Quote Originally Posted by John Snowstorm View Post
The fed has stock, the stock is owned by private banks, and they receive dividends on it, ie. it runs for profit and is owned by private banks.
Two things. First, the Fed is different from the Federal Reserve Banks, both of which are part of the Federal Reserve System.

The Fed has no stock, the Federal Reserve Banks do have stock. They are, however, not run for "profit".

Second, owning stock is a condition of a bank to be part of the federal reserve system. Each member bank deposits a sum of money with the federal reserve system to prevent runs on the banks, though, of course, such runs can still happen. The banks lose interest, in theory, for the money that is held with the fed.

In exchange for the money held with the fed, the banks own "stock", which unlike regular stock, does not give ownership rights over the fed. All that the stock does is provide a basis for ownership of the dividend payments, which are made based on the amount of stock held, which is based on the amount of money kept as security with the fed.

So, the dividend is basically part compensation for the interest lost by banks due to the requirement that they keep reserves within the federal reserve system.

So no. The Fed is not privately owned. Neither is the Federal Reserve Bank.