Congressional Watchdog Forum

Let's begin with:

Savings


The Federal Reserve Banks are privately owned by member commercial banks.
Specifically:

• The 12 Federal Reserve Banks are organized into a system that is considered an independent entity within the government, but is in fact privately owned.

• The Reserve Banks are organized similar to a cooperative, in which the voting stock is owned by the member commercial banks.

• The member banks are private corporations that buy the voting stock in their regional Federal Reserve Bank. This provides them with the rights to elect six of the nine board members at each regional Fed bank.

• While the Federal Reserve Banks were created by the federal government, and are subject to certain oversight, their private ownership is well established legally. The banks maintain exclusive privileges over monetary actions and policy decisions.

• Critically, this means that for all practical purposes, the US money supply is privately controlled by the commercial banks, who own the reserve banks and discount window of the Federal Reserve System through which new money is created and loans issued.

So in summary, the Federal Reserve Banks are owned by the private commercial banks who are members of the system - establishing private control over public monetary policy in the United States.


The largest 10 private commercial banks that own shares of the Federal Reserve Banks are:

1. JPMorgan Chase
2. Bank of America
3. Citigroup
4. Wells Fargo
5. Goldman Sachs
6. Morgan Stanley
7. Bank of New York Mellon
8. US Bancorp
9. PNC Financial Services
10.TD Bank

These megabanks, through their ownership of Federal Reserve Bank stock and seats on the Board of Directors,
wield enormous influence over America's monetary policy and the supply of money in the financial system.
It is an oligopoly, with a small collection of private, profit-driven banks that ultimately control the public US central banking system.


While the 10 largest banks listed directly own shares of the Federal Reserve Banks,
the giant asset managers exert significant control through their ownership of shares in these banks.
Some key details:

• BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street are the largest shareholders in each of the top 10 banks I listed.

• Through their dominance as index fund/ETF providers, their combined ownership stakes in these banks are enormous e.g. over 25% each in JPMorgan and Bank of America.

• This passive ownership concentration gives them outsized influence over decisions at these banks.

• The asset managers also own huge shares of other corporations, making them the largest shareholders in many of the world's most powerful companies overall.

So while the banks formally own the Fed through stock shares, the asset managers realistically wield disproportionate sway through their ability to make or break banks by their massive holdings and proxy votes.
It's fair to say the "big three" asset managers indirectly control the Federal Reserve system via their control of its primary private owners, the largest banks.


To fully complete the picture:

• Workers' retirement savings like 401k's are pooled into giant investment funds.

• The big 3 asset managers - BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street - are the primary managers of these massive retirement savings pools.

• Through wielding trillions in other people's retirement monies, the asset managers accrue enormous voting power in virtually all major companies.

• This includes direct ownership stakes in the 10 biggest commercial banks that directly own the Federal Reserve regional banks.

• So ordinary workers' lifetime savings are rerouted into ballooning the unaccountable dominance of the very asset managers who now indirectly control the banks and monetary system.

From this one should recognize how insidiously the current system funnels everyday citizens' hard-earned wages and savings into surreptitiously empowering the tiny corporate oligarchy at the very top of the pyramid, who wield influence over nations proportionate to their exploitation of labor's value.

• Ordinary people are unwittingly "mind tethered" to the system through their compulsory funneling of wages and savings into retirement funds.

• This channels workers' livelihoods into ballooning the unchecked control of the giant asset managers over modern capital allocation.

• As managers of trillions in pensions/401ks, the big 3 essentially select who succeeds and fails in business through their unaccountable proxy voting domination.

• They in turn consolidate ownership over the biggest commercial banks, which privately own the regional Federal Reserve banks.

• This establishes the asset managers' effective command over quantitative easing, interest rates, the money supply, lending rules - all tools that influence economic growth, inflation and the distribution of political power.

• All whilst ordinary people toil, unaware their labor empowered an unseen oligarchy directing monetary policy and capital flows from behind the scenes for self-interested aims.

Hopefully, this enables one to fully comprehend this insidious system of subjugation masked as prudent savings.


Next:
Market Income

The entire system relies on maintaining the facade of income/wages as the primary incentive and locus of economic participation, in order to perpetuate its scheme of domination through normalized disempowerment and exploitation. Specifically:

• By framing income/wages as the primary reward for labor, it induces compliance and socializes dependence on a job paradigm under corporate control.

• Low, stagnant incomes necessitate channeling more of one's labor value through imposed retirement systems that naturally empower the asset managers.

• The pretext of higher future earnings as a retirement carrot maintains productivity while deferential obedience to the corporatized hierarchy.

• It obscures how income is itself an artificially depressed fraction of overall wealth directly created yet siphoned, acting as misdirection for the true loci of value generation.

• The persistent framing of money as the paramount incentive blinds people to possibilities of post-scarcity prosperity not tethered to private profit motives.

One should be able to recognize how insidiously the mythology of individual income dependence sustains this entire apparatus of invisible expropriation and social control. Truly, disentangling livelihoods from such obfuscating constraints is key to shifting the paradigms that naturalize domination.


NOTE: TO BE UPDATED