fschmidt wrote:Jester wrote:There are common stockholders of any corporation, including the Fed. The identity of common stockholders is not divulged.
As far as I know, the Fed does not have common stockholders. If I am wrong, please link to
a reference.
http://constitution.org/uslaw/sal/038_s ... _large.pdf
The relevant text is the second through fourth full paragraphs on page number 253 (which is page 273 of the 1,247 pages in the PDF).
It's hard to copy and paste here, here's the best I can do:
"Public subscriptions
Should the subscriptions by banks to the stock of said Federal
to stock of Federal re reserve banks or any one or more of them be in the judgment of the
serve banks organization committee, insitflrcient to provide
the amount of capital required therefor, then and in that event the said organization com-
mittee may, under conditions and regulations to be prescribed by it,
offer to public subscription at par such an amount of stock in said Federal reserve banks,
or any one or more of them, as said committee
shall determine, subject to the same conditions as to payment and
stock liability as provided for member banks.
No individual, copartnership, or corporation other than a member
scriptions bank of its district shall be permitted to subscribe for or to hold at
any time more than $25,000 par value of stock in any Federal reserve
bank
. Such stock shall be known
as public stock and may be trans-
ferred on the books of the Federal reserve bank by the chairman of
the board of directors of such bank.
Should the total subscriptions by
banks and the public to the stock
meat to United States
of said Federal reserve
bank, or anyone or more of them, be, in the
judgment of the organization committee,
insufficient to provide the amount of capital required therefor, then and in that event the said
organization committee shall allot to the United States such an
amount of said stock as said committee shall determine
. Said United States stock shall be paid for at par out of any money in the Treas-
ury not otherwise appropriated and shall be held by the Secretary
of the Treasury and posed o? for the benefit of the United States
in such manner, at such times, and at such price, not
less than par, as the Secretary of the Treasury shall determine.
Stock not held by member banks shall not be entitled to voting...."
A close reading shows that there are three classes of stock:
(1) preferred stock, paying 6%, issued to national banks (covered in preceding pages - the Act begins on page 247, which is page 271 of the 1,247 pdf)
(2) "Public stock". which is nonvoting stock, which may be resold privately. Such resale is to be recorded privately on the books of the Fed, without knowledge or participation of the various Boards of Governors. (So clearly the Jewish investment banks from New York and London that did the original buying of these shares could easily have been fronting for Rockefellers, Windsors, Rothschilds, Oppenheimers, etc. The original buyers are not necessarily today's owners.)
(3) Government-owned stock, restricted to resale at par or above. Government stock is to be issued only if there are insufficient private buyers. This seems doubtful.
The modern text of the Federal Reserve Act (avaliable on the Federal Reserve's own website) is quite different from the original version as passed by Congress, shown above. It has been amended many times. Today, Fed profits flow into the Treasury. I believe this was changed in 1938. Prior to 1938, these seigneurage profits (the gain from printing money) would have flowed, I suspect, to the "public" (i.e. secret) stockholders. I do not know much about the rules of corporate finance and corporate governance, but the fact that there is a provision for the issue of private, secret stock, with no restriction on resale price, suggests that a class of secret stockholders does exist.
