Federal Reserve Dig Report. Anon tries to sauce Fed ownership. Clarifications or corrections with sauce appreciated.
Im trying to answer: Is the Fed’s ownership actually transparent via their website?
Everything Im finding points to commercial (private) banks owning some stock in the 12 Federal Reserve Banks, and they get 6% dividends. After dividends and expenses are paid, the US treasury gets net earnings.
Per: https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/files/quarterly-report-20160331.pdf
$24,762,000,000 “Q1 2016 Total Earnings Remittances to the Treasury” Page 4
$40,078,000,000 “Balance” Q1 2016. (600M shares) Page 5
$ 185,000,000 “Dividends on capital stock” Page 5
…but 185*4/40,078 =1.8%. Why not ~6%? Also, this doesn’t seem sufficiently more than reported dividend payments from Richmond in 2017(159M. details further below). So I’m missing something somewhere.
More details:
Each of 12 reserve banks has commercial banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System hold stock in their District's Reserve Bank. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm
Stockholders receive dividends equal to 6% of stock. (unless their assets are more than $10B. then the dividends are the smaller of 6% or the rate equal to the high yield of the 10-year Treasury note). https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/section7.htm
Stockholders of each Reserve Bank are published. E.g. https://www.richmondfed.org/banking/supervision_and_regulation/fry6_reports?year=2017
There is a “FR Y-6” report for each stockholder. Reports publish the ownership of all top-tier holding companies and consists of the requirement that top-tier holding companies not registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) submit a copy of an annual report to shareholders if one is created. The FR Y-6 also requires the submission of an organizational chart and an annual verification of domestic branches within the organization and includes information on the identity, percentage ownership, and business interests of principal shareholders, directors, and executive officers. https://www.federalreserve.gov/apps/reportforms/reportdetail.aspx?sOoYJ+5BzDa2Waq9p25mGQ==
Total dividends paid, shares held, etc are published in the financial statements. https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/audited-annual-financial-statements.htm
https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/combined-quarterly-financial-reports-unaudited.htm
E.g. Richmond paid $159M in dividend payments 2017. https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/files/richmondfinstmt2017.pdf
Net Earnings(after payment of dividends) are transferred to the US Treasury. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm
The [specific officer] of the US Federal reserve is required to provide testimony before congress. . E.g. https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/the-semiannual-testimony-on-the-federal-reserves-supervision-and-regulation-of-the-financial-system
This testimony has been avoided when the position of the [specific officer] has ben vacant. Recent bill [ ___ ]required testimony regardless of any vacancy ( lost the link )
The Fed actively performs Stress Tests on the economy, but currently willfully withholds details on the stress test. Ref testimony: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/testimony/quarles20181114a.htm