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I seem to be a bit confused here, I have been told that the Fed is owned by member banks, International banks. Since you seem to know all about the Fed, who actually does own it? I don't understand why we need the Fed. Didn't the country function without it from it's inception until 1913?

The member banks that comprise the Fed include institutions that have been controlling the banking system in Europe for centuries. The truth is that we do NOT need the Fed. The only thing they have done is put us on the fractional reserve banking system, which has made our "money" worthless. The Rothschilds and others of their ilk began trying to take control of our monetary system as soon as the Revolutionary War was over. Meyer Rothschild was quoted as saying,"Let me control a nation's currency, and I care not who makes its laws." Oh, a comment for "aynrandfreak", your liberal slip is showing. Conservatives don't speak in code. We have the balls to say what we mean.

I have been told that the Fed is owned by member banks, International banks. Since you seem to know all about the Fed, who actually does own it?

The law does not permit the stock of a Federal Reserve Bank to be traded publicly like the stock of a typical corporation. The original Federal Reserve Act called for each regional Federal Reserve Bank to sell stock to raise at least $4 million to begin operations (12 USCA §281). The stock was to be sold to banks, not to the public. Only in the event that sales to member banks did not raise the necessary $4 million would the regional Fed Banks be permitted to sell shares to the public, called "public stock." However, this did not happen and no stock in any Federal Reserve Bank has ever been sold to the public, to foreigners, or to any non-bank U.S. firm. The member banks get one vote each; it is not like a corporation where you get one vote per share. The Second Bank of Podunk has the same voting power as Citibank.

Every consequential bank in the United States is a publicly held corporation; you can buy and sell their shares, usually on the NYSE. As publicly-held companies, they have to file reports with the SEC. One of the things they have to disclose is sizeable shareholders... people or institutions that own more than 5%. I have actually gone through the annual reports of the top ten banks in the U.S.; not one of them has a shareholder who owns five per cent. Somebody else did this in 1996, and found that Citibank had one shareholder holding 8%: Price Alwaleed Bin Talad of Saudi Arabia. I think this is the same guy who gave Giuliani the $10 million gift, and then said something offensive about Israel that caused Hizzoner to tear up the check.

I don't understand why we need the Fed. Didn't the country function without it from it's inception until 1913?

No. They didn't call them "The Federal Reserve," but the U.S. had two previous central banks. The first was founded by Alexander Hamilton. The First Bank's charter was drafted in 1791 by the Congress and signed by George Washington. It had a twenty-year charter, and when the charter ran out it was not renewed. The building is still there, and it's still called the First Bank of the United States. The museum curators report that they still get junk mail from companies trying to sell them banking software.

We also had a Second Bank of the United States, founded in 1816. It also lasted twenty years. We then went without a central bank until 1913, when <sarcasm> double-secret Jews from the mountains of Switzerland crushed the United States beneath their boots forever, by slipping the Federal Reserve Act through Congress in the dead of night on Christmas Eve, giving them total ownership of all land and property in the United States... a fact hidden from us by the title insurance companies, who are part of the giant scam that secretly makes us all slaves. </sarcasm>

The short answer for why we need it is that, beginning in the early 20th century, technology has produced gains in human productivity -- and hence rates of economic growth -- that outstrip the ability of gold miners to keep up. The money supply therefore does not expand rapidly enough to keep pace with the amount of goods and services being cranked out. This causes deflation, and ultimately a depression. The way out is to hand control of the money supply to somebody other than the gold miners. The bankers won't do, because they like deflation (or at least a little of it). The politicians won't do because they like inflation; they want to dispense benefits using money grown on trees. The solution adopted was a committee where half the members are appointed by the bankers, and the other half by the politicians. That's what the Federal Open Market Committee is. It's supposed to find a balance between the forces favoring deflation, and the forces favoring inflation. We tried to do better, but God wouldn't take the job. That was a shame, because He's the only one who really has the slightest idea how much money we need at any given moment. There's just no perfect way for humans to do this.

The country did function without a Fed until 1913 and had a huge problem with repudiated bank notes, and a crushing cycle of recessions and bank busts. These are the reasons the Fed was started, basically to give us a more stable currency. While it didn't work right away it seems to have been working pretty well since Reagan.

The Fed is owned by member banks, which are American (not International) banks. There are actually 12 regional Fed banks each controlled by the member (some times referred to as Money Center) banks in their local area. These banks are in turn controlled by their shareholders, as most large money center banks these days are public corporations traded on the NY Stock Exchange. The Treasury department takes a dim view of foreign corporations that try to take majority control of US chartered banks. You may remember the BCCI scandal where a bunch of spooks and arabs tried to circumvent this. They failed, the bank was closed and several people including Clark Clifford had their reputations ruined.