds rate, and it can also attract heightened regulatory scrutiny of the borrowing bank."

What attracts scrutiny? The discount rate? Why does it attract scrutiny? I think this needs clarification for everyone who does not already know what the sentence is trying to convey. Rtdrury 00:39, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok - Good point. I added a few sentences. I hope it's better! (12.171.160.202 11 Jan 2006)

"Legality" of the Fed?

The following text, apparently inserted by Xode, was removed on 22 January 2006:

At this point, it is important to note that the legality of the Federal Reserve system has been disputed and that many of those arguments make sense. Please see the criticism section below for details.

First, the "legality" of the Federal reserve system is not disputed in the text under "Criticisms" -- at least not as currently written in the article. All the criticisms seem to relate to other topics (opacity, etc). Second, whether "those [legal] arguments" make sense is not verifiable, since no legal arguments have been made in the article. Third, the "legality" of the Federal Reserve System (or anything else in the United States) can be tested in only one place: a court of law. Any coherent discussion of the "legality" of the Fed would probably have to include an analysis of the state of the case law, if any, on the subject. The article as currently written contains none. Fourth, placing the statement -- that the "legality" of the Fed has been "disputed" -- near the beginning of the article arguably gives the misleading impression that there is some serious problem facing the Fed in the legal system. Without backup to support that point of view in the article, placing that statement in the article, especially at the introduction, is both non-neutral point of view and not verifiable. Yours, Famspear 22:17, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of the criticisms in the article, here is a replay of some of them:

Problems relating to "inflation and fractional reserve banking"
Problems regarding the "chairmanship of Alan Greenspan, specifically, that the Fed’s credibility is based on a cult of personality around him"
Criticisms of the "Fed’s expansionary monetary policy in the 1920’s, allowing misallocations of capital resources and supporting a massive stock price bubble"
Criticism "that the Fed then deepened the resulting Great Depression by contracting the money supply at the very moment that markets needed liquidity"
Criticism "that the current Fed over-emphasizes consumer spending, and has thus not been aggressive enough in reducing US dependence on oil and energy-intensive capital goods"
Criticism "that the Fed’s concentration on GDP or other aggregate indicators risks ignoring important changes in regional economies, and is an unsuitable proxy as an indicator of well-being"
Criticism "that the Fed’s focus on reducing national inflation made it unable to adequately respond to the economic problems in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina"
Criticism "that the Fed places too much emphasis on GDP as a measure of well-being"
Criticism that the Fed is "notoriously tight-lipped about the measures and metrics which are used to make its decisions" and that "there is no support in the released transcripts"
Criticism that "it is shrouded in secrecy"
Criticism that there is a "lag in the release of FOMC transcripts, as well as the extremely limited and carefully worded minutes and statement"

None of the above question the legality of the Fed. Famspear 22:33, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


When the US goverment has the authority to print money instead borrows this money from "The Fed", it's pretty fraudulent. There's no need to pay any interest at all. The article says "The Fed" is not run for profit, so where does all that money paying the interest go?


Date for the users posting the paragraph above? comment to poster: Just check Famspear's "audits" link (link to a page that claims that the Fed has been properly audited). how many times was it? John Smith (nom de guerre) 08:12, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Legality could be added to the criticisms section. I have read an argument that the Constitution only allows Congress to print money, and not delegate those powers. If that is true, the Federal Reserve could be perceived as unconstitutional. I may add this.--Gloriamarie 14:07, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Regarding what happens to the extra interest, the surplus interest after paying the administrative costs of the federal reserve and the costs of borrowing from the private sector, totalling around $21bn is returned to the US governement, see the profit and loss statement of the federal reserve. Clearly if the government simply issued new notes, rather than borrowing from the private sector, that way inflation lies, in fact inflation is in effect a 'tax' on borrowers devaluing their savings. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lukeski (talk • contribs) 10:11, August 24, 2007 (UTC)

interest rates and money supply

The addition of "money supply" to this title is good

I'll quibble with the other recent changes 1. "Because the Federal Reserve pays interest on its repurchase agreements with primary dealers the net result of temporary operations is always a net permanent increase in the money supply." and 2."If Fed wishes to attempt to permanently decrease the money supply" (addition of attempt. 1. Using standard reverse Fed-speak (I'm not kidding) you should say "reverse repo" when the Fed is borrowing (decreasing money supply) and technically you are correct, but it is a quite small amount (say 1 day's interest at 4.50% per year). But reverses are quite uncommon, and repos (Fed lending) have the opposite effect (interest paid to the Fed decreases the money supply by a small amount) and repos are much more common (about 180 days to 1 in 2004). Net it is still a small effect. 2. The Fed can certainly reduce reserves by selling a bond from its permanent inventory. You seem to be saying that this can only be a temporary effect on the total money supply - well, I'd like to understand that theory better before I comment - but it is certain that by selling a bond they decrease money supply now, and also decrease money supply from what it would have been without the sale later. In short I'll remove "attempt." Smallbones 14:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Because the total return (principal + interest) over the lifetime of a treasury bond is greater than the cash received by the fed for the sale of the bond, the sale of bonds from the fed's inventory must always increase the money supply. The return on bonds held by the fed is returned to the treasury. If the federal reserve wanted to contract the money supply by decresing reserves, it could achieve the same effect without further dilution of the dollar by increasing the reserve ratio. The fact is the very architecture of the fed requires that there be a national debt and inflation. 128.84.186.188 21:54, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I added a good amount of detail to this section regarding how the Fed conducts monetary policy on an operational level. I hope this clears up any ambiguity of the original. (GMCViolin 06:14, 12 February 2006 (UTC))
"Because the total return (principal + interest) over the lifetime of a treasury bond is greater than the cash received by the fed for the sale of the bond, the sale of bonds from the fed's inventory must always increase the money supply."
- This is not true – sales of Treasury securities will decrease the money supply in an absolute sense regardless of the effect caused by the greater payout of the security. This relates back to the money multiplier process. Basically, ignoring certain complications (significant, but distracting), with a 10% required reserve ratio, a $100 reduction in reserves will translate to a $1000 reduction in the money supply. This will far outweigh the ~5% increase in the money supply caused by the greater payout of the original $100 of the security. As such, I'm changing the relevant text in the article to reflect this. It should be noted, however, that the Fed has not performed an Outright sale in many years - offhand, I'd say the last one was in the 1980's. (GMCViolin 23:02, 13 February 2006 (UTC))
The total return on a tresury bond (principal + interest) will eventually be deposited back into bank accounts (as holders of the bonds deposit their interest and principal checks). That total return in greater than the initial sale price, which was taken out of the bank reserve accounts when the bond was sold. If a bond is sold for $100, then bank reserves decrease by 100. If the bond pays out over its lifetime $130, then bank reserves will increase by $130 as the principal and interest are deposited back into banks by the bondholder. The net result of the sale of bonds is an increase in bank reserves, and hence the money supply. If my logic is faulty, please show me where.

128.84.198.50 21:59, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I think there is some disagreement here with 128.84.186.188 and (GMCViolin and myself). Maybe there are some terminology differences as well. In any case, if the point is that the very structure of the Fed requires inflation, I'd have to say this is a minority viewpoint (notwithstanding that there almost always seems to have BEEN some inflation except for the 1930's, d this built-in inflation idea has some currency among non-economists). Maybe we could just find a good quote with that idea and leave it at that? Smallbones 21:07, 14 February 2006 (UTC)


I see that no one can refute assertions about how the sale of treasury bonds must result in an increase in the money supply. 128.253.214.55 15:36, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

the refutation is encompassed by the reverse mulitplier effect. Also...I believe that people are forgetting that the Federal Reserve is by its nature a short term supervisor. IE. It does not use monetary policy to aim for such and such a path of money supply for 50 years...

HOLY SHIT

there were like 15 links to decent sites that could explain the federal reserve here a couple weeks ago - why the HELL did they get taken out? i'm starting to see more and more how wikipedia is going to be taken over by government - despite it's 'wiki' name.

Yes! Somebody please create a criticism article again and so we can analise every aspect of it. NEUTRAL point of view.. This is absurd!
where are the dates and IP-adresses for these comments? John Smith (nom de guerre) 08:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Criticisms

Why are the criticisms represented in this article only those of the austrian school of economics and libertarians? There should be a seperate section within the criticisms which reflect both the arguements that come from the "american system: national bankers" and the gold standard advocates.

Largely because many of those types of criticisms really refer more to fractional-reserve banking as a monetary system than the Federal Reserve as an institution. Now, of course, you could probably argue that the libertarian criticisms are also, at the core, criticisms of the monetary system instead of the institution. So, if someone wanted to put in a short bit about how gold-standard advocates want to change the structure of the Fed specifically, rather than a general criticism about fractional reserve banking, that would be completely appropriate in my view. (GMCViolin 14:15, 22 April 2006 (UTC))

good point. the gold standard arguement is against the entire fiat idea including the fed. However, the national bankers believe in fractional reserves vis a vis Alexander Hamilton but are against the federal reserve to which they cite the constitution article 1 sections 8 and 9. Perhaps some mention may be made of the gold standard supporters and a more substantial representation of the national bankers underneath said criticisms section?

what happened to critical links? this whole site STINKS with US bias ~pissed off at the controlled media~

I just added a quote about Thomas Jefferson regarding Central Banking and it was removed with a "drop POV Jefferson dies 100 years before" So the 2nd US president's opinion is irrelevant because he died before the Fed was enacted? Central banks have been around for longer than the Fed. From the Wikipedia Central Banking article "The oldest central bank in the world is the Bank of Sweden, which was opened in 1668 with help from Dutch businessmen. This was followed in 1694 by the Bank of England, created by Scottish businessman William Paterson in the City of London at the request of the English government to help pay for a war." How are Thomas Jefferson's words not relevant here? Is the constitution also irrelevant because it was written before the Fed was created?

the Jefferson quote is a fake--he never said it. Rjensen 23:01, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

So you're saying that the following sources are making this up? Wow, you're good. You just removed the quote from Wikiquote! The Law Encyclopedia Brainy Quote I'm searching the library of congress.

Good luck. I did search the standard sources. I note that no biographer has found the quote either. There is a free huge online edition of Jefferson at Lipscomb, Andrew A. and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds. The Writings Of Thomas Jefferson 19 vol. (1907) Rjensen 23:20, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
OK, Here is the whole letter by Jefferson to John Taylor. Or from the University of Virgina. Or from Britannica I'll keep them coming. Is your argument that he was dead or that this quote is fabricated? The full quote FYI "And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." Oh and I found the quote[2] at the site you said you searched
Jefferson disliked ALL banks, especially private ones; he said they were all trickery and deception and never created wealth. He wanted the federal Treasury to directly control the money supply. Have you found the quote I deleted: in a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies . . . If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] . . . will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered . . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." Rjensen 00:06, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Let's say you're right and Jefferson was wrong, does that mean that the primary author of the Declaration of Independence's opinion is irrelevant to the discussion? If I added the above quote, cited using the site you use to validate articles, why would you delete it? Or would you not delete it?
Why quote Jefferson in this article??? Jefferson hated all banks. private ones especially. He never commented on the Federal Reserve, so there does not seem much point in quoting him one way or the other. His followers like WJBryan did comment, and they approved it. Rjensen 01:22, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Because the Fed consists of private banks that control the issue of the dollar and the quote says "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency". How is that not relevant? It's exactly what he's talking about. Jefferson wrote much of the Declartion of Independence and commented directly on the role of the Fed. Can you cite something that proves Jefferson "hated all banks"?
1) Jefferson never said that. That quote is a hoax invented recently. 2) read his letter to Yancey (or search that huge TJ text for "private banks") Rjensen 01:41, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Jan 6, 1816.

You're right, here's the quote "And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." Thanks for taking the time to point that out. I'm open minded enough to admit when I'm wrong. But is the Fed not a banking establishment? And who was the first to fake that quote?
talk to Jefferson about banks and debts and he would turn purple (so to speak). Herbert Slaon has a whole book on TJ mishandling of debt. He though that only farmers produced wealth and that bankers swindled people out of it. Lots of people probably still believe that. Who invented the hoax? Hard to say but use of the word "deflation" was the clue--the word was invented in 20th century (1920 for money says OED) so the hoaxer doesn't know much about history or language.Rjensen 03:07, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Conversion between annual and overnight yields

To convert from annual to overnight yields, you find (365th root of [1 + annual percentage])-1. thus 4.5% annual is 1.045^(1/365)-1 = 0.0121%. You do *not* divide the annual percentage by 365. Just in case anyone didn't understand my edit. :-) Tompw 15:50, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Except in leap years. Rich Farmbrough 09:11 26 May 2006 (UTC).

This is obviously how it SHOULD be done mathematically, but how it actually is done according to the quotes people use is another matter. Do you have any sources on this? Just to be clear let me give an extreme example. The quoted rate is 36.5% annual. Do the bankers actually just divide by 365 giving a 0.10% daily rate, or do they do it the mathematically correct way 1.365^(1/365)-1 = 0.0853%. The difference is $147 per day on a $ million deposit. Please note that the Fed is allowed to do it any way they want to, and there are lots of quotation conventions in these markets (i.e. they ignore the theoretical mathematicians), Smallbones 18:09, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm a little confused. I think I'm the one to have done this incorrectly before, so if someone could explain this to me, I'd be grateful. The formula I used, P(t) = P(0)*(1+r/365)^n is, I gather, the formula for interest compounded daily over n days. So, if we're just interested in one day, why doesn't this formula work? I completely understand the point made above that if this formula is used with 36.5% annual rate, the formula I used would actually give an effective yield of greater than 36.5%. But isn't this the expected result? Does anyone with some industry experience know what the market convention is? I don't mean to critize; I'm just curious. Thanks. (GMCViolin 02:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC))

Enigmatic language removed from section on Opacity

On 15 June 2006, the following language was inserted in the main article:

The perceived opacity of the Fed are [sic; should be "is"] further exacerbated by the fact that it is privately owned. While the Chairman of the federal reserve is appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate, the Board of Governors and all other officials are selected by the private owners of the bank. A complete list of owners of Federal Reserve Bank stock is not publicly known, but many believe such families as the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers and the Sachs-Coburg-Goethas to be among the owners. Many Americans are concerned by the fact that the monetary policy of the United States is controlled by a private institution owned by foreign bankers and potentates.

This language has been removed, as explained below.

First, ALL members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate -- not merely the Chairman. This is clearly stated elsewhere in the article, with a link to the statute itself as authority. So, it's unclear what the editor meant by saying that the other members are "selected" by the "private owners of the bank."

The stock of each Federal Reserve Bank (e.g., the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, etc.) is owned by the "member banks." The bank down the street in your community might be a "member bank." The member banks, in turn, are owned by their own shareholders -- whoever that might be. Presumably, Rothschild, Rockefeller and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (and I believe that's the correct spelling, not "Sachs-Coburg-Goethas") family members are allowed to be shareholders of member banks. The verbiage beginning with the words "Many believe such families [ . . . ]" is unverifiable. Can you say "weasel words"? The sentence beginning with "Many Americans are concerned [ . . . ]" may be true or it may be false but in any case is arguably unverifiable. Again, can you say "weasel words"?

Thus, "the Fed" -- in the vague way I think the editor used the term -- is not "privately owned." Also, the term "the Fed" is understood by some people to mean the entire Federal Reserve System, which consists of various units, some of which are government entities and others of which are privately owned corporations. So, let's be more specific about what we mean when we make references to "the Fed."

Perhaps the editor who inserted this material may wish to review Wikipedia's policies regarding Neutral Point of View and Verifiability. Yours, Famspear 20:50, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

PS: See the discussion elsewhere on this talk page about the meaning of the phrase "who owns the Fed". Yours, Famspear 21:01, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Responses to Famspear's comments

On 15 June 2006, the following language was inserted in the main article:

The perceived opacity of the Fed are [sic; should be "is"] further exacerbated by the fact that it is privately owned. While the Chairman of the federal reserve is appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate, the Board of Governors and all other officials are selected by the private owners of the bank. A complete list of owners of Federal Reserve Bank stock is not publicly known, but many believe such families as the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers and the Sachs-Coburg-Goethas to be among the owners. Many Americans are concerned by the fact that the monetary policy of the United States is controlled by a private institution owned by foreign bankers and potentates.

This language has been removed, as explained below.

First, ALL members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate -- not merely the Chairman.

The board of governors of the Federal Reserve are chosen by an unknown entity/body and then presented to the President for his "selection" / "appointment". I know of NO case where the President has EVER chosen a different candidate than the one presented to him by the figures behind the Fed.

This is clearly stated elsewhere in the article, with a link to the statute itself as authority. So, it's unclear what the editor meant by saying that the other members are "selected" by the "private owners of the bank."

This is why: The board of governors of the Federal Reserve are picked and presented to the president by an unknown entity/body. Presented to the President for his "selection" / "appointment". I know of NO case where the President has EVER chosen a different candidate than the one presented to him by the figuers behind the Fed.


The stock of each Federal Reserve Bank (e.g., the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, etc.) is owned by the "member banks." The bank down the street in your community might be a "member bank."

And this language of yours somehow makes it all swell and dandy? "bank down the street" , what is this? Germany 1931??? Who are you kidding? yourself?


The member banks, in turn, are owned by their own shareholders -- whoever that might be.

Can you think of a good reason why this isn't a publicly known piece of information?

Presumably, Rothschild, Rockefeller and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (and I believe that's the correct spelling, not "Sachs-Coburg-Goethas") family members are allowed to be shareholders of member banks. The verbiage beginning with the words "Many believe such families [ . . . ]" is unverifiable.

is it? Really?? Could someone explain why this should be "unverifiable" please? I cant exactly see that the Fed has lacked critics over the past century...


Can you say "weasel words"? The sentence beginning with "Many Americans are concerned [ . . . ]" may be true or it may be false but in any case is arguably unverifiable. Again, can you say "weasel words"?

On the contrary. in this case I would say it was pretty dammned safe to assume that the statement was both correct and easily verifiable. Staunch Critisism of the Fed has existed for close to a century now, exept that it's never let into the main bulk of the mainstream media.
For more current critisisms I suggest you actually look around: Have you ever visited google video? check out the popularity of the material concerning the Federal Reserve System.

Thus, "the Fed" -- in the vague way I think the editor used the term -- is not "privately owned."

This must be the worst inconsistency I've witnessed to date. it defys reason. I'm at a loss here.
"It's privately owned but its not privately owned". Great.

Also, the term "the Fed" is understood by some people to mean the entire Federal Reserve System, which consists of various units, some of which are government entities and others of which are privately owned corporations. So, let's be more specific about what we mean when we make references to "the Fed."

Perhaps the editor who inserted this material may wish to review Wikipedia's policies regarding Neutral Point of View and Verifiability. Yours, Famspear 20:50, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

PS: See the discussion elsewhere on this talk page about the meaning of the phrase "who owns the Fed". Yours, Famspear 21:01, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Modification of unverifiable, non-neutral POV language

On 23 June 2006, the following language was added by an anonymous user:

Woodrow Wilson later regretted the unconstitutional decision to put private corporations in control of printing and minting the nation's supply of money. He said "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world - no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

I have deleted the word "unconstitutional." In one sense, "decisions" are neither constitutional nor unconstitutional. Statutes, etc., may be constitutional or unconstitutional. The statutes creating the Federal Reserve System have not been ruled unconstitutional (as far as I know). Thus, the use of the term "unconstitutional" in this way is unverifiable for purposes of Wikipedia. The use is also non-neutral POV. I also added a tag after the long quote attributed to President Wilson. Also, the "decision" was to create the Federal Reserve System, not to "put private corporations in control of printing and minting the nation's supply of money." I changed the wording to make the passage more neutral. Yours, Famspear 19:55, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Did Wilson say that? it's a hoax. Rjensen 06:54, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
The Wilson quote appears at http://www.fdrs.org, http://home.att.net/~jrhsc/wilson.html, http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/2/bankquotes.htm, http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/woodrow+wilson, http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/society_culture/the_inevitability_of_patriarchy.htm, http://americandefenseleague.com/destofa1.htm, http://www.wtv-zone.com/Mary/FEDERALRESERVE.HTML, http://www.libertydollar.org/Federal_Reserve.asp, http://www.themoneymasters.com/presiden.htm, http://blogs.albawaba.com/Alexanderjames/2067/2006/02/22/19948-the_modern_day_babylonian_monetarycredit_system, http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/FED.html, http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_mark_020503_money.html... isn't Google wonderful?
It's a hoax that has been repeated by unreliable sources on the www. For example, none of the sources give a date--not even a year in which Wilson wrote it. The 80 volume collection of Wilson's writings does not include it. None of the histories of the Fed includes it. No book online at Google or Amazon gives it (except one: The Best of Times: The Worst of Times

by Gyeorgos C Hatonn, a self-published religious tract). It is not found in the entire back run of the New York Times or the Washington Post newspapers (online at Proquest). It only seems to pop up on oddball sites. Rjensen 04:57, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the source is alleged to be Page 31 of a document titled "Repeal the Federal Reserve Banks" by Casimir Frank Gierut. Being unable to find an online copy of this document, I cannot say for sure what Casimir's source is. The year is either 1916, 1919, or 1923, depending on who you ask...

If Wilson said it on January 1, 1921 (or whenever) we can easily check its authenticity. To avoid that hoaxers do not give any exact date. That alone is a huge red flag. Rjensen 08:15, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree with editor Rjensen that the authenticity of the Wilson "quote" is highly questionable, as are the "sources" for the quote (the web sites listed above). If Wilson really said or wrote this, someone should be able to find a reliable source for it. Yours, Famspear 16:16, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Problematic material deleted

The following verbiage was recently added to the article by an anonymous user in the subheading under "Opacity":

Additional criticism is leveled at the fact that despite its name, the Federal Reserve is not a federal government agency. As pointed out by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Lewis v. United States, "[e]xamining the organization and function of the Federal Reserve Banks, and applying the relevant factors, we conclude that the Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of the FTCA, but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations."[17]

I have removed this material for a variety of reasons. First, the fact (if it is a fact) that the "Federal Reserve" is not a federal government agency is not in and of itself a criticism of any reasonable coherence. A McDonalds Restaurant is not a government agency either. If we're going to say it's not a government agency, let's identify why the critics believe that's "bad."

Second, the quotation from the oft-quoted Lewis case refers to the Federal Reserve Banks, not the Federal Reserve. We have a terminology problem that continues to creep into the article, despite having been extensively addressed here in the talk (discussion) page. The Federal Reserve (i.e., the Federal Reserve System) is an overall term that includes the (1) Board of Governors (a government agency), (2) the FOMC, (3) the Federal Reserve Banks (such as the FR Bank of St. Louis, of Dallas, etc.), and (4) the member banks (which may include your own bank in your own home town), etc. This structure has already been covered in the article or the talk page.

Third, it's unclear why the so-called "criticism" would relate to "opacity" or secrecy. The structure of the Federal Reserve System is certainly no secret.

Granted, the concept that some people might criticise the Federal Reserve System because it includes both governmental and non-governmental entities -- based on some rationale that this setup is "bad" -- might properly be added to the article. The idea that some people might not like the setup based on a misconception that the entire Federal Reserve System is somehow "private" might also belong in the article as well. Stay tuned. Yours, Famspear 21:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

More unverifiable language removed

An anonymous user at IP 85.10.199.106 re-inserted the following language on 28 June 2006, which verbiage had previously been twice inserted on 27 June by someone at the same address, and removed by another editor:

The Constitution authorizes Congress to coin money, that it's [sic] value must be determinable, (Art 1, Sect 8) and mandates the backing of legal tender by gold or silver. (Art 1, Sect 10)[.] The Federal Reserve Act cedes Congress's power to private banks which may independently create an unlimited supply of unbacked fiat currency, and further mandates the acceptance of these valueless notes as legal tender. These points raise a serious question as to the constitutional legality of the Federal Reserve Act.
The Federal Reserve "Note" has no redeemable value and lacks other aspects that place it outside the historic and general statutory definitions of Negotiable Instruments, (aka Notes) However any instruments issued by the Federal Reserve Banks have been specifically excluded from the requirements governing negotiable instruments. UCC 3-102

I removed the language. I argue that the removed material is unverifiable for purposes of Wikipedia, as the cited material does not appear to support the statements made.

First of all, Article I section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power "[t]o coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures [ . . . . ]" Congress has the power to fix the standards of "weights and measures." There is no requirement in this passage that Congress fix the standards of weights and measures. More to the point, nothing in this passage expressly requires that the value of money (as opposed to weights and measures) be fixed or "determinable" by Congress -- whatever that means. Granted, a statement that the value of money must be "determinable" is probably a reasonable-sounding statement, but that in and of itself does not make "determinability" (whatever that means) a legal requirement -- constitutional, statutory or otherwise.

Article I section 10 does not "mandate the backing of legal tender by gold or silver." Article I section 10 states (in relevant part): "No State shall [ . . . ] coin Money [ or ] make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts" (emphasis added). Nothing in Article I section 10 says that Congress cannot establish Federal Reserve notes or hula hoops or ping pong balls (or anything else it pleases) as legal tender. The Federal Reserve System was created by an Act of Congress, not by a "State." Further, nothing in Article I section 10 says that Congress must require that legal tender be backed by gold or silver.

The law arguably may or may not cede Congress' power to "private banks which may independently create an unlimited supply of unbacked fiat currency." This might be the basis for a description of a "criticism" of the Federal Reserve System -- if some elaboration is added. Further, the law apparently does mandate "the acceptance of these [ . . . ] notes as legal tender." (Notice, however, that I deleted the word "valueless" from the quote.) Maybe this would also be the basis for a "criticism" -- but can we get a bit more elaboration in the description of what exactly is deemed to be objectionable?

Anyone who really believes his or her Federal Reserve notes are "valueless" is invited to mail any and all such notes to me personally as a "valueless" gift to me -- and I will be happy to keep and spend those "valueless" notes on such valuable things as music CDs, movie tickets, lunches with friends, and anything else of value I can find to spend them on. It is incorrect -- and more importantly unverifiable for purposes of Wikipedia -- to say that Federal Reserve notes have no "redeemable value." Obviously, if you turn in two fifty dollar bills and receive, in return, a single one-hundred dollar bill, that $100 bill has value. You can still take that one-hundred dollar bill to a restaurant or store and obtain products or services that most people would think are worth - oh, about a hundred bucks. The mere fact that what you receive when you redeem a Federal Reserve note is another Federal Reserve note does not change the fact that all such notes have VALUE IN EXCHANGE FOR VALUABLE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.

Come on folks, let's get real.

Regarding the statement that "any instruments issued by the Federal Reserve Banks have been specifically excluded from the requirements governing negotiable instruments. UCC 3-102", ummm, well, let's look at that statute (here, the Texas version of Uniform Commercial Code section 3-102):

§ 3.102. SUBJECT MATTER. (a) This chapter [Chapter 3 of the Texas Business and Commerce Code, entitled "Negotiable Instruments"] applies to negotiable instruments. It does not apply to money, to payment orders governed by Chapter 4A, or to securities governed by Chapter 8.

Tex. Bus. & Comm. Code sec. 3.102 (Tex. UCC).

So, let's see now. Chapter 3 of the UCC applies to Negotiable Instruments -- and not to "money" (i.e., not to coins or Federal Reserve notes)! So "money" and "negotiable instruments" and "payment orders governed by Chapter 4A" and "securities governed by Chapter 8" are separate concepts. What a shock. Chapter 3 of the UCC also does not apply to pig's feet and salt water taffy. So what? Let's be a bit more specific about what the "criticism" is supposed to be!

Descriptions of the criticisms of the Federal Reserve System certainly belong in that applicable section of the article -- but let's try to make the specific wording of the insertions a bit more coherent -- and let's make them Verifiable for purposes of Wikipedia. Stay tuned. Yours, Famspear 18:54, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Part of the government?

The article mentions that the Fed is an independent government agency. However, the Fed is not part of the government. It is often mistaken for part of the government, because it does the things the Constitution gives Congress the power to do (therefore, it is unconstitutional--but I don't suppose those claims, though they're true, would be considered "neutral").

Look in the phone book. You won't find it in the government pages.

Also, in the State of Delaware, the Federal Reserve is incorporated as a not for profit organization. Government institutions have no need to be incorporated.

So the question is: how should it be described in the article? I know how I'd describe it, but again, it wouldn't be neutral (thus, I'm not editing that page myself). --RobertlewisIR 09:05, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that question was settled some years ago in a lawsuit, when the District of Columbia government wanted to collect property taxes on the Federal Reserve headquarters building. There are many other Federally-owned corporations, including the TVA and the USPS. --John Nagle 17:12, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Dear fellow editors: Nowhere does the article say "that the Fed is an independent government agency." As used in the article "the Fed" means the Federal Reserve System (i.e., the entire system). The article says that the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is a governmental agency.

Part of the Fed is "in the government" and part of the Fed is not.

The article clearly states:

The Federal Reserve System is a quasi-governmental, decentralized central bank. It is composed of a central Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C., twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks located in major cities throughout the nation, numerous member banks and other entities [ . . . ]

The key term is "quasi-governmental." The prefix "quasi" means "to some degree," or "in some manner" (American Heritage Dictionary, 2d College Ed. 1985). To some degree, or in some manner, the Federal Reserve System is governmental. The implication is that perhaps the System is partly but possibly not entirely governmental. The nature of the Federal Reserve System is that it is indeed partly governmental and partly non-governmental. This truth is described in the article as currently written.

Regarding the verbiage:

[ . . . ] in the State of Delaware, the Federal Reserve is incorporated as a not for profit organization. Government institutions have no need to be incorporated.

Does anyone have any support for these statements. Any sourcing?

The article as currently written clearly states that the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is a governmental agency (which it is) and that the Federal Reserve Banks are "owned" by their respective member banks. The member banks are generally privately owned. Please read the rest of this discussion (talk) page for more information. The Federal Reserve System is thus neither completely governmental nor completely private. It has components of both.

The statement that the Federal Reserve System "does the things the Constitution gives Congress the power to do (therefore, it is unconstitutional [ . . . ]" is interesting and could be the basis for the beginnings of a discussion about legality. However, you would have be more specific and you would have to come up with some sort of a legal rationale. Under the U.S. legal system Congress certainly has the authority to delegate SOME powers to government agencies created by the Congress by statute. You could argue about whether powers granted to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, or to the Federal Reserve Banks, or to the FOMC, or to the member banks, are properly granted, etc., etc. You would need to be specific, however, about which powers are granted to each COMPONENT of the System and you would have to cite the law that makes the grant of those powers to that particular component "unconstitutional." And, to maintain neutral point of view, you would then have to point out the court cases, if any, in which constitutional issues were raised and decided about the Federal Reserve System or any component (governmental or non-governmental) of the System.

Whether something is "constitutional" is a legal question. For purposes of an encyclopedia, whether some aspect of an American institution (such as the entire Federal Reserve System, or an individual component of the System, or more properly the statute that created the System) is "constitutional" is not a matter of personal opinion, but a matter of legal analysis using principles of U.S. law. Yours, Famspear 21:06, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

note that in 1920-33 the New York regional Fed was the decisive player and it was owned and controlled by the member banks--eg by Wall Street. Rjensen 12:14, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Open a phone book. The Federal Reserve, if listed at all, will be in the business white pages and not the blue government pages. [comment added by user at IP 69.115.230.118 on 1 September 2006]

Ummm, I think you're just helping me make the point that the article is correct in saying that the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is a governmental agency (which it is) and that the Federal Reserve Banks are "owned" by their respective member banks (i.e., the Banks themselves are at least arguably "private").
First of all, I doubt that there is any listing at all in your phone book for "Federal Reserve" or "Federal Reserve System" (except maybe in the Washington DC area phone book?). Go back and look at your phone book.
There may be a listing for "Federal Reserve BANK" in your business white pages. For example, there is a listing for "Federal Reserve Bank" in the business white pages of the phone directory in my city here in Texas. All the Federal Reserve Banks in Texas are presumably branches of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (or of San Francisco, etc.) is not the same thing as the "Federal Reserve" or the "Federal Reserve System." A "Bank" is also not the same as the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Here's the rule: "banks" are (at least arguably) "private"; "Board of Governors" is a U.S. government agency; Federal Reserve SYSTEM is quasi-governmental (partly governmental and partly private), as the SYSTEM includes both the Board of Governors and the Banks, and the FOMC, etc., etc. Something that has both governmental and non-governmental components cannot be properly described as being "private." These really are not complicated concepts.
Finally, and I want to say this as gently as I can: your phone book is not a proper place to look to determine whether the Federal Reserve Bank of "xxxxxx" (fill in the blank) is "private" or not, or to determine whether the Federal Reserve System is "private" or not. It's just a phone book, for heaven's sake. Let's get real. Yours, Famspear 20:22, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

A "bank of issue"

I note the following language in the article under critiques of the Federal Reserve System:

They argue that the Federal Reserve proposal was unconstitutional from its inception, because the Federal Reserve System was to be a bank of issue.

I have no idea what the author meant by a "bank of issue." Maybe someone can enlighten us as to what was meant by that term (unless I just missed it elsewhere in the article). What is a "bank of issue" and why, if the FRS "was to be a bank of issue" would that somehow make the FRS unconsititutional? Yours, Famspear 18:48, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I note the following statement from a web site called "Secrets of the Federal Reserve":

As a bank of issue, it would control the nation’s money and credit.[3]

See also the following language from the Federal Reserve Act (bolding added):

Such notes shall be the obligations of the Federal reserve bank procuring the same, shall be in form prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury, shall be receivable at par in all parts of the United States for the same purposes as are national bank notes, and shall be redeemable in lawful money of the United States on presentation at the United States Treasury or at the bank of issue.[4]

See also the following verbiage from another web site:

the new, redesigned Federal Reserve Notes no longer bear the seal of their bank of issue[5]

Perhaps the term is simply meant to denote a bank that issues notes. In any case, the critique is not in my view adequately explained in the article. Yours, Famspear 18:57, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

the quote is a fake--Jefferson never said it. Rjensen 23:00, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Conspiracy theory v. alternate history

A fellow editor wanted to change one of the subheadings in the critique section from "conspiracy theory" to "alternate history" -- apparently because of the negative connotation of the term "conspiracy theory."

Calling Mr. Griffin's theory and critique of the Federal Reserve System a "conspiracy theory" appears to be accurate -- at least if we are to believe the Wikipedia description of what Griffin claims. As I have said on another talk page, Maybe the Griffin article in Wikipedia is not accurate and maybe Mr. Griffin doesn't really push those conspiracy theories -- I don't know. But it would be illogical to say someone has published books on such and such a conspiracy theory and then say, "but he's not a conspiracy theorist" or "we can't call his theory a conspiracy theory because the term has negative connotations." I would argue that if we're thinking about neutral point of view, NPOV would not require that we not label someone a conspiracy theorist if that person actually is one. It's like saying you can't call a convicted felon a "convicted felon" because that term has negative connotations.

Disclaimer: Again, I don't know anything about Mr. Griffin or his writings, other than what I've seen here in Wikipedia. So I don't know absolutely for a fact whether the label is or is not accurate as applied to him or his theory about the genesis of the Federal Reserve System. I am simply going by what he is reported in Wikipedia to be claiming about the System. Yours, Famspear 16:24, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Well you should read his book. Basically Griffin does not claim any 'conspiracy theory'. it is FACT that the meetings took place in secret and this was even publicly stated by people who attended the meeting later on. Griffins book just shows the history of the system for how it really was - the act was created by conferring with the richest NY bankers. When it was rejected they added conditions, which they admitted to deliberataly allowing only because they knew they could get ammendmants through later. I don't see how he is a 'conspiracy theorist'. He does not have any theory here, he is just explaining the federal reserve system. I think it is appropriate to at least note what he says, in that the Fed is neither Federal, nor does it have any money reserves, nor it is a system of distirubting power. This is important to say because the name 'Federal Reserve System' implies all these things. This article doesn't even give a good description of how the system operates.--155.144.251.120 05:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
If Giffen is NOT a conspiracy theory and is treated as real history, then he does not get mentioned because only peer-reviewed scholarly studies get mentioned as real history. Rjensen 05:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Dear user at IP155.144.251.120: Umm, I think you just made my point for me again. First, let's look at the term "conspiracy."

You're saying that Mr. Griffin is explaining the "fact" that the meetings took place in secret. To conspire means "to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end" (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, p. 243 (8th ed. 1976)). Are you saying that Mr. Griffin is saying that these people joined together in a secret agreement to accomplish some sort of end -- either lawful or unlawful? If he is saying that, then this makes him a conspiracy theorist. A conspiracy theorist is someone who explains or tries to explain an event or series of events by positing that two or more people joined together in a secret agreement. And of course the fact that some people later revealed the fact (if it is a fact) that the meeting occurred does not change the fact that those people met in secret and agreed to do something -- either lawful or unlawful.

I myself am a conspiracy theorist in the sense that I believe, based on everything I have read, that Richard Nixon, H.R. Haldeman, and other people in the government secretly agreed to obstruct justice in the United States in the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s. The fact that historians generally agree with me on that point also makes them "conspiracy theorists" on that particular point. The fact that several people in the Watergate scandal went to jail in connection with obstruction of justice or conspiracy to obstruct justice does not make the theory any less a theory in this sense. The fact that the theory is true does not make it "not a conspiracy theory."

Now let's talk about "theory" and "fact." Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity and his General Theory of Relativity are "theories." My understanding is that these theories are accepted by nearly all scientists as accurate, factual descriptions of how the universe works. Theories and facts are not necessarily opposites. Many theories have been "proved" as fact. A theory is "a body of theorems presenting a concise systematic view of a subject" (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, p. 1209 (8th ed. 1976)). The mere fact that something is a theory does not mean it is not also a "fact."

If I may venture a guess, I suspect your objection to the use of the term "conspiracy theory" is that the terms "conspiracy" and "theory" also happen to have negative connotations in the minds of many people. Yours, Famspear 06:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Lots of meetings--I guess MOST meetings--are held privately. Griffen adds nothing new except to condemn it as an immoral or illegal or evil meeting.Rjensen 10:50, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

There are no "conspiracy theories" that are known to be true as when a theory is put forth and is proven true it is relabeled "scandal." Therefore to the casual reader since no there are no conspiracy theories which are true, and the fact that scandals aren't commonly refered to as former conspiracy theories the idea that conspiracy theories are inherently false (because none are proven) has become held by some. Also, to call an individual a "conspiracy theorist" bears a distinctly pejorative connotation with it, which is not exactly neutral per se.Historiocality 06:33, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

The "Board of Governors" is not a "bank," public or private

On 19 November 2006, an anonymous user at IP 69.37.130.34 changed the text from: "The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is an independent government agency." to "The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is a privately owned bank affiliated with the United States government."

I reverted the change. Obviously, the Board itself is not a bank at all, either public or private. I suspect the anonymous user may be confused on terminology. As has already been clarified over and over on this talk page, and in the article:

1. The member banks are private banks (i.e., they are not governmental entities);
2. The Federal Reserve Banks (not the same as the member banks) are nominally "owned" by the member banks), and are arguably private banks (i.e., arguably not governmental);
3. The Board of Governors is a governmental agency whose members are appointed by the President (the Board itself is not a "bank"), and are subject to removal by the President for cause;
4. The Federal Reserve System is the combined total of all the above (and some other entities). Because the System as a whole has both governmental parts and non-governmental parts, the System as a whole (the "Fed") is, well, partly governmental and partly private, or quasi-governmental.

Yours, Famspear 03:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


Making Bankers Profit by issuing money

Maybe it's a silly question, but I would really like to know how the Federal Reserve would increase the monetary base without any public bonds to buy through open market operations. I know it is an extreme and almost impossible situation, but if there wasn't any government bond in the market, and a decision was taken to increase the monetary base due to a recession or depression, would the Treasury have to first issue bonds, maybe at a very high discount, just to see a given bank or fund sell those same bonds at a much higher price (i.e., lower yield) to the Fed ?

If it is true, then it probably explains the reason why central banks were created -> to indirectly keep bankers profiting through the "money issuing" business. --Dfv10 20:24, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

You might be interested in "Alternative Instruments for Open Market and Discount Window Operations" -- a link is available at http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/openmarket.html. If there were no public bonds available, then basically the Fed would just buy something else -- their first preference would be agency bonds (e.g. Fannie & Freddie) and they would really prefer not to buy stocks if they didn't have to. Don't worry, it is highly unlikely that the U.S. will ever pay off all its debt. The Fed was not created to funnel profits to bankers, it was created to enable control of an elastic money supply. Afelton 22:59, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Unfilled seat on the Board of Governors

Anybody know why there is an unfilled seat on the Board of Governors? Also I thought it odd that "Board of Governors" links to a generic article; perhaps the Board should have a page of its own, apart from the "Federal Reserve System" article--but in any event the link to the generic article is not helpful. Massysett 21:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Member banks: examples

I added a subsection on the member banks -- with some specific examples of both large and small member banks, to explicitly show examples of the "private" part of the Federal Reserve System (FRS). From time to time, certain people who have a strong antipathy toward the FRS repeatedly try to falsely argue here in Wikipedia (in the form of non-neutral POV edits to this article) that the entire System is "private" -- with the unspoken thought -- but clear implication -- that "private is bad." As explained on this talk page, parts of the system actually are "private" (i.e., non-governmental) -- namely the member banks, which can include your bank down the street in your home town.

I deliberately included some examples of member banks from a relatively small state (New Hampshire) and a large state (California). I hope these examples will give readers a sense of the difference between a Federal Reserve Bank (such as the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston) and a member bank (such as one of the listed member banks in New Hampshire). Yours, Famspear 21:13, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Freedom to facism

First of all, when I click "edit this article", the entire section on criticisms is missing. when i click on the "edit" for the section labeled criticisms, it takes me to the page for editing the bibilography, the next section down. i really doubt, but leave open the possibility, that i am just doing something wrong. now for the reason i wanted to edit the criticisms. clearly someone pro-America Freedom to Fascism wrote a very kind paragraph on the pretty much nonfactual video, which i have seen 10 minutes of (with many rediculous/irrelivant/unproven claims). The article also assumes all of it is truth, instead of stating it as an opinion (which bothers me because some of it is rediculous). It ends with a "free video here!" link, because someone wanted to take advantage of wikipedia to show their video. maybe im going a bit overboard, but i think someone should clean it up 59.176.30.250 20:59, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Jekyll Island/conspriacy theories

Firstly, Jekyll Island must be stated as a factual account of where and how the Federal Reserve Act was created:

"Picture a party of the nation's greatest bankers stealing out of New York on a private railroad car under cover of darkness, stealthily hieing hundred of miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch, sneaking onto an island deserted by all but a few servants, living there a full week under such rigid secrecy that the names of not one of them was once mentioned lest the servants learn the identity and disclose to the world this strangest, most secret expedition in the history of American finance. I am not romancing; I am giving to the world, for the first time, the real story of how the famous Aldrich currency report, the foundation of our new currency system, was written . . . .

The utmost secrecy was enjoined upon all. The public must not glean a hint of what was to be done. Senator Aldrich notified each one to go quietly into a private car of which the railroad had received orders to draw up on an unfrequented platform. Off the party set. New York's ubiquitous reporters had been foiled . . . Nelson (Aldrich) had confided to Henry, Frank, Paul and Piatt that he was to keep them locked up at Jekyll Island, out of the rest of the world, until they had evolved and compiled a scientific currency system for the United States, the real birth of the present Federal Reserve System, the plan done on Jekyll Island in the conference with Paul, Frank and Henry . . . . Warburg is the link that binds the Aldrich system and the present system together. He more than any one man has made the system possible as a working reality." -Bertie Charles Forbes, founder of Forbes Magazine, 1916.source with footnote

"I was as secretive, indeed I was as furtive as any conspirator. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would have been wasted. If it were to be exposed that our particular group had got together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congress…I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System. The essential points of the Aldrich Plan were all contained in the Federal Reserve Act as it was passed." -Frank Vanderlip, one of the Jekyll Island attendees, in his autobiography.[http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=SecretsCh01 source

This is not a conspiracy theory. It should be included in the article.

It should also be noted that the most important member of the bunch, Paul Warburg, was paid by Kuhn, Loeb & Co. to oversee the making of the Federal Reserve Act. What a shame that the Act regulating bankers was written by bankers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.174.156.176 (talk • contribs) on 11 January 2007.

the act was in fact written by Congress controlled by enemies of banks. Whether or not meetings were publicized or "secret: is not the issue. Best read Link's book that explores all these issues. Rjensen 19:43, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually it's a lot more likely that either 1) Most Congressmen just didn't understand the tremendous advantage that idle capital derived from the system or 2)The banks were in the pockets of enough Senators and Representives to get them to look the other way. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.174.156.176 (talk) 03:47, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

Dear user at IP68.174.156.176: You say or quote:

"Picture a party of the nation's greatest bankers stealing out of New York on a private railroad car under cover of darkness, stealthily hieing hundred of miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch [ . . . ] living there a full week under such rigid secrecy

And here you say or quote:

[ . . . ] utmost secrecy was enjoined upon all. The public must not glean a hint of what was to be done. Senator Aldrich notified each one to go quietly into a private car [ . . . ]

And here you say or quote:

"I was as secretive, indeed I was as furtive as any conspirator. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would have been wasted. If it were to be exposed that our particular group had got together [ . . . ]

Then you say:

This is not a conspiracy theory. It should be included in the article.

To conspire means "to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end" (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, p. 243 (8th ed. 1976)). What you have described in connection with the Jekyll Island matter is the very essence of a conspiracy. So the word "conspiracy" is not objectionable -- indeed the word precisely denotes what you have described.

As for the word "theory": as explained elsewhere on this talk page, the fact that something is a "theory" does not, in and of itself, make it either true or false. Some theories are true; others are false.

Referring to the Jekyll Island account as a conspiracy theory about the genesis of the Federal Reserve System is denotatively correct -- by definition. The mere fact that the term "conspiracy theory" has negative connotations does not change the fact that the term "conspiracy theory" precisely, accurately denotes the "facts" you have described. Yours, Famspear 15:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I haven't read the Jekyll Island book but the Minnesota Fed itself seems to corroborate the secret Jekyll Island meeting. I don't think the private meeting would classify as a "theory" since it apparently occured. http://www.minneapolisfed.org/pubs/region/89-05/reg895d.cfm —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fafyrd (talk • contribs) on 17 February 2007.

Seignorage

This is a very long discussion (for good reason) and I haven't read every word, but I am surprised that I haven't seen the term "seignorage" discussed. This is really what it's all about. The way that the private Federal Reserve member banks (which collectively own the private Federal Reserve Bank branches) make money is by, literally, making money (out of nothing). You and I make money by working; bankers who own stocks in banks who own stocks in the Federal Reserve bank branches make money by loaning money that doesn't exist until they loan it. Privately creating money and then buying things with it, such as real estate, capital, political influence, or anything else that takes money (everything) is a great business. It is also fraud. It is legal fraud that almost nobody outside the system understands, but it is fraud nevertheless. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.219.191.91 (talk) 11:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC).

Material moved to critique section

Dear editors: Regarding the following language:

In a nutshell Fed prints the dollar bills and lend them to the government of United States with relatively high interest charge. Suspicious is that this corporation does not produce any products or services at all but still has collected only via interest of charge an unbelievable sum of 310 517 000 000 (or 310 billion) dollars from year 1913 to 1964 (today this sum is astronomical huge). This means that all that unbelievable sum of money has been practically robbed from incomes of honest and hard working labours.[footnote here]

I reverted the material before, with the notation that it was POV, unsourced, and possibly OR. I somehow failed to notice that it actually did have a footnote citation at the end -- so my edit comment that the verbiage was unsourced was incorrect. Sorry about that.

However, I have moved the material from near the top of the article down to the section on critiques, and I have tried to tone down the non-neutral language. Yours, Famspear 16:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

It may be "sourced", but the source is definitely not reliable. The Federal Reserve does print Federal Reserve Notes. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) (in the U.S. Treasury Department) prints the notes for the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Reserve compensates the BEP for the cost of printing the notes.[6]
The Federal Reserve does not "lend" Federal Reserve Notes to the U.S. government. The Notes are obligations of the individual Fed Reserve Banks. They enter circulation when banks with reserve accounts at a Federal Reserve Bank purchase the notes from the Fed Res Bank by debiting their accounts.[7] The contributor of this paragraph, like many conspiracy theorists, seems to believe that Federal Reserve Notes somehow enter circulation when the U.S. government pays federal employees or contractors. In fact, the U.S. government only gets access to cash—whether in the form of notes or bank deposits—through taxes and through borrowing from the public by issuing Treasury notes and bonds.
In a very strained sense one might say the U.S. government "pays interest on" Federal Reserve Notes—but you really have to stretch. The law and treasury regulations require that, for each Federal Reserve Note in circulation, the Federal Reserve must hold as collateral an equal value of U.S. Treasury notes. The U.S. government does pay interest on Treasury notes. But the Federal Reserve has no control over whether the government issues Treasury notes—the notes are issued by the government to borrow funds; i.e., they are issued when the government spends more than it takes in in taxes. Only a fairly small portion of treasury notes are purchased by the Fed—most are purchased by individuals and businesses; if the Federal Reserve wasn't buying its portion of notes, someone else would be. And the Federal Reserve does not keep all the interest it collects from the U.S. government. Any amount in excess of the Fed's expenses must be rebated to the Treasury, which amounts to the vast majority of the interest collected by the Fed.
Finally, the Federal Reserve does provide services. Most importantly, it provides for the nation's currency. It also oversees banks, facilitates the clearing of checks, and acts as a lender of last resort when banks get in trouble. — Mateo SA (talk | contribs) 17:01, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Dear editors. I would note that the author of the cited material is listed as a "Karl Steinhauser." A google search reveals a lot of hits, such as the following at a web site for something called the Stephen Roth Institute at Tel Aviv University at [8]:

One of the main disseminators of the alleged Jewish conspiracy theory is Karl Steinhauser, who runs Edition Secret News, a small publishing and mail-order company. He distributed the book Protokolle der Weisen von Zion aus der Sicht nach 100 Jahren (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion 100 Years Later) by Herbert Pitlik, which was confiscated in early 2000. He continued to distribute anti-Semitic literature, for example Pitlik’s new book The Nuremberg Trials: Tracing the Truth, B’nai B’rith -- Jewry and World Politics and Israel’s Secret Plan for the Annihilation of Peoples. Steinhauser also offers reprints of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Theodor Fritsch’s version -- 1931) and The Power of the Jews, Its Nature and End, by Erich and Mathilde Ludendorff.

I don't know if the Stephen Roth Institute is talking about the same "Karl Steinhauser" or not. Does anyone have anything on the Steinhauser footnote citation in the article? I would argue that anyone who is pushing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion should be taken with a huge grain of salt at best, as far as credibility or reliability goes. Just my opinion, though. Yours, Famspear 17:19, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I did not really surprised the answers. Ofcourse it must be "unreliable" when it does not fit to the philosofy of jews. Fact is that kongers members tried to annul the Federal Reserve law when they hear that unbeliable robbed sum of money that Fed has collected. Another good example is what Henry Ford has said about that law. In Finland we have Bank of Finland (in finnish "Suomen Pankki") that is owned by state of Finland and that prints the euro bills (previously markka bills). The system in USA is a cheat of all times. --Stop New World Order 12:55, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations, the Nazi-card - inaudible in sivilized discussion - has been used. --Stop New World Order 13:22, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Dear user Stop New World Order: I'm not sure what you mean by saying that the "Nazi-card" has been used. The article on Godwins Law for which you provided a link states that Godwin's Law is: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one" [i.e., the probability of "one" being "absolute certainty"].

I assume you are referring to the quotation above regarding the book The Nuremberg Trials: Tracing the Truth, B’nai B’rith -- Jewry and World Politics and Israel’s Secret Plan for the Annihilation of Peoples. The Nuremberg Trials obviously involved criminal prosecutions of Nazis, so perhaps that's what you're thinking about. But you are the first person here to mention "the Nazis" or "Hitler" in this discussion.

Your reference to the Nazis and Hitler is tangential. This talk page discussion is about the reliability of the source authored by "Karl Steinhauser", as referenced in the footnote of the Wikipedia article. Neither I nor any other Wikipedia editor in this section of the discussion has made any "comparison involving Nazis or Hitler" or, indeed, any "comparison" at all.

Any information you may have to enlighten us about the reliability of your source, the Karl Steinhauser material, would be appreciated. Yours, Famspear 15:55, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Other guys here accused that Karl Steinhauser is an antisemitic and - if I understood it right - this how tried to prove his statements about Fed is nonsense. This is equal to shouting red faced: "that guy is a nazi, everything he says is not correct!" which is ridiculous at least to me as an european but - I don't know - argumenting might be taught some other way in USA. --Stop New World Order 16:15, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Dear user Stop New World Order. If someone has accused Karl Steinhauser of being a Nazi, that may be interesting to you, but I would argue that it would not be on point in this discussion. The point is that if the Karl Steinhauser you referenced in the Federal Reserve System article is the same Karl Steinhauser referenced in the Tel Aviv University web site, the information on the University web site may be at least relevant to readers in assessing the reliability of Mr. Steinhauser's writings. I don't see that the Tel Aviv University web site accused Mr. Steinhauser of being a Nazi (although of course I am not certain about that, as I have not read everything on the University web site). And even if they or someone else accused him of being a Nazi, that should not be the focus here. The focus should be that if someone promotes a book like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion that is purported to be a hoax, a fraud, that fact would be relevant to readers who want to assess other things he may have done, such as writing the material you cited in the Wikipedia article. What we are asking for here is some clarification about Mr. Steinhauser and his writings, not tangential references to "Nazis" and "Hitler." Yours, Famspear 17:11, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Critisisms of the Federal Reserve Act

For the record: Ignoring valid critisism seems to be all the rage these days. I'm surprised that people find it ok to remove all controversy and critisism from certain pages as if the world we live in was devoid of controversy and debate. Democracy _is_ debate. If user Famspear found bona fide faults, inaccuracies etc. Why did he not remove these instead of the entire thing. Where is his documentation of "highly questionable" material after a glance"? I'd like people to put some thinking into what is objective and what is just purely omitting historical events and valid controversy for starters. See Jurgen Habermas on public discourse. I want a serious debate on what goes into Wiki, not a screaming contest on who's the holder of objective truth in historical matters and recording events of great controversy. Why would one Ignore and/or omit the views of people like the twelve years head of the commitee on banking, Edison, Senators and Presidents? This is almost ridiculously POV and biased towards people trying to find both sides of an issue. My post was in good faith that this also would be a goal for wikipedia and wikipedians. Sincerely John Smith (nom de guerre) 23:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC) Federal Reserve Act

Those "views" were deleted because they were unsourced. Content on Wikipedia must be verifiable. It is not sufficient to simply insert purported quotes from "Edison, Senators and Presidents" without specifying a reliable source for those quotes (or even a date when those statements were supposedly made). On Wikipedia, it is not necessary to document why material is questionable to delete that material. It is necessary to document why material should be added.
Many of the quotes that you inserted are demonstrably false, such as the purported quote from Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was an educated man and would have known that the Federal Reserve is and has been audited (see Edward Flaherty's Myth #6: The Federal Reserve has never been audited). These distortions and inaccuracies should be enough to cast doubt on the validity of your edits, even if we did not have a requirement for verifiability on Wikipedia. — Mateo SA (talk | contribs) 00:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Dear user John Smith (nom de guerre): I believe you may be confused. The only text I have deleted in this article in recent days was here[9] on 24 March 2007. I did, however, revert a huge text dump that you made a few hours ago in the article on Federal Reserve Act. For some reason you duplicated much of the same material in the talk page for that article, and on this talk page.
I take it from your comments that you view the reversion of the long list of quotes you dumped in the article for the Federal Reserve Act as some sort of attempt by me or other editors to ignore "valid critisism [sic]," or to stifle "Democracy" or "debate."
Clue #1: I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in any opinion about whether the Federal Reserve System is "good," or whether the System is "bad." Boring, boring, boring. I have no interest in either including or excluding any critique of the Federal Reserve System.
I do infer from your comments that you personally believe the Federal Reserve System is "bad." I don't care. I assume from your comments that you are trying to use Wikipedia articles and talk pages as vehicles to spread the word that the System is "bad."
Clue #2: The article already contains a pretty good sized section on criticism. Maybe that section should be expanded; maybe it should be shortened. I don't care.
Regarding your statements: "I'd like people to put some thinking into what is objective and what is just purely omitting historical events and valid controversy for starters. See Jurgen Habermas on public discourse." Sorry, but Wikipedia is not primarily a forum for thinking about "what is objective." Neither is this Wikipedia article primarily a forum for "public discourse," at least not in the sense of having the purpose to right the putative wrongs engendered by the creation of the Federal Reserve System. And the primary purpose of this talk page is to discuss ways to improve the article, not to provide a forum for critiques of the Federal Reserve System.
You say you "want a serious debate on what goes into Wiki, not a screaming contest on who's the holder of objective truth in historical matters and recording events of great controversy." Clue: In the article on the Federal Reserve Act (which apparently is what you are talking about, not this article), you dumped an enormous volume of text -- page after page of poorly sourced "quotes," one of which was found to be false with almost no effort. That's why the material was removed. What we should want here on this talk page is a serious discussion on how to improve the article, not a debate on whether the Federal Reserve System is good or bad. The article itself can include critiques of the Federal Reserve System; indeed, it already does.
Regarding the question: "Why would one Ignore and/or omit the views of people like the twelve years head of the commitee on banking, Edison, Senators and Presidents?" Answer: Because the material consisted of an enormous volume of text -- page after page of poorly sourced "quotes," one of which was quickly found to be false -- with almost no effort. The material you dumped into the Federal Reserve Act article is found in one form or another on numerous web sites, a couple of which are documented in the talk page for that article. Unless I'm wrong, the text dump more the doubled the size of the article -- and consisted almost entirely of nothing more than a disjointed series of only vaguely-sourced "quotes."
In my opinion, writing an encyclopedia article does not consist of copying and literally dumping massive amounts of disjointed, improperly sourced "quote" material -- material that is in some cases blatantly phony. (For example, readers may refer to the phony "quote," for example, from of all things the Federal Tax Lien Act of 1966 that user John Smith (nom de guerre) inserted in the article on "Federal Reserve Act" and in the talk page for that article.
Rather than simply copying and dumping material on a wholesale basis from other internet web sites, let's work together to write and edit this article (and the one on the Federal Reserve Act), keeping in mind the Wikipedia concepts of Verifiability, Neutral Point of View, and No Original Research. Yours, Famspear 03:16, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Critisisms of the Federal Reserve Act (2)

For the record: Ignoring valid critisism seems to be all the rage these days. I'm surprised that people find it ok to remove all controversy and critisism from certain pages as if the world we live in was devoid of controversy and debate. Democracy _is_ debate. If user Famspear found bona fide faults, inaccuracies etc. Why did he not remove these instead of the entire thing. Where is his documentation of "highly questionable" material after a glance"? I'd like people to put some thinking into what is objective and what is just purely omitting historical events and valid controversy for starters. See Jurgen Habermas on public discourse. I want a serious debate on what goes into Wiki, not a screaming contest on who's the holder of objective truth in historical matters and recording events of great controversy. Why would one Ignore and/or omit the views of people like the twelve years head of the commitee on banking, Edison, Senators and Presidents? This is almost ridiculously POV and biased towards people trying to find both sides of an issue. My post was in good faith that this also would be a goal for wikipedia and wikipedians. Sincerely John Smith (nom de guerre) 23:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Those "views" were deleted because they were unsourced. Content on Wikipedia must be verifiable. It is not sufficient to simply insert purported quotes from "Edison, Senators and Presidents" without specifying a reliable source for those quotes (or even a date when those statements were supposedly made). On Wikipedia, it is not necessary to document why material is questionable to delete that material. It is necessary to document why material should be added.

Even when it's blatantly obvious why it is necessary I gather.

Many of the quotes that you inserted are demonstrably false, such as the purported quote from Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was an educated man and would have known that the Federal Reserve is and has been audited (see Edward Flaherty's

Myth #6: The Federal Reserve has never been audited). These distortions and inaccuracies should be enough to cast doubt on the validity of your edits, even if we did not have a requirement for verifiability on Wikipedia. — Mateo SA (talk | contribs) 00:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Dear user John Smith (nom de guerre): I believe you may be confused. The only text I have deleted in this article in recent days was here[10] on 24 March 2007. I did, however, revert a huge text dump that you made a few hours ago in the article on Federal Reserve Act. For some reason you duplicated much of the same material in the talk page for that article, and on this talk page.
I take it from your comments that you view the reversion of the long list of quotes you dumped in the article for the Federal Reserve Act as some sort of attempt by me or other editors to ignore "valid critisism [sic]," or to stifle "Democracy" or "debate."
Clue #1: I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in any opinion about whether the Federal Reserve System is "good," or whether the System is "bad." Boring, boring, boring. I have no interest in either including or excluding any critique of the Federal Reserve System.
I do infer from your comments that you personally believe the Federal Reserve System is "bad." I don't care. I assume from your comments that you are trying to use Wikipedia articles and talk pages as vehicles to spread the word that the System is "bad."
You assume incrorrectly. The sole idea is to document the intense opposition many voiced against central banking in general and the creation of the Federal Reserve System in Particular, as a historic fact.
Clue #2: The article already contains a pretty good sized section on criticism. Maybe that section should be expanded; maybe it should be shortened. I don't care.
in your _opinion_. If you have no care one way of the other, it implies lack of interest in the subject matter, something which doesn't vouch for your abilities as a historian, I suggest you stop editing that particular piece altogether and leave it to people who actually do care about history, and historic research (not "original research").
Regarding your statements: "I'd like people to put some thinking into what is objective and what is just purely omitting historical events and valid controversy for starters. See Jurgen Habermas on public discourse."
Sorry, but Wikipedia is not primarily a forum for thinking about "what is objective."
Which is exactly what I was trying to point out. What I suggested was that people did this at home.
Neither is this Wikipedia article primarily a forum for "public discourse," at least not in the sense of having the purpose to right the putative wrongs engendered by the creation of the Federal Reserve System.
Not what I suggested. it does not follow from what I said.
And the primary purpose of this talk page is to discuss ways to improve the article, not to provide a forum for critiques of the Federal Reserve System.
you're not able to draw proper conclusions as to the consequences of your own words here.
providing relevant material is somehow not a way to improve the article?


You say you "want a serious debate on what goes into Wiki, not a screaming contest on who's the holder of objective truth in historical matters and recording events of great controversy." Clue: In the article on the Federal Reserve Act (which apparently is what you are talking about, not this article), you dumped an enormous volume of text -- page after page
incorrect. the entire thing would fill one page
of poorly sourced "quotes," one of which was found to be false with almost no effort.
irrelevant. anyone can make a mistake
That's why the material was removed. What we should want here on this talk page is a serious discussion on how to improve the article,
the article would be greately improved if one included the intense debate the act generated at the time.not a debate on whether the Federal Reserve System is good or bad.
your erroneous conclusion/ supposition.
The article itself can include critiques of the Federal Reserve System; indeed, it already does.
hardly. at best "debateable".
Regarding the question: "Why would one Ignore and/or omit the views of people like the twelve years head of the commitee on banking, Edison, Senators and Presidents?" Answer: Because the material consisted of an enormous volume of text -- page after page of poorly sourced "quotes," one of which was quickly found to be false -- with almost no effort.
reiteration of falsehood.
but you do exactly what you say wiki is not for: turn it into a debating forum.
The material you dumped into the Federal Reserve Act article is found in one form or another on numerous web sites, a couple of which are documented in the talk page for that article. Unless I'm wrong, the text dump more the doubled the size of the article
irrelevant. if the information is relevant and , why would one care that an article on let's say World War One doubled on the arrival of important new information.
do you believe it is wiki's project to give as little as possible information on a subject??
and consisted almost entirely of nothing more than a disjointed series of only vaguely-sourced "quotes."
ah. weasle arguments en masse."quotes"? "vaguely"? what's vague here is the claim that these quotes are in any way shape or form difficult to verify.
In my opinion, writing an encyclopedia article does not consist of copying and literally dumping massive amounts of disjointed, improperly sourced "quote" material --
the essence of important dissent is better found and often sourced in quotes from the main opponents, a seperate issue, too large to go into here now.
material that is in some cases blatantly phony.
allegation. not serious argument. You have not shown that the entire thing consisted of "blatantly phony" material. You have shown(?)/pointed to one error "at a glance".
(For example, readers may refer to the phony "quote," for example, from of all things the Federal Tax Lien Act of 1966 that user John Smith (nom de guerre) inserted in the article on "Federal Reserve Act" and in the talk page for that article.
it will not be the first mistake made on wiki or the internet. Wiki is not considered a primary source in any school or university. It is merely a tool and a reference point and a convenient way to access information quickly and go further in investigation - in my opinion.

I've never heard of any scholar using wiki as his primary source.

Rather than simply copying and dumping material on a wholesale basis from other internet web sites, let's work together to write and edit this article (and the one on the Federal Reserve Act), keeping in mind the Wikipedia concepts of Verifiability, Neutral Point of View, and No Original Research. Yours, Famspear 03:16, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
It's of absolutely no significance, wether you believe you can "infer", or in any other way believe you can determine the motives of others from posts that do not explicitly say so.

The issue at hand is this: should an article on a historic event contain the main arguments of the main "combatants" / participants.

Are you sure _you_ are the standard to which we should hold all our knowledge and information?

Because if not, I think we can fairly say that wether you belive you can determine the motives of any historian in the world is highly doubtful to say the least, and your views on what other people belive is screamingly unimportant.

Again:Which inclination you might entertain on wether _I_ think the Fed is good or bad is not only a ludicrous and utterly unimportant issue, it has absolutely nothing to do with the issue. So to echo your own words: I couldn't care less what you believe or what you do not belive.

The fact of the matter is that there are enormous amounts of criticism that has been fielded towards the Fed, by people such as the conservative Nobel Price winner,Nobel Laureate in Economics Milton Friedman, and hundreds if not thousands of other scholars, presidents, congressmen, senators, economists, historians, and all other forms of public figures.

This huge body of critisism is simply not reflected in wikipedia.

What _you_ think or do not think about _my_ views is completely and utterly irrelevant.

You do not grasp the objective problem with not documenting the main body of the views one of the greatest economic controversies in our time? Fine. But dont expect for one minute that many others around the world will share your view for very much longer.

Wiki could of course source each and every line in its articles on let's say the second world war, but that would be both highly impractical,as well as time consuming, not to mention ridiculous.

But again, fine, I'm able to source 90 % of the material I've provided, much , if not most of it, directly to Library of Congress, renowned historical archives, and the entire range of US Universities, and I and others will do just that.

As to neutrality it is a fairy tale and a way to promote a "centrist" view as if this POV was the objective version of history and historical debates and controversy.

It is not. The only way to give credibility to a historic subject is to present more than one side of the controversy. And preferably present serious parts of all sides - as many sides as the subject matter needs to be dealt with in an academically acceptable fashion, making the subject matter conform(?) to a standard that could and would pass a peer reviewing process.

Each and every article in wiki carries a certain load of value and bias in its selection of words and syntax. If you are not familiar with this concept I suggest you do some research or join a college/university again.

As to your own "source", the page "Myth #6: The Federal Reserve has never been audited" by Edward Flaherty, Ph.D. Department of Economics College of Charleston, S.C. , it is in itself a highly questionable "source", and the authors concept of an "audit" is dubious at best. For a serious audit to be of any value one would need to know who the bona fide true owners of the Federal Reserve are. This matter is shrouded in a conglomerate of financial institutions and different appointees.John Smith (nom de guerre) 07:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


Critisisms of the Federal Reserve Act (3)

Dear John Smith (nom de guerre): Thank your for sharing your feelings with us. Let's look a these comments you made about me:
If you have no care one way of [sic] the other, it implies lack of interest in the subject matter, something which doesn't vouch for your abilities as a historian, I suggest you stop editing that particular piece altogether and leave it to people who actually do care about history, and historic research (not "original research").
Thank you for sharing your feelings and pointing out my spelling mistakes so clearly. You obviously felt that that was somehow important or necessary. BTW if you check my IP you'll see that I'm writing you from Norway, I'll be happy to correct your norwegian on no.wikipedia.org if you ever need it.


First, regardless of whether I or other Wikipedia editors are "historians" or not, and regardless of whether I or other Wikipedia editors are interested in the "history" of the Federal Reserve System, our primary task here is to edit the Wikipedia article on the Federal Reserve System following the rules of Verifiability, Neutral Point of View, and No Original Research.
Thank you for pointing that out for me again. Notice that I comment upon your care for the subject matter, not your possible credentials nor your abilities as such, although most people would consider it valid to go to a mechanic for car repairs and a historian for clarity on historic subject, although none excludes the possibility of the other having just as good knowledge in either field.
The point here, my point, was that a crucial piece of evidence was missing for this article to be of any value or be a encyclopedic article at all. In this regard I hope it would be valid to ask that the article actually contained the historic material it pretends to and not just what amounts to one-sided political "pamphleteering".


Second, for all you know, I and every other Wikipedia editor on this page could have a Ph.D. in history. On a de facto basis, one of the basic tenets of Wikipedia is that you do not need credentials or expertise (or anything else other than an internet-connected computer) to edit in a given area of expertise. Bringing up what you feel are other people's lack of credentials or ability is not going to win any arguments for you here.
I don't think you understand completely. I don't think I care one way OR the other about "winning" any arguments here. I don't care about credentials either. I do however care about people showing enough interest to at least try incorporate serious historic evidence of great controversy.
you still seem to take it for granted that anyone who bothers voicing "the other sides" version of history must automatically hold their views.
After you have edited here for a while, you may notice that the vast majority of editors show their credentials only on their user pages -- almost never in discussions on the talk pages for articles. Just as using one's credentials or abilities as a sword to try to win an argument can be ineffectual, using what you feel is someone else's lack of credentials or ability is generally going to be ineffectual in Wikipedia.
again. I was mainly pointing to your lack of interest not to your abilities in history. Although I would assume that it would help knowing chemistry when editing a wiki entry on chemistry.
Also it would probably help in aiding one in understanding the reason why some material is suggested by others and the reasons for it being suggested.


Third, I respectfully suggest that you consider keeping your feelings about Wikipedia editors' abilities to yourself. Wikipedia has a rule against personal attacks. Comment on the writing itself, not on fellow Wikipedia editors.
I respectfully suggest and "feel" that you assume too much and try to much to indicate / insinuate that other peoples views are merely "feelings" and that your "feelings" somehow therefore are to be considered more or better arguments and objective facts. That's just creating weasle words as far as I can tell.


Fourth, the fact that I myself don't care (in the sense that I don't have a strong emotional attachment to the subject of the history of the Fed) is arguably an advantage. Persons with strong feelings about a particular topic may sometimes have a harder time being objective than people like me without a strong emotion on the subject. That doesn't mean that emotional people cannot provide good contributions, or that detached people cannot provide bad edits.


"([..]"I myself don't care" - "I don't have a strong emotional attachment to the subject of the history of the Fed)" etc.
Again - here you are insinuating that you and your "feelings" somehow carry more validity merely because of your self-proclaimed disinterest in the subject. It does not follow, and its a disingenious way of "debating" / trying to prop up ones own views through subtle(?) ridicule of other peoples arguments.
Fifth, merely copying concatenations of "quotations" from other web sites and pasting them into a Wikipedia article on a wholesale basis is not "historical research."
Ah, but it will be if such material is continually and consistently summarily deleted. Furthermore I didn't think wiki required it to be historical research, but more historical fact. so...


I would suggest that you consider doing the following:
1. Take a deep breath, and relax;
Sure. And thanks for indicating to the world that I'm somehow not calm enough.


2. Recognize that the reversion of your text dump was not personal -- it was not intended as a "slam" against you, or against your apparent belief that the Fed is bad;
again, you use a tactic accrediting me with a point of view you hav constructed to defend your own position. I added critisism because it is a serious historical matter. This is arguably the pivotal point in US economic history and probably in US history overall, considering economics importance in world events and politics. If you and your fellow wikipedians fail to grasp this I think wiki is in serious trouble. As you say, noone needs to be a historian, but you still need and want wiki to be a reliable source, neutral and without original research, if this is the case someone will need to check the content in a way that matches the criteria demanded of scholars on the subject.


3. Put aside (at least for a while) your strong feelings about the Federal Reserve System, and especially stop trying to persuade others that the Fed is a bad thing;
again: You really should stop with the derogative way of adressing other people as just being emotional and somehow overcome by "feelings". it amounts to weasle argument and is a disingenious way of putting others down.
and exactly the same thing goes for insinuating that I'm trying to persuade anyone. I do not for a second believe I'm going to "persuade" you or any others who do not wish to hear other sides of the story. I do however consider that people who are serious in their search for knowledge will want to know both sides of the controversy and that all people have a _right_ to know the extent of it.
4. Assume good faith on the part of other editors, and comment on the material, not on what you believe are the attributes or credentials of Wikipedia editors;
Assuming good faith is not something I "feel" I've been experiencing, and I have tried to explain to you that I care about a balanced view of history more than any of your credentials. The point here being balance, as in we need at least some form of history research "tools" (abilities)(the ability to see that two or more sides actually exist and acknowledge them) for there to be any historical entry at all and not just one sided political propaganda,no matter be it "leftist", centrist or right-wing.
5. Refrain from copying long lists of inadequately sourced "quotations" from other web sites;
Fair enough. I'll admit that I was making a point in so far as to show the scope, width and importance of the critisims by selecting to submit them all at once.
The Federal Reserve Act is a enormous field with huge consequences for the world, the history of the world, politics, it's ramifications are great.This in itself should vouch for a serious extension of the article, but it seems no wikipedian is in any hurry to do any such work even though there's an abundance of easily sourced bona fide material readily available both from library of congress and universities and books throughout the US and the rest of the world.
6. Read or re-read the Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and keep contributing!
Remember, the article may very well need additional documentation on critiques of the Federal Reserve System. Your edits were not deleted because an editor felt that no additional critiques should be put into the article. This is not about the goodness or badness of the Federal Reserve System.
I'll have to tell you again: wether the Federal Reserve is or was good or bad is not the issue, the issue is to document the scope of the debate on one of the events of the greatest importance in the history of US economic history and probably in US political life too.Serious enough for presidents, congressmen historians and economists to debate all the way up until this very day and age.


I agree that the quotes did not fit the article in a seamless fashion and needed rewriting, but this was what I was trying to spur, the awareness that a huge body of important historical evidence of controversy was left out or ignored completely, as well as the historical background for the Federal Reserve Act.
This is about Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Yours, Famspear 22:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Sure. And probably just a little bit about content.
But lastly: Please refrain from referring to other peoples views as "feelings" in the future, as if to create some kind of "illusion" your own views are more objective or true in any sense. Pointing out spelling mistakes etc is just somewhat juvenile. it really does not look like you're showing any of the respect you claim to have for others. You will yourself be met with a lot more respect if you succeed refraining from it. The tone you meet others with affect the tone you'll be met with yourself.
Good luck.
cheers.John Smith (nom de guerre) 11:18, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

reply

Dear user John Smith (nom de guerre): First, the only sense in which I was pointing out a "spelling mistake" was in the use of the Latin term sic in a quote I copied from you. I don't "feel" that pointing out spelling errors is "important or necessary." It is considered good practice, however, when copying a quote from someone else, to indicate with the Latin term sic if there is indeed a spelling error or an enigmatic phrase -- rather than changing the precise way in which the quoted author wrote the material. The use of the Latin word is a way of pointing out that the material is printed "thus" in the original. You shouldn't take that personally. Indeed, what you are referring to appears to be merely a typographical error. I make typographical errors, too, and I wouldn't feel upset if someone copied a passage from my writing and used the Latin sic where appropriate.
Regarding your response that you "comment upon [ . . . Famspear's] care for the subject matter, not [Famspear's] possible credentials nor [Famspear's] abilities as such, although most people would consider it valid to go to a mechanic for car repairs and a historian for clarity on historic subject, although none excludes the possibility of the other having just as good knowledge in either field" -- well, let me remind you of what you actually wrote:
If you [Famspear] have no care one way of [sic] the other, it implies lack of interest in the subject matter, something which doesn't vouch for your abilities as a historian, I suggest you stop editing that particular piece altogether and leave it to people who actually do care about history, and historic research (not "original research").
I argue that a reasonable person would interpret this commentary as an an attack on my "abilities as a historian" and a suggestion that I, Famspear, "stop editing that particular piece altogether and leave it to people who actually do care about history, and historic research."
And here you wrote:
I don't think I [John Smith (nom de guerre)] care one way OR the other about "winning" any arguments here. I don't care about credentials either. I do however care about people showing enough interest to at least try incorporate serious historic evidence of great controversy.
The fact that your long list of quotations (copied and pasted from other web sites) was reverted does not mean that the Wikipedia editors who have worked this article to this point do not show "enough interest to at least try incorporate serious historic evidence of great controversy." This is an overstatement of the case for the inclusion of the material.
Regarding your comments that "most people would consider it valid to go to a mechanic for car repairs and a historian for clarity on historic subject" -- I agree. And my point is that under the rules of Wikipedia, that does not matter.
Non-experts edit in areas in which they have no expertise. Non-historians are allowed to edit in articles on history or historical matters. People who have absolutely no training or credentials in physics are allowed to edit articles on highly technical matters in physics. People without a clue about engineering would be allowed to edit technical articles on engineeering. That's the way it is in Wikipedia.
Now, let's look at your comments here:
The point here, my point, was that a crucial piece of evidence was missing for this article to be of any value or be a encyclopedic article at all. In this regard I hope it would be valid to ask that the article actually contained the historic material it pretends to and not just what amounts to one-sided political "pamphleteering". [Italics added by Famspear]
With all due respect, you are overstating your case. The article already contains a critique section. Wikipedia editors do, from time to time, add and delete with respect to that section and the rest of the article. You are a Wikipedia editor, and you can add and delete. Your contributions, my contributions, and everyone else's contributions are subject to being chopped up unmercifully by other editors. An editor who takes that personally is not going to be very happy in Wikipedia.
Nowhere in the article does the article claim to contain "the historic material it pretends to" -- whatever that means. And I'm sorry, but I disagree with your assertion that the article as presently written is "one-sided political pamphleteering." Putting aside any contributions I have made to the article (which are probably minimal), I assert that the many Wikipedia editors who have worked this article to its present condition have done a pretty good job. If, however, you believe that the article is missing a "crucial piece of evidence" and that it must have that piece of evidence "to be of any value or be an encyclopedic article at all," then by all means convince your fellow Wikipedia editors (not just me).
Regarding "feelings" -- sorry, but my perception, based on the comments you have posted on this talk page, is that you took the reversion of your material very personally -- based on hurt feelings. Certainly the deletion of your material contributed was not based on a feeling, an emotion, on my part about the history of the Federal Reserve System. I know that there are people who have strong "feelings" about the goodness or badness of the Federal Reserve System, and that those people may be vocal and emotional, but they are few in number. I am not one of them. Yours, Famspear 18:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Critisism... (4)

Dear user John Smith (nom de guerre): First, the only sense in which I was pointing out a "spelling mistake" was in the use of the Latin term sic in a quote I copied from you. I don't "feel" that pointing out spelling errors is "important or necessary." It is considered good practice, however, when copying a quote from someone else, to indicate with the Latin term sic if there is indeed a spelling error or an enigmatic phrase -- rather than changing the precise way in which the quoted author wrote the material. The use of the Latin word is a way of pointing out that the material is printed "thus" in the original. You shouldn't take that personally. Indeed, what you are referring to appears to be merely a typographical error. I make typographical errors, too, and I wouldn't feel upset if someone copied a passage from my writing and used the Latin sic where appropriate.
Not really interesting. But fine. It's just not necessary, it's a completely unnecessary sidetrack and just looks juvenile or a way of sidestepping the issue, cloud the debate with masses of inconsequential text that has nothing to do with the issue as you now have made me comment upon. Just stop it. I'm quite capable of finding my spelling mistakes if I'm so inclined or truly need to.
Regarding your response that you "comment upon [ . . . Famspear's] care for the subject matter, not [Famspear's] possible credentials nor [Famspear's] abilities as such, although most people would consider it valid to go to a mechanic for car repairs and a historian for clarity on historic subject, although none excludes the possibility of the other having just as good knowledge in either field" -- well, let me remind you of what you actually wrote:
Reminding me of what I wrote yes. Again, this is a waste of time and has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
If you [Famspear] have no care one way of [sic] the other, it implies lack of interest in the subject matter, something which doesn't vouch for your abilities as a historian, I suggest you stop editing that particular piece altogether and leave it to people who actually do care about history, and historic research (not "original research").
I argue that a reasonable person would interpret this commentary as an an attack on my "abilities as a historian" and a suggestion that I, Famspear, "stop editing that particular piece altogether and leave it to people who actually do care about history, and historic research."
How can it be an "attack" on your abilities? You have never professed to having any, and my suggesting that you are making an error if you were or are trying to follow scholarly methods in the field of history, must be a proper thing to do just as anyone here points out factual mistakes or mistakes in the handling of the subject matter her on wiki on a daily basis.
But this is ridiculous to argue on. Again you are starting a blame game to come out as the insulted part and somehow winning an argument. You do not stick to the _issue_.


And here you wrote:
I don't think I [John Smith (nom de guerre)] care one way OR the other about "winning" any arguments here. I don't care about credentials either. I do however care about people showing enough interest to at least try incorporate serious historic evidence of great controversy.
The fact that your long list of quotations (copied and pasted from other web sites) was reverted does not mean that the Wikipedia editors who have worked this article to this point do not show "enough interest to at least try incorporate serious historic evidence of great controversy." This is an overstatement of the case for the inclusion of the material.
You do not see that the article lacks huge parts of the decades of historical critisisms fielded by a hundreds of prominent political and economic figures. Fine.


Regarding your comments that "most people would consider it valid to go to a mechanic for car repairs and a historian for clarity on historic subject" -- I agree. And my point is that under the rules of Wikipedia, that does not matter.
That's fine, but we have to agree on some kind of level, standard of what reporting historical evidence correctly constitutes. And the only reasonable standard we have are manuals and scholars in the field of history, not manuals on car repair or ones own inclinations and "feelings" for the day.


Non-experts edit in areas in which they have no expertise. Non-historians are allowed to edit in articles on history or historical matters. People who have absolutely no training or credentials in physics are allowed to edit articles on highly technical matters in physics. People without a clue about engineering would be allowed to edit technical articles on engineeering. That's the way it is in Wikipedia.
Now, let's look at your comments here:
The point here, my point, was that a crucial piece of evidence was missing for this article to be of any value or be a encyclopedic article at all. In this regard I hope it would be valid to ask that the article actually contained the historic material it pretends to and not just what amounts to one-sided political "pamphleteering". [Italics added by Famspear]
With all due respect, you are overstating your case. The article already contains a critique section.
You call a four line preamble, six lines in the "Historical criticisms" and then some inconsequentual innuendo about CNBC and Bernanke's statements and his influence on the stock market(an influence reiterated everyday on/in economic media) and then six lines called "Business cycles, libertarian philosophy and free markets" where one line is Bernankes admission and the rest consists of a few names (three?) and some hint to gold standrd problems a critique section?
You seriously mean to tell me that this reflects the main body of the and the scope and volume of the 94 years of opposition to the Fed and the preceeding hundred years of opposition to the creation of a central bank by people like President Andrew Jackson? You seriously mean to tell us that you can call this critique of the Fed?
This is laughable. And I can see no due respect to anyone of wiki's readers here. I see an insult to my intelligence and anyone else who goes to wiki for _information_.
Wikipedia editors do, from time to time, add and delete with respect to that section and the rest of the article. You are a Wikipedia editor, and you can add and delete. Your contributions, my contributions, and everyone else's contributions are subject to being chopped up unmercifully by other editors. An editor who takes that personally is not going to be very happy in Wikipedia.
again you assume too much. I take the article seriously and I'm trying to stick to the critisism and have you desist with all the "feelings" , who attacked who, who cares, and "taking it personally" dabeting. Please stop that, I'm having to sift through enough stuff as it is to get to the issues.
I don't have enough time to , or any interest in discussing what you think about my feelings or personality, it's utterly irrelevant, so please stop.
Nowhere in the article does the article claim to contain "the historic material it pretends to" -- whatever that means. And I'm sorry, but I disagree with your assertion that the article as presently written is "one-sided political pamphleteering." Putting aside any contributions I have made to the article (which are probably minimal), I assert that the many Wikipedia editors who have worked this article to its present condition have done a pretty good job. If, however, you believe that the article is missing a "crucial piece of evidence" and that it must have that piece of evidence "to be of any value or be an encyclopedic article at all," then by all means convince your fellow Wikipedia editors (not just me).
Regarding "feelings" -- sorry, but my perception, based on the comments you have posted on this talk page, is that you took the reversion of your material very personally -- based on hurt feelings. Certainly the deletion of your material contributed was not based on a feeling, an emotion, on my part about the history of the Federal Reserve System. I know that there are people who have strong "feelings" about the goodness or badness of the Federal Reserve System, and that those people may be vocal and emotional, but they are few in number. I am not one of them. Yours, Famspear 18:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
You're repeating yourself, please stop it, its getting really tedious to sift through your "feelings" , goodness/badness - "defense". The issue here is wether the article reflects the enourmous amounts of critisism that has been fielded against the Federal Reserve, the Act, and therefore also the historical controversy with the concept of central banking up until the creation of the Fed. I'm sure you're familiar with Andrew Jacksons controversy with the attempts to prolong the second Bank of the United States.
I'm not hurt, but more and more irritated that I have to discuss _your_ assumptions as to other peoples feelings, motives and whatnot, instead of the issues. It's fine that you deleted the quotes, I was in fact trying both to show and to spur people to incorporate serious critisism better by showing the large amounts of people who have critisised the Federal Reserve System. But if really noone can see the problem here I'll happily give up on this part of wiki's credibility and let it slide on it's own course. I'm not about to waste time adding critisism that someone will delete and then spend time like this debating with people who cannot stick to the issue for a few days .
Again: These are historic facts, and it is clearly NOT reflected in the article that hundreds of political figures and renowned people throughout the years have pointed this out.
I'm really getting tired of reading and trying to find some substance in your style, prose and debating technique, you really should do some thinking about sticking to the issue and subject instead of decorating it with insinuations going on to play the insulted party turning it into a debate on "style". It's terribly irritating and unnecessary. Yet again: Please stop it. John Smith (nom de guerre) 00:20, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Dear user John Smith (nom de guerre): You yourself introduced much of the matter about which you are now asking me to "please stop." And you don't need to "sift through" any "feelings, goodness/badness - defense," except your own. You insert the materials on the talk page and you are the only editor here currently trying to make a defense of anything. And as long as you keep coming up with comments like:
"I do however care about people showing enough interest to at least try incorporate serious historic evidence of great controversy."
And this:
"You do not see that the article lacks huge parts of the decades of historical critisisms fielded by a hundreds of prominent political and economic figures. Fine."
And this:
"But if really noone can see the problem here I'll happily give up on this part of wiki's credibility and let it slide on it's own course. I'm not about to waste time adding critisism that someone will delete and then spend time like this debating with people who cannot stick to the issue for a few days."
And this:
"I'm really getting tired of reading and trying to find some substance in your style, prose and debating technique, you really should do some thinking about sticking to the issue and subject instead of decorating it with insinuations going on to play the insulted party [ . . . ]"
other editors (like me) may well keep responding to what you say. This is, after all, a discussion page.
I intend to look at the material you referenced, along with a massive amount of material from another user that was dumped into this talk page (and removed for, among other things, apparent copyright violations). Perhaps you and I and the other editors can work together to use some of the materials as the basis for an addition to the critique section in this article. Rather than engaging in wholesale copying and pasting, we as Wikipedia editors need to write the materials ourselves, and use materials from other web sites, etc., as our sources. Limited quotations -- with full citations from reliable sources -- are fine. There are no promises. Whatever you or I or another editor adds will be subject to merciless editing by the rest of the Wikipedia community. Each addition will be evaluated for concepts like Verifiability, Neutral Point of View, and No Original Research. The Wikipedia goal is not to persuade others about what we believe is true, or to right the wrongs of the past, but instead to report what third parties have already written about the subject of each Wikipedia article.
You might see as we work through the process together that this can be quite interesting. This is a busy time for me, so it may take awhile. Let's see what we can come up with together. Yours, Famspear 20:06, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

The Centrist Ideology of the Media

The problems with wikipedia on controversial issues seem to be that many of the US users and others have a thoroughly conservative view on history as well as economics. In this respect they seem to believe that any attempt at even remotely displaying signs of the actual controversy that has in fact occured throughout the years must be POV. I don't know if this has something to do with the educational system, the US media or just the users of wikipedia, but it creates a huge gap between europeans views of what is a fair and balanced view of history and the US version one meets on wikipedia. No serious debate is generated and there seems to be a grave lack of understanding what the history subject is all about in some cases. Often encyclopedic form is used as an excuse although huge amounts of wiki articles on current entertainment industry pieces are far more extensive and cover several scores of pages and references and supplimentary pages.

One media analyst summed it up in this fashion in his article
"Propaganda from the Middle of the Road"
The Centrist Ideology of the News Media

"Another hallmark of centrist propaganda is to affirm, no matter what the evidence, that U.S. foreign policy is geared toward promoting democracy. Journalists are not unaware that the U.S. helped overthrow democratic governments, for example, in Guatemala in '54, Brazil in '64, Chile in '73 -- but these cases are considered ancient history, no longer relevant. (In centrist ideology, since the system is constantly fixing and renewing itself, U.S. abuses -- even against democracy -- become distant past overnight.)

Mainstream journalists respond to such criticism by explaining that articles for the daily press are not history texts and cannot include everything. That's true, but centrist propaganda finds space for certain histories and not others.

from a www.fair.org article by Jeff Cohen

from www.fair.org
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1492 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nunamiut (talk • contribs) 09:07, 1 April 2007 (UTC).

Critisism (5)

Dear user John Smith (nom de guerre): You yourself introduced much of the matter about which you are now asking me to "please stop."

Oh, I did did I? Really?? You're quite sure about this?? Ah. But Of course. The blame game. continued. Thanks. But You are "inaccurate" to say the least. I did not in any way shape or form start with the references to "feelings" "goodness/badness" or any other of your debating techinques. Please don't be dishonest, these were _your_ words. Not mine.

If anyone reads the original post they'll see that I did not at any time there referr to you or your abilities 'at all. I'll be more than happy to point you or anyone else to the post which you yourself commented upon the 27th of March this year.
Here it is by the way:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Federal_Reserve_System#Critisisms_of_the_Federal_Reserve_Act

And you don't need to "sift through" any "feelings, goodness/badness - defense," except your own.

Yes. indeed. Of course. How silly of me. And since you where the one who introduced the nice finishing touches commenting on how other peoples views are "feelings" and how others are merely so uninformed that they do not understand all this help that you're trying to provide. Thanks. But you do not have to repeat anything for me neither anymore I don't think.

Do your self a favour and just dont delude yourself that this reply(?)/"discussion" of yours passes for useful use of wiki or internet space anymore.

You clearly wont debate any of the real historic facts or the issue at all. Fine.

You insert the materials on the talk page and you are the only editor here currently trying to make a defense of anything. And as long as you keep coming up with comments like:
"I do however care about people showing enough interest to at least try incorporate serious historic evidence of great controversy."
And this:
"You do not see that the article lacks huge parts of the decades of historical critisisms fielded by a hundreds of prominent political and economic figures. Fine."
And this:
"But if really noone can see the problem here I'll happily give up on this part of wiki's credibility and let it slide on it's own course. I'm not about to waste time adding critisism that someone will delete and then spend time like this debating with people who cannot stick to the issue for a few days."
And this:
"I'm really getting tired of reading and trying to find some substance in your style, prose and debating technique, you really should do some thinking about sticking to the issue and subject instead of decorating it with insinuations going on to play the insulted party [ . . . ]"
other editors (like me) may well keep responding to what you say. This is, after all, a discussion page.

Indeed. But you see I defend the issue that one is supposed to show more than just a fragment of the historical evidence of great controversy, which is somewhat on topic towards the article, while your "defence" is page upon page on how other peoples views are feelings and why you feel you have to comment this or that way. You do not debate the issue: should there be more of the historical controversy quoted? which main parts of the controversy and the debates should be covered? which figures need more space? who _were_ the main combatants through the years etc.

I intend to look at the material you referenced, along with a massive amount of material from another user that was dumped into this talk page (and removed for, among other things, apparent copyright violations). Perhaps you and I and the other editors can work together to use some of the materials as the basis for an addition to the critique section in this article. Rather than engaging in wholesale copying and pasting, we as Wikipedia editors need to write the materials ourselves, and use materials from other web sites, etc., as our sources. Limited quotations -- with full citations from reliable sources -- are fine. There are no promises.

After your derogatives lobbed in my direction from the start. I't seems more like you're just being disingenious again to say the least.


Whatever you or I or another editor adds will be subject to merciless editing by the rest of the Wikipedia community.

That's rather curious. Because so far the only one contributing(?) here I've seen is you, and the standard and content of the article is on the verge ridiculuos and in any case worthless to any serious historian or serious student. Both in scope and content.

And I'm sorry but I don't think I believe you, for you have shown no evidence and give me no reason to believe thatr you will actually do the work you say on a topic that disinterests you so much or you are so indifferent to as you've stated.

Each addition will be evaluated for concepts like Verifiability, Neutral Point of View, and No Original Research. The Wikipedia goal is not to persuade others about what we believe is true, or to right the wrongs of the past, but instead to report what third parties have already written about the subject of each Wikipedia article.

Constantly Repeating wiki rules to other users, me in this case, incessantly, rules that I have not broken, amounts to a regular smear game, and is a pretense that I have not read or do not understand them or have somehow committed some offense to them. I could of course ignore this too, but since I don't think this is any "slip up" on your part anymore. I do take this as a direct insult. I can only ask you to quit that too, if nothing else for your own credibilitys sake.

Further to the point: If you truly hold the views you've stated earlier then please don't pretend that you carry more weight or seriousness in the approach to verifiability, NPOV or no original research, it's both juvenile and just plain irritating, as in you wont win any good will from it.

You might see as we work through the process together that this can be quite interesting. This is a busy time for me, so it may take awhile. Let's see what we can come up with together. Yours, Famspear 20:06, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Let's hope so. since it seems everyone else have given up on providing wiki and the world with more factual material on this part of economic history, through this channel at any rate. Could it be that you have something to do with this? Where are the rest of the wikipedians who share an interest in the disemination of, and sharing of information and knowledge? I can't help but thinking it's a bit curious that you and I are the only ones who seem to have an interest in the quality of this information.

John Kenneth Galbraith is just one mainstream economist that has commented on the Federal Reserve and even written a book on the Great Crash of 1929,(I hope you are aware of Bernankes statement) he (Galbraith)was one of the most widely respected economists of his time, I'll gladly source you to some material from his work and that of scores of others. But I do not want to waste anymore time having Galbraith smeared, discussing debating techniques or having my posts quoted to point out irrelevant stuff.

Just one final thought (for the benefit of other readers) You (Famspear) clearly won't debate any of the historical data or the need for more space for other views. But cling to the constant more or less subtle(?) use of derogatives. Why on earth? Is this not the place to come to discuss seriously how to improve wiki, faults and the addition, subtraction or the lack of important information?

But I'll try to ignore any and all derogatives you might provide in your replies, (not likely I will succeed) and assume that someoneelse will start giving real historical input soon that might be debate-worthy. And worthy of wikipedia (at least the original idea of Wikipedia). John Smith (nom de guerre) 21:30, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Seems one shouldn't be holding one's breath. Waiting for sanity. (Still).

217.144.240.250 12:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

break line inserted for ease of editing

"The fallacy of argument ad temperantiam is an appeal to moderation, on the apparent assumption that truth, in Burke's phrase is always a "sort of middle." In academic scholarship it commonly occurs in two forms. The first is stylistic; the second, substantive."

"Historians write dull books not because they are dull fellows, but because they have formed the stupid habit of confusing dullness with detachment. A clear example of an excess of stylistic moderation is the good, grey, Cambridge HIstory of British Foreign Policy, or the Cambridge Modern History. An editor of these excruciating works, the English diplomatic historian A. W. Ward, is alleged to have revised one chapter on the ground that "It's a bit lively." --217.144.240.250 20:01, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Implementation of monetary policy

This section is Fucking Bullshit: "A member bank lends out most of the money deposited with it"

The Gospel: From a systems viewpoint, commercial banks as contrasted to financial intermediaries, never loan out existing deposits (saved or otherwise) including existing DDs, or TDs or the owner’s equity or any liability item. When CBs grant loans to or purchase securities from the non-bank public (which includes every institution and every person except the commercial and the reserve banks), they acquire title to earning assets by the creation of NEW money-DDs.

You motherfuckers don't know jack shit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Flow5 (talk • contribs) (on 10 April 2007, USA central time).

Dear Flow5: Thanks for the insightful, colorful commentary.
You are basically correct. In most cases when a bank makes a loan, the bank's book entry is to debit loans receivable (the actual name of the account depends on the bank's chart of accounts), an asset account on the bank's balance sheet -- and to credit a liability on the bank's books, such as a demand deposit account (what most people would call the checking account of the borrower), a time deposit account (such as a certificate of deposit) or a cashier's check (liability) account, etc., etc., as the case may be. On rare occasion, a bank might instead disburse the loan proceeds in the form of actual currency and coin, in which case the credit would be to a "currency and coin on hand" account (again, the specific title of the account would just depend on how it's listed in the bank's general ledger, based on its chart of accounts). But issuing loan proceeds in the form of actual currency (such as coins or U.S. Federal Reserve notes) is relatively rare.
In other words, if, by "existing deposits" you mean the actual currency and coin that people have already deposited with the bank, your analysis is correct that banks never or almost never actually loan this money out.
On a side note, it may come as a surprise to most non-banking people, but the currency and coin that you deposit with your bank actually becomes the bank's property at the instant you make the deposit. Once it's in the teller's tray or the bank vault, it's not really called a "deposit" in bank accounting and legal jargon. It's called "currency and coin on hand" or something to that effect. When you open a checking account with, say, a one hundred dollar bill, that bill becomes the property of the bank. You, in return, receive an intangible asset (here I'm using that term in a non-technical way) called a "demand deposit account" -- otherwise known as a checking account. Although your checking account is an asset for you, that account is a liability owed to you on the books of the bank. This discussion does not apply, of course, to any currency you happen to have stashed in a safety deposit box that happens to be located at the bank, or to currency the bank might be holding for you in a "safekeeping" department. Bank "safekeeping" departments are actually there to provide physical security for stuff like negotiable securities such as bearer bonds, but you could theoretically keep currency in the "safekeeping" department instead of in a safe deposit box, I guess. Any currency in the safe deposit box or in the safekeeping department would not generally be reflected on the bank's own general ledger.
This is my long-winded way of saying that this is probably not a topic that needs too much emotion or "color" attached to it. I am a former bank auditor, but I don't usually monitor this article that closely. Hint: Banking is booorrrrrinngggg (my opinion). Flow5, if you want to correct something in the article, go for it. Famspear 19:56, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Proof that this page is biased

I provided a section with adequate sources from Carroll Quigley, Louis T. McFadden, Wright Patman, Charles A. Lindbergh, and Mayor John Hylan regarding criticisms of the power of the Federal Reserve and they were removed. This page is so biased that it is a disgrace to democracy. Apparantly it is taboo to elaborate upon the real criticisms of the power of the Federal Reserve on this page.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.174.156.176 (talk • contribs).

Not every source is suitable. For example, we don't allow forum postings as sources. Pleasee see WP:RS for a guideline. -Will Beback · † · 22:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Well I know for a fact only one of those links was a forum posting. The rest are just as valid as anything else I've seen on Wikipedia! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.174.156.176 (talk • contribs) on 16 April 2007
Please read the guideline. One-person sites are also considered unreliable. Fringe sites are considered insuitable as well. Furthermore, quotations are "primary sources", and are best avoided. -Will Beback · † · 04:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Dear user at IP68.174.156.176: A disgrace to democracy? Clue: Wikipedia is not a democracy.[11] Yours, Famspear 17:29, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

71.214.77.36 19:12, 21 April 2007 (UTC)== Federal Reserve is PRIVATE ==

Just look for the movie Freedom to Fascism and tell me you won't be against the Fed after that. If you are not mad after seeing it it is just becose you are another liar. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 911allo (talk • contribs) 07:19, 18 April 2007 (UTC).

Dear 911allo: On behalf of everyone who has ever edited this article, or who has ever edited the article America: From Freedom to Fascism, I want to thank you for sharing that astonishing insight with us. Famspear 17:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Criticisms bias

The criticisms section makes it look like the Fed's exacerbation of the Great Depression was because of the Federal Reserve itself, not a few policy mistakes as it truly was. It should be changed to note that the criticism is solely of the actions taken by the Federal Reserve at that time, rather than its structure or role in the economy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.110.44.196 (talk • contribs) on 5 May 2007

"a few policy "mistakes" that it truly was"??? How on Gods green earth do you document this fantastic POV? Very easily I gather. since no counter critisism ever gets through user Famspear in these pages. that's just great. thanks. I won't be contributing anymore to these Wiki pages on any topic on economic history anymore, I don't think, and I think I'd advice any and all to stay far away from wiki for any historical reference other than the simplest facts and dates. The greatest economic crash(es) in world history as "a _few_ policy "_mistakes_"(!!!) For the love of God... someone please help me out here...217.144.240.250 13:06, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

initiating Resolving_disputes, Request for Comments and other "tools"

Some months have passed now with no reaction from anyone so I suggest we try resolving the issues through the Wiki tools available. I will take steps to contact several parties for comments and third party reviewing and mediation, as outlined on the wiki pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Third_opinion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Resolving_disputes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Resolving_disputes#Informal_mediation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/History_and_geography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal

I suggest others back this up and contact proper channels themselves too. If someone is more familiar with the process than me I'd like to see an outline or something on the proceeding, how much time is deemed nessesary for the whole process and such.
I also sugesst archiving at least the first half of the discussion page, the 2006 and earlier posts at any rate. It's getting troublesome to gain oversight.

sincerely, js.217.144.240.250 13:32, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

No counter arguments on the criticisms

What the fuck gives, if you just present the arguments and not even a hint of counter-argument, I would call you bias. I'm not logged in at the moment because I'm short on time, but I'm M4bwav, I will verify if you question me. --70.116.24.232 02:15, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Kind of an inane remark to put it lightly. As if the FED's proponents, or whomever wishes to relieve themselves up the backside of the banking industry, haven't had a "fucking" 100 years to propagandize their fantastic "benefit" to society and the world. As if "FED bias" is not inherent and implicit in the articles "neutral" stance and it's lack of coverage on the vast amounts of historical controversy surrounding the issue of central banking in the US throughout its history. Any serious criticism is totally annihilated effectively upon arrival by smear games, accusations of agendas and the immediate branding of contributors as "conspiracy theorists", confusing and avoiding the issues by endless tirades on shit that has no meaning or anything and everything that does not concern the historical facts at all. Dishonesty ad nauseam. 217.144.240.250 20:20, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't use Wikipedia to push a point of view

I just reverted to last version by Rich257 (although my edit summary does not make this clear, as the description inadvertently got cut off due to my fumbling fingers), to remove the POV commentary on the link, regarding Ron Paul and the desire of some people to see the Federal Reserve abolished. If you want the FRS abolished, fine. Don't use Wikipedia to push your point of view. Yours, Famspear 13:06, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the above statement. Any other POV pushing attempts will be removed.--Jersey Devil 16:48, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
The problem has gotten so bad that I've decided to semi-protect the page for 3 days.--Jersey Devil 11:06, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Who decides how much outright transation

How are Outright transactions decided? Who decides how many treasury bonds the Fed will purchase? Is it by law, given some statistics (in this case which one), or is it also decided by vote? Tony 04:46, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Public/private status of FRBs

Are the Federal Reserve Branches private corporations like this article says?

The exact nature and legal status of the branches has been elusive. I've seen a lot of opinions and allegations but have never seen any articles-of-incorporation or similar 'proof'.

So I contacted five FRB's from their "Contact Us" web page. Three responded. Two just sent me links that I've seen before. However, one (a Research Librarian for the branch) elaborated further and we had a bit of email dialog that I'd like to share.

Here's a condensed version:

Me: Is Wikipedia correct when it states the branches are private corporations?

FRB Research Librarian: Absolutely not. However, the question regarding incorporation of Federal Reserve Branches "is difficult to answer because of the complex nature of the relationship of the Federal government and the FRBs"

Me: Well, I'd like to get beyond opinions and into verifiable facts. If these are private corporations, they should have articles-of-incorporation filed in one or more states. Does your branch have articles-of-incorporation filed somewhere?

FRB Research Librarian: No, Our Branch is not incorporated, nor are any of the others.

(I researched that and, indeed, could not find any of the branches registered as corporations in their states -- there is a "Federal Reserve Association" filed in Delaware but it turned out to be a dead-end)

Me: OK, if they are not private corporations, what kind of legal entity are they?

FRB Research Librarian: They are congressional chartered agencies, similar to the USPS and NASA. For more info, see page 10 of http://www.federalreserve.gov/pf/pdf/pf_1.pdf (Warning: This document is 15M in size)

(So I looked into that and indeed it says: "Congress chartered the Federal Reserve Banks for a public purpose. The Reserve Banks are the operating arms of the central banking system, and they combine both public and private elements in their makeup and organization"

I found similar congressionally chartered agencies at http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/Independent.shtml )

Me: OK, but what about the court case "Lewis v. United States, 680 F.2d 1239 (1982)" which concluded the "Fed branches are "independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations".

Fed branch research librarian: "I think the court was saying that the Fed banks are set up like private corporations only in the sense that the Federal government does not oversee their activities on a day to day basis and that they are run independently. They are seen as federal instrumentalities under many circumstances ...".


Well, that last comment was not exactly satisfying and still left a public-vs-private contradicton on the table. So I read more from the court opinion text, trying to make sense of it all.

My opinion/conclusion on the court decision: The court was look at the narrowly in terms of how to treat it in terms of tort law. Can it be sued as a private corportation, or is it protected as a government agency? The tipping point for the court was that the majority of the branches directors (6 out of 9) are elected by the member banks, NOT appointed by the government. By extension, this implies private control for most local decisions, so any tort law regarding those local decisions would be applicable.

I would equate it to a government agency contracting certain aspects to private companies, and the courts making a narrow ruling on what the private company can be directly sued.

My conclusion on the legal entity status of FRB's:

- Definitely NOT private corporations - They are congressional chartered governement agencies - Day-to-day operations of the FRB's is entrusted to the member banks - Oversight of the FRB's resides with the Board of Governors and Congress. - Primary auditing of the FRB's resides with the General Accounting Office but there is a stipulation in the law that all FR financial reports be confirmed by an independent agency.

I petition the wiki-powers to remove the phrasing that erroneously states that FRBs are private corportations.

A more accurate statement would be that FRBs are "congressionally-chartered government agencies with day-to-day operations entrusted to member banks who elect 6 of the 9 board members."

Comments?

- From user SomethingWikiThisWayComes

Dear user SomethingWikiThisWay Comes: As best I can tell, what the article actually says is:
The 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks (not to be confused with the "member banks"), which were established by Congress as the operating arms of the nation's central banking system, are organized much like private corporations—possibly leading to some confusion about “ownership.”
[bolding added]
That is not the same as saying that the Federal Reserve Banks actually are private corporations. If there is anything in the article that says they are private corporations, I missed it. I don't see anything in the material that you gathered that specifically contradicts the article. With all due respect, you might want to review your own quotes from the Federal Reserve librarian more closely.
It might be helpful if you could point out exactly what language in the article you consider erroneous or misleading. Yours, Famspear 02:13, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Duplicative language

The following two paragraphs are almost identical, and have been moved from the article to here:

Common among the criticisms of the federal reserve system is the history of the falling value of the dollar, in spite of claims that the system is in place to protect the dollar's purchasing power.[citation needed] These criticisms cite the fact that relative to its value in 1913, the dollar today is worth only four cents.[12]

And this:

Common among the criticisms of the federal reserve system is the history of the falling value of the dollar, in spite of one of the missions of the fed to pursue "stable prices".[13] Yet inflation is dramatically up since 1913. [14] (Note the source of the graph comes from the fed [15]

To be discussed... Famspear 14:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps these two paragraphs can be combined, and the citations clarified. Famspear 14:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

The language is grammatically confusing. "The history of the falling value," etc. is not a "criticism" -- and therefore cannot be "common among the criticisms." You could say, where applicable, that "such and such a person has argued that the Federal Reserve System has caused the value of the dollar to fall over time" -- and then show the citation supporting that. You might also want to find support for the idea that if the dollar falls in value, someone who points that out is making a "critique". Is a falling dollar a bad thing or a good thing? Etc., etc. Stay tuned. Famspear 14:52, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

How about: "Some have argued that the Federal Reserve System has let the dollar decrease in value despite the Fed having as one of its missions the pursuit of stable prices. [16] [17] [18] Although a modest amount of inflation isn't bad, it can be bad if wages do not keep up with inflation. Wages adjusted for inflation, or real wages, have dropped in the past, which negatively impacts workers. [19] Some critics argue that the Fed increases the money supply and inflates the dollar which negatively impacts workers via stagnating or declining real wages.

Please reword it to your liking and we can put it in. This information will be here per the guidelines of Wikipedia(The data is referenced and comes from a reputable source, the fed itself, it is a criticism in the criticism section) It's just a matter of coming to a consensus about the wording. If you don't respond promptly then I will see this as a sign that you are fine with this wording and I will use this wording unless you have a better alternative. Thank you. - 68.108.245.209 Tue Aug 21 06:27:30 UTC 2007 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.108.245.209 (talk) 06:33, August 21, 2007 (UTC)

Member Banks

Would it be a worthwhile addition to create a list of the Member Banks? Chadlupkes 20:12, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I suspect the list would be far too long for inclusion in the article. Famspear 21:18, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Removed Zeitgeist spam. Tommy.rousse 16:41, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

other

Public domain article to incorporate http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/dec23.html

I may come back and do this...just trying to pitch in on the 100,000 article mark for now -- RobLa 23:07 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)

see the fed is like new mexico: NM : its not new, and it isn't Mexico FED: nothing federal 'bout it, and there are no reserves

catch my drift ?

From

http://www.federalreserve.gov/faq.htm


The Federal Reserve System is not "owned" by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution. Instead, it is an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.

As the nation's central bank, the Federal Reserve derives its authority from the U.S. Congress. It is considered an independent central bank because its decisions do not have to be ratified by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branch of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by the Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms. However, the Federal Reserve is subject to oversight by the Congress, which periodically reviews its activities and can alter its responsibilities by statute. Also, the Federal Reserve must work within the framework of the overall objectives of economic and financial policy established by the government. Therefore, the Federal Reserve can be more accurately described as "independent within the government."

The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by the Congress as the operating arms of the nation's central banking system, are organized much like private corporations--possibly leading to some confusion about "ownership." For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold or traded or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.

The earnings of the Federal Reserve System come primarily from interest received on the Reserve Banks' holdings of U.S. government securities (which are used in the conduct of monetary policy) and from fees they charge depository institutions for providing services (such as processing and clearing checks). The expenses of the System are paid from these earnings. Any net earnings are paid yearly to the U.S. Treasury. For 2001, the payment was $27.14 billion.


you can see here[20] who are Federal Reserve stockholders. The district of New York take the control of the other eleven district of Federal Reserve. The district of New York is controlled by private foreign banks.

It is not strange that Federal Reserve is a private bank. BCE and many european central banks are also private society. Two years ago, in Italy there was a great surprise when Mediobanca published a study with the stockholders composition of Bank of Italy. Actually, few people know that BCE is also a private bank. Consider that the first national bank in the history(the Bank of England) was born as a private society. On its model were built the other national banks. If FED stockholders does not receive receive a great earning(only 6% by law) from their stock of shares, there is another problem: the control of american monetary policy is taken not by US government, but by foreign subjects. We need to know not only FED stockholders, but the exact composition of the share stocks. How many FED shares does each stockholdes take? I am sorry for my not very good english.


I find two statements here very interesting:
  1. “The Federal Reserve System is not "owned" by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution. Instead, it is an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.”
  2. “The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.”
In no.1, the operative term here is: “is not a private, profit-making institution.” If that is to be considered a true statement, then how can the statement that there are “dividends” paid out in no.2 be true? Aren’t dividends profit? If, as they seem to be implying, the “System” is not-for-profit, then the payment of dividends would be unlawful private gain. If they mean that the “System” is not-for-profit by virtue of its being a governmental organization, then the payment of dividends to anyone but the U.S. treasury would be misappropriation of government funds. Regardless of which is true, I don’t see how the “System” can justify paying dividends to stock holders, unless, the “System” IS operated for profit in which case it would mean that the above two statements are lies. -- Britcom 12:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Another intriguing question that plagues me: the dividends paid, it is six percent of what? Yirgacheffe 01:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC)Yirgacheffe
6% of paid in capital stock -- see 12 USC 289 Brettmender 19:36, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
6% of how much money, then?


If there was no profit then why would banks be involved? If the Fed wants to send me a few billion - the more the better - at their current interest rates ( wait maybe lower - I'm feeling very Republicanish all of a sudden ) on a regular basis I would be very appreciative. Please send my money to my new home in Greenwich, CT if you please Ben. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.105.80.141 (talk) 14:06, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Banks are involved because they are (for the most part) required to be. The 6% return on capital is a compensation for them being required to purchase 'stock' in the first place. You may very easily get a 6% return on your capital any number of ways (as could the banks, if the Fed didn't tie up some fraction of their money). CptnJustc (talk) 21:08, 24 January 2008 (UTC)


I think that in order to properly address this institution there should be at least some mention of the historic controversy over central banking in the US. The first one never had its charter renewed, the second was taken to pieces by Andrew Jackson. There has always been a contingent of American statesmen opposed to the idea of central banking as a corruptive influence. Congressman Louis_T._McFadden served as chairman of the house Banking and Currency commitee for 10 years and he denounced the Fed as being thoroughly corrupt and pressured the congress to correct the situation. His statements were dismissed as "belly-aching", but never otherwise addressed and he was eventually murdered after multiple failed attempts. The history of US central banking and of the Fed itself is thickly woven with opposition. This should at least be noted in the article. The current outside link (which I plan on changing as soon as I find a better target) marginalizes the amount of contention the Fed has historically generated and leads to a site that caters to eco-terrorists and other green militants. Other 13:11, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Other. Yet, rather than adding a few short comments to the current page, I believe that the history of US central banking is so fascinating and extensive, yet relatively little known topic, that it deserves a page of it's own. The only problem is how to cover it in a neutral tone when the path is laden with assassinated/assassination attempted presidents. I'm fairly sure that just talking about the topic is going to raise an angry mob of POV! claims at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. Finlander 20:24, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This article (and many of the other articles related to the financial services industry) seems to have some serious POV issues, not to mention atrocious grammar and some errors of fact. 18.24.0.120 17:25, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree. I tried to fix some of the worse POV problems and grammatical mistakes but more work is still needed (by someone with more knowledge of the subject than myself). Perhaps some of the... extremist talk can be put into an NPOV section about critisism of the Federal Reserve? Jacob1207 23:17, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Removed a lot of a the conspiracy theory sections. The Fed is a government agency. It's subject to all sorts of laws (like the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act) that government agencies are subject to. This has implications for copyright. If the Fed were private, its web pages would have an implied copyright, whereas as a agency of the federal government, they don't.

You can argue that the banks effectively control the Fed, but you simply can't plausibly argue that as a matter of law, the banks own the Fed or that the Fed is a private organization. Roadrunner 10:48, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You most certainly can argue that the banks own the Fed and that the Fed is a private organization. April 19, 1982: Lewis vs. U.S., 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: "Each Federal Reserve Bank Branch is a separate corporation owned by commercial banks in its region." Nothing could be more clear than that and directly from the "horse's mouth" so to speak. This needs to be reflected in the article. I have made a POV note to the article accordingly. Xode 19:18, 22 Jan 2006 (UTC)

It's not so cut-and-dried. Conspiracy theories aside, it is not adequate to go to the Fed website and say, "see here it says XYZ therefore it is fact". Is it even possible that there is something out of the ordinary to the words "independent within the government" when used in this context? I can't think of a single (other) government agency that makes that particular claim.

Sure there are several. The United States Postal Service, Amtrak, the Tennessee Valley Authority

Simply because the Federal Reserve has the word "Federal" in its name, or because they give a nod to the FOIA or don't assert a copyright on their pages. Hell I can start a private corporation called the "Federal Association of Butt" and do all the same, does that make my corporation an agency of the United States government as well?

Yes but if a private corporation refuses to

hand over documents, then that's the end. If the Fed refuses to hand over FOIA then the issue goes to Federal Court.

http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/foia_updates/Vol_V_1/page7.htm

http://www.michbar.org/opinions/district/1999/111699/5730.html

I'd say issues like ownership, control, and purpose (nefarious or benign) make for an interesting article - if all you want to do is parrot or copy what is on the Fed website, why even bother making an article?

Because it's a good rough draft text. I agree that

its pointless to just cut and paste, but once it has been cut and pasted, it can be edited. The other reason was that I was making a point. If the Fed was a private organization what I did was invalid as it would have been subject to copyright even without an explicit notice. Since the Fed is an agency of the Federal government, the presumption is that web pages are not subject to copyright.

Removal of sections that don't fit the perceptions that you have of the Fed after reading (and block copying large sections from) the Federal Reserve website does not make it NPOV - it simply makes the article your POV.

So go ahead and start editing.


Roadrunner 15:17, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

>while the BCE has only to fight inflation. This is not true : the ECB can contribute to growth when inflation is low.

Move here as it asserts facts which are at least disputed. The Federal Reserve Bank asserts that it is part of the U.S. government, which at least makes disputable a bold statement that it is not....


"Federal Reserve" was carefully selected name - "Federal" implying that this is a government organization. "Reserve" implying that the Federal Reserve notes (i.e., all United States currency) issued is backed by gold and/or silver. In fact, the Federal Reserve is a private corporation, authorized by Congress but owned by private member banks. Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything. The notes have no value for themselves, but for what they will buy and because the government of the United States accepts these notes for payment of taxes.

Roadrunner 07:06, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This needs to be rewritten.

The U.S. went on the gold standard in 1900, and it was actually the bankers that wanted a gold standard rather than a silver standard. The decision to go off the gold standard in 1971 was not a decision of the federal reserve.

Also, its not necessarily the case that wealthy people benefit from inflation. The decision to go on the gold standard in 1900 was backed mainly by business interests who wanted stable currency while debtors and farmers wanted inflationary policies. (re. William Jenning Bryan's cross of gold speech).

The Fed: Gold, Dollars, Inflation and Debt

America once had a stable dollar backed by gold deposits, a "gold standard" system. Central bankers do not want a gold-backed currency system, because it restricts their ability to stabilize the domestic economy and to avoid deflation.

America's gold-standard system was gradually undermined throughout the last century, until President Nixon finally severed the last tenuous links between the dollar and gold in 1971. Since 1971, the Fed has employed a pure fiat money system, meaning that it can create money whenever it decrees simply by printing more dollars (though of course the practice is more complicated). The "value" of each newly minted dollar is determined by the faith of the public, the total amount of dollars in circulation (the money supply), and the financial markets. It depends on the power of the Fed keep currency artificially scarce.

Since dollars have no intrinsic value, they are subject to currency market fluctuations and government policies, especially Fed inflationary or deflationary policies. Every time new dollars are printed and the money supply increases more than the real amount of production, the average price level rises.

Inflation acts as a hidden tax levied disproportionately on the poor and fixed-income retirees, who find the buying power of their limited dollars steadily diminished. The corporations, bankers, and wealthy Americans suffer far less from this inflation, because they can take advantage of the credit expansion that immediately precedes each new round of currency devaluation.

  • A gold standard can not be maintained. Fixing an exchange ratio between currency and gold limits the amount of currency in circulation. It was good to be on a gold standard in the 1800s when populations were low, but currently, creation of new currency to faciliate the exchange of goods and service is needed faster than gold mines can produce to "back" more. Money was invented as a psychological concept to facilitate the exchange of goods and services in a time delayed continuum. The only true 21st century design for a zero inflation/deflation system is a triple currency system where each currency is designed to float independent of the others. This triple currency system would include the fiat currency we have now, plus gold specie and certificates, and silver specie and certificates. Currency represents monetized debt, not wealth, and should be created at the point of virtual wealth (wealth assumed to exist for accounting purposes once all methods of its production are available). A fractional reserve system is perfect for this. This would allow the economy's productivity to be unhindered; however you point out the obvious need to control inflation. Currently, the Fed as designed can not control inflation without taking a sledgehammer to the economy. They are working with archaic tools on a system desiged in 1913 not based on any economic practice when it was established. Only NESARA provides the reforms needed to make inflation zero while still supporting a fractional reserve fiat currency that turns the wheels of a growing economy. If you think about it, there is a finite amount of gold, but an infinite production of wealth, and hardly a limit to population. There will reach a point in any gold-backed-only system as their limitations become obvious as populations grow, and as people demand more currency to support new wealth-creation projects such as new homes and business, because eventually the need for new currency will outpace the increase in gold circulation, and gold will become scarcer and scarcer, or the gold-backed dollars issued against that commodity will be issued at lesser amounts over time, which causes deflation and the renders use of that commodity as money as useless to that function. Gold is wealth, but when its used as money it represents debt, not wealth - it represents a future exchange of goods and services which has not yet occured - as currency it represents a future claim on the aggregate goods and services of the society. As such, the finite amount of gold limits its use as currency (as tokens of claims on the future aggregate goods and services of the society) when a society grows in population and becomes increasing specialized. I suggest you start reading here for a better understanding of what money, wealth, currency, and debt is: http://nesara.org/articles/abstract.htm click on "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" to read the next article in the series. inigmatus 16:52, July 26, 2005 (UTC)
and cannot there be inflation in gold currency if its supply exceeds the level of production of goods and services as supposedly happened under the Spanish Empire? After all gold has limited intrinsic value in dentistry and electronics, leaving aside jewelry; its function with money being a reified fetish?Tom Cod 07:08, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Criticism/NPOV

I am trying to get the criticism section in neutral-enough tone to remove the NPOV tag. I think having a criticism section is valid and useful, but want to make sure that 1) the criticism is reasonable and not based on wild accusations, and 2) it's about the Fed specifically, not about central/fractional-reserve banking in general. After this, I'll work on the proposed reforms section... Any comments? Thanks, Afelton 18:04, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I think your recent edits do very good job of clearly outlining the criticisms in a straighforward NPOV manner. Good work. Kbh3rd 16:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks -- I removed the tag. Next stop: FA! Afelton 15:45, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I think you may have spoken too soon -- it seems as though Ron Paul acolytes have been mangling this article recently. I just removed this bit:

Lastly, at the foundation of what is supposed to be an economy based on free markets where buyers and sellers agree on prices based on arms length transaction, the Fed establishes the price of money (the federal funds rate) in secret.

Reasons: Obviously non-NPOV, weasel words, unsourced, of dubious veracity (the BoG announces their decisions immediately, releases their minutes, publishes the vast majority of the information they use, etc.). CptnJustc 16:47, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Cut the B.S.

Look, can someone give me a straight answer to these three questions!!!!!:

1. Is the Federal Reserve a government agency or not (screw this independent entity BS!!!!). If not, who owns it, who controls it, and who's pocketing the 6%?!!!!

2. Is there a law that states that Americans are required to pay direct income tax from their labor!!!!??

Yes, it's called the Internal Revenue Code whose authority stems from the the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed in 1913. Tom Cod 07:11, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

3. If the answer to the two questions above is no, then why are we as Americans are sitting on our ass and letting the US Government take almost half of our hard earned money (if you want to call it money - it has no value and is not backed by anything "real" such as gold) and not doing anything about it?

Answers, people!!!!!

Almighty2001 16:54, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Dear Almighty2001: Two suggestions. Suggestion One: read the article on Federal Reserve System and the articles on Tax protester arguments. Your answers are there.
Suggestion number two: As an alternative, read my commentary below.
The question of whether the "Federal Reserve" is a government agency is a meaningless question. I'm not sure how many more ways there are to say this. As has been stated over and over here on this talk page and in the article in one form or another, the term "Federal Reserve" means the Federal Reserve SYSTEM. The SYSTEM is composed of both governmental and non-governmental entities. This is not rocket science.
The System includes a government agency called the "Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System" PLUS some non-governmental entities -- the private member banks (like, maybe your bank down the street, where you have your checking account), plus some other entities. The private member banks "own" stock in a group of entities called the "Federal Reserve Banks" (of Dallas, of San Francisco, etc.), but that "ownership" is not "ownership" in exactly and completely the same way that you "own" a car or I "own" shares of IBM. In other words, some parts of the Federal Reserve System are "private" and other parts of the System are governmental. Look, these are basic concepts. Trust me, this is the EASY part of banking law.
Is there a law that states that Americans are required to pay direct income tax from their labor? Yes, obviously there is. What does that have to do with the article on the Federal Reserve System?
Please read Tax protester constitutional arguments (in particular, taxing labor or income from labor) and Tax protester statutory arguments. You will find the specific citations to the U.S. Constitutional provisions and the taxing statutes that impose legal obligations to both pay Federal income taxes and file the related tax returns and that impose both monetary and criminal penalties for willful failure to timely do so -- for example 26 U.S.C. § 1; 26 U.S.C. § 6151; 26 U.S.C. § 6651; 26 U.S.C. § 6011; 26 U.S.C. § 6012; and 26 U.S.C. § 7203. You will also find a litany of the laughable tax protester arguments that these laws do not exist, or that these laws do not mean what these laws say. You will also find a listing of court decisions ruling tax protester arguments frivolous, with a lot of explanation as to why they are frivolous.
Although your third question is moot, I will say that the reason we Americans are sitting around and letting the U.S. Government take almost half of our hard earned money is that our ancestors ratified a U.S. Constitution that allows our Congress to pass perfectly valid taxing statutes that impose Federal income taxes, and the Congress did indeed pass those tax statutes. The reason we're not doing anything about it? Who cares? This is an encyclopedia, and we are trying to edit an encyclopedia, not have a public policy debate here.
Regarding your comments about money having no value and not being "backed up" by anything, please read my commentary on the so-called "valueless" Federal Reserve notes elsewhere on this talk page.
Discussions about what the article should or should not say are not "B.S." Now please, let's keep this talk page relevant to discussion of ways to improve the article. Yours, Famspear 18:18, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Post-script: as of August 5, 2006, the official chart on "The Government of the United States" from page 22 of the "U.S. Government Manual" at the Federal government web site[21] shows "FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM" as being in the category of "INDEPENDENT ESTABLISHMENTS AND GOVERNMENT CORPORATIONS" (which in turn is shown as technically being part of the "EXECUTIVE BRANCH") along with such agencies as the Central Intelligence Agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Social Security Administration, and many, many other entities.

However, I think technically it would be more correct if the chart were changed to say "Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System" (and not "Federal Reserve System"). Yours, Famspear 21:13, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Dear Famspear,

I read all you suggested. I also watched a very interesting video on Google Video - The Money Masters - Federal Reserve History (search Federal Reserve).

Would you care to watch the video? It sheds light on today's situation. I would be interested to hear your comments on the video. Almighty2001 23:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

No Comment? Almighty2001 20:14, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Dear Almighty2001: No, no comment on the video. I did watch a just few minutes of the beginning of the video you mentioned, but it looks like the video is over an hour in length. I could theoretically watch it at work where I have a high speed connection, but not at home -- where I have a slow, old dial-up. The connection is just too slow at home. I simply cannot take that much personal time off at work right now. In any case, we want to reserve this talk (discussion) page for dialog on the Wikipedia article, not on my specific, personal views or commentary (whatever they would be) about the video The Money Masters or the other videos on that web site that apparently deal with the Federal Reserve System. By the way, despite the fact that I used to be a bank auditor, I don't really have a strong personal interest in the topic of the Federal Reserve System per se. I'm just here editing this article like many others in Wikipedia. I can make edits to this article to help maintain technical accuracy, but I don't really care about the public policy arguments over whether the Federal Reserve System is "good" or "bad" (whatever that means). My main current interest is Income tax in the United States.
The following comments are not directed at you specifically, but are general statements.
Many people try to make non-neutral point of view edits to this article over whether the Federal Reserve System (FRS) is "governmental" or "private." Some people apparently believe that if they can modify an on-line encyclopedia article to say that the FRS is "private" that this somehow bolsters their argument that the FRS is "bad."
Personally, I don't care whether the FRS is "good" or "bad." It's a boring topic for me. Similarly, bank auditing was interesting for a while. Only for a while.
However, the proper way to "argue" about the "goodness or badness" of the FRS is, well, to formulate cogent arguments about it. One thing we cannot change: some FRS entities are governmental entities and other entities are private. It's not just one entity -- it's one entity that is composed of a group of entities. The proper way to present arguments pro and con about the FRS is in my view to report or summarize those arguments as arguments or opinions -- and not as facts. We cannot change the reality of what each component of the FRS really is merely by making statements in an encyclopedia article.
And now, for another version of my green cheese speech (not the first time here in Wikipedia). In an article on the subject of "the moon" it might be permissible to mention that some people believe the moon is made of green cheese. Maybe you could cite to publications of the International "We Are Absolutely Convinced the Moon Is Made of Green Cheese and All the Experts Are Engaged in a Vast Conspiracy and Have Been Lying To Us About It All Along" Society, if there were such a thing. However, this is an encyclopedia. I would argue that if you did decide it was worthy to mention the green cheese theory in a Wikipedia article on the moon, you would be obliged to point out (if such is the case) that 99% of all astronomers, moon experts, etc., do not subscribe to the green cheese theory -- perhaps with citations to materials showing what the majority of those experts say the moon is made of. It is possible and permissible for minority viewpoints to at least be presented. Some theories about the FRS may approach the green cheese theory, and Wikipedia editors should watch for that tendency. Green cheese theories may or may not be presentable in an encyclopedia article, but in any case green cheese arguments should be clearly identified as minority viewpoints. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. We are not required to give equal weight to the green cheese theory.
The article on the Federal Reserve System, like the articles related to U.S. Federal income tax, is sometimes the target of people with fringe, minority viewpoints who attempt to push a political or personal agenda by introducing -- as "facts" -- statements that are not verifiable or are non-neutral point of view, or both. If we don't like the FRS or the Federal income tax, the proper way to channel our feeling is not to attempt to re-write an encyclopedia article to make demonstrably false statements. Wikipedia has been inundated with these kinds of attempts. For examples where these attempts have been exposed, see Tax protester constitutional arguments and Tax protester statutory arguments.
I would argue that Wikipedia should keep the arguments about whether the FRS is good or bad in the form of -- arguments (not statements of fact). I would argue that Wikipedia should keep those arguments in the section on the criticism of the FRS. Yours, Famspear 21:13, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Almighty2001, maybe you will be interested in seeing the documentary called "America: Freedom to Fascism" by Aaron Russo. There is a trailer in Google Video and in YouTube. 08:40, 21 September 2006 (CET) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.16.177.224 (talk • contribs) .

1. Re the 6% - this is paid over the the member banks to reimburse them for supplying the capital that the Federal Banks need to operate, the total is $781m per annum. I think you maybe confusing the 6% paid on the capital of the federal banks with the interest paid on the money the government borrows from the federal reserve system. The latter is used to pay various operating expenses and the remainder $21bn is paid back to the US government , see page 309 of the 2005 accounts at (http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongress/annual05/ar05.pdf)

Re the question of is the federal reserve a private or government agency, well see very detailed comments above which are correct, and remember the world is not black and white but has many shades of grey, there is a lovely phrase in law 'an emmanation of the state' which expresses this ambiguity. The banks are owned by the members but the board, (which takes the decisions) is not owned by anybody its members are appointed by the government. You may wish for a simple answer but i could only give you one if i lied.

2. See other websites, but plese note that even if there isnt a specific law in the US, every country in the world, bar a few tiny oil rich kingdoms, have some form of income tax.

3.Money does not have value, it has the value that you can use it to exchange for something else, when you get your pay packet at the end of the week, is it valueless, no you can buy things of value with it. The fact that it is a 'fiat currency' exchangeable at the government only for other currency and not gold or some other item that alledgedly has value is irrelevant, it provides an agreed medium of exchange between you and the dude in the shop. By the way government spending as a percentage of GDP in the US is 25% not 50% so they are only 'taking' and then giving back to you in some other form, a 1/4 of your earnings. Above comment was added on 10 October 2006; —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lukeski (talk • contribs) .

The Taxes have everything to do with the Federal Bank Reserve. They collect our 6% and if they are not backed by the Government and Constitution, than they are stealing our money and making us into slaves. If they cannot provide us the law for Income Taxes, than we have all the rights not to pay them! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.22.251.226 (talk • contribs) (on 22 March 2007, C.D.T., USA)

Cartel

I've removed the following from the page due to lack of sources.

Another critique is that the Federal Reserve System is an essentially corrupt and unconstitutional institution -- essentially a banking cartel that has been granted sweeping privilages and powers by federal statute and policy,[citation needed] while the power to coin money and regulate its value is vested exclusively in Congress by the U.S. Constitution. Under this critique, the cartel status of the Federal Reserve is considered inherent in its creation in 1913, and dramatically expanded by the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980, when the regulatory authority of the Federal Reserve was broadened from only Federal Reserve members to include all other banks, savings banks, savings and loans and credit unions.[citation needed]

Once it's properly sourced it can go right back in the "Criticism" section. -FrankTobia 14:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

New World Order

I don't think that a link to New World Order (conspiracy) is appropriate in the See also section. I've read through that article, and there are three references to the Federal Reserve. All three are unsourced. The page itself levels some pretty serious accusations at a number of institutions, and I feel that because of this there should be a clear demonstration of how these topics are related. This link has been added twice by Special:Contributions/72.201.217.168 and I've removed it both times. I ask that we discuss it here first before that user (or any other user) puts the link back. In either case I won't be removing it again, until we come to a consensus. -FrankTobia (talk) 20:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)