"The Fed's top priority is making sure the cards remain stacked against wage and salary earners."

[A HERETIC I AM]

30. First of all, it isn't a private bank.

Let's just start there, OK? All the conspiracy type bullshit aside, the Federal Reserve is NOT a privately held institution. It seems so because it is given autonomy in a way that looks odious, but the alternatives, which this country experienced before the Fed was established are far, far worse.

It is in many ways analogous to the Supreme Court. The framers designed the SCOTUS process so that the Justices could outlive the administrations that appointed them, thus making sure that when a president went away, the entire court didn't go with him.

The economy is an incredibly complex mechanism and the same sort of autonomy, not tied to the political whims of the party in charge, must be maintained. Sure, Greenspan was an asshole and an economic conservative, but the guy that followed him was not of the same stripe and the current head, Janet Yellen is a different stripe again. What's more important, is that those transitions did not occur on the inauguration day of the various presidents.

Unfortunately, this is really bad timing. I would love to go into the detail necessary to describe why I have the understanding I do, but I just don't have the time this afternoon. You've been on this board as long as I have, Octafish, and I trust you have read some of what I have posted over the years. I am a career truck driver, NOT an economist, but you may recall that I was a Stock Broker from mid 2006 through late '09 and during that time I learned a SHITLOAD about this institution as well as the US Treasury and their roles in how money is procured and distributed, both for government operations as well as the economy.

I have to drive tonight. I have to go to sleep now so I can get up at ten PM and drive all night, so I just can't type out a 2 hour, properly edited and attributed multi paragraph description with links.

But I will say this before I go;

In the article you linked as well as the article linked in post #19 above, she conflates the job the US Treasury does with that of the Federal Reserve. The FED does not issue US Treasury debt paper. Thats what the Treasury does. The way the Fed is associated with United Stated Treasury Bonds is the NY Fed branch acts as an agent, conducting the regular auctions of debt paper on behalf of the Treasury and they have the ability to buy and sell treasury securities in order to add or remove money (cash - lets be clear here) from the supply. Why does the NY Fed do this? Because New York is where every major bank in the world has a branch and the "Primary Dealers" are all located. Go to the NY FED website and search for the Primary Dealers list. You'll see the list of banks and brokers that are allowed to do the bidding at the auctions. Please note that "China" is not on the list, but a bank that does a lot of business with the Chinese Fed equivalent (the Chinese central bank) is on the list (the name escapes at the moment) I say this because so many people have the impression that we - the US Government - somehow went hat in hand to the Chinese and begged them to loan us a trillion dollars (or pick your figure). Nothing could be further from the truth. We don't OWE the Chinese a damned thing. THEY own (or hold) US Treasury Bonds which they bought of their own volition - no one twisted their arm - and they get regular interest payments on them. When a series they own matures, they get redeemed and paid in Federal Reserve Notes for the entire Par value of the series. Why do they own so much? And the Japanese too? Because US Treasury bonds are an INCREDIBLY SAFE AND EXTREMELY LIQUID SECURITY and not a single issuance, not one single series has ever defaulted in modern times.

Never.

I have to stop now or this will take me two hours.

I'll be home Monday morning where I can sit at my PC and do this quicker, and if you like, I'll go into more detail, but suffice to say, much of what many many Americans understand about how the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve works is wrong.