Actually, this is a brilliant thread. Thanks to this thread I have come to realise what I think is the error in the thinking of a lot of AnCap's and Libertarians.
Those guys seem to think that the Fed is owned by the government, hence the government is fucking us over.
The reality however, much like I have stated on the first page of this thread, is that it's more like the other way around. The government does not *really* own the Fed, because the government is itself owned by private banks.
It's the private banks that own the fed directly.
It's the private banks that own the fed indirectly through regional fed's.
And it's the private banks that own the fed indirectly through the government.
It might be the government that is the wizard of oz, but it's the private banks that are behind the curtain.
It's the private banks they should really be after.
You have misunderstood the situation.
The Fed is a "private organization" that is given powers above and beyond those that are available in the private sector.
So the fed is a "quasi-private" organization. It is neither private nor public, it is in the gray area.
Sure, some "libertarians" might mistakenly think that it is directly owned by the gov't, but that's no better than mistakenly thinking "Oh, it's owned by private banks, so the "an-caps" should be going after the banks." The Fed does what it does on the authority of the federal government. It has the power to control how much legal tender is printed; legal tender that is recognized by the federal government as legal tender. It also controls interest rates. If I started a business tomorrow I couldn't just decide to do these things, any more than you can just decide how the "an-caps" classify the Fed.
The Government started the Fed, it is a quasi-private institution, the government can end it or audit it, but it's not going to, because the Fed is the only reason that the government can continue spending as much as it does.
You can blame the banks but half of them would have failed years ago without the fed, and the other half would be a hundredth of the size because they wouldn't have gotten the easy money/capital to gamble billions on derivatives and HFT schemes. There would be big banks without the Fed, sure, but the Fed completely redefined the meaning of "big."
Sometimes people say "Lol I just entirely disproved all the libertarians/anarchists, because they say that there would be absolutely no such thing as fractional reserve banking without the Fed, and that's not true!" (Ignore for a second that no one actually makes that argument; the argument being referred to is completely mischaracterized.)
I can do stuff like that too. "I just entirely disproved all black people, because I just heard this one black person mispronounce 'fifty' as 'fitty," and that's incorrect!"