The Federal Reserve made a profit of $52.1bn (£32.2bn) in 2009, a rise of 47% over the previous year.

The sum allowed the central bank to pay a record $46.1bn to the US Treasury last year.

That was the largest amount ever paid by the central bank since its creation in 1914.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8454535.stm

I bet most of that was interest on the bailout packages

havent most of the banks paid it back (with interest) by now?

In one way I would wish that the government would learn from this .. But they would just piss it off and still tax us to death . we won't win , until we regain control of the government .
we could be almost tax free if we hired ( by vote ) a lot smarter type of people in stead of these buffoons we got . one token can ruin the whole thing .

A few years back people demonized the oil companies - guess it's the banks turn now....

Come to think of it, there HAS been a little less demonizing of Obama lately...prolly won't last though. :)

I sure hope Ron Paul had a stainless steel rod handy to bite down on before he read about this!

Who said the government loses money on everything it touches?

-Kerry O.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
This proves it you can always justify any thing .

What makes you think the "government" made anything? In fact, all profits have to be paid back to the bank, with interest...

This is the concept of a central bank.

Not really,that would result in another credit crunch i would think....

In other words another "bust" period would result from our artificial boom...

That's great.Now if we can just make back the $1,258,000,000,000 that Obama spent in his first year we can be back to where Bush left off.

Tell me Libertarians like Paul _don't_ see the Fed as an illegitimate form of government.

The Fed has to fund its operations from money it generates, it doesn't get a stipend in the form of tax dollars from Congress but it does return any money it makes to the general fund.

And at least Bernanke's office probably didn't cost 1.2 million to decorate like the ex-head of Merrill Lynch's John Thain's.

-Kerry O.

He might just double or triple that amount this year, if things keep going the way they are going.

Of course, these are just numbers on a computer screen. I can play with them too.

Here is 20 bucks for you, copy paste it over to your word document:

$ 20.00

Interesting... So the FED funds a government operation through loans, the government then pays this back with interest, and the Fed returns a portion of that money back to the government in return and that is considered a profit?

I am also left wondering, if the banks are paying the majority of the money to the Fed, where are the banks getting this money from?

Give to people with one hand, take back even more with the other...

It sure isn't a deficit unlike a lot of the corporate welfare that's been doled out over the years. And it's not coming from taxes on the American people, so what's the objection?



From lending the money their depositors are getting small fractions of a percentage point on?
From the profits they make off lending money the Fed is virtually _giving_ them for gratis? Or the money the TARP program payed out to make good on at least some of the AIG credit default swaps that were meant to insure some of the toxic CDO these million dollar CEO's bought up like marks at a carnival?

Ron Paul isn't telling all, is he? He's basically an anarchist who doesn't care if the train jumps the tracks as long as his grandiose theories are 'proven'. Damn the Stupid Money torpedoes, Full Speed Free Markets Ahead!


-Kerry O.

The FED isn't part of the government. It's a corporation that controls the money supply via interest rates. See "The Creature From Jeckyll Island" for a more thorough understanding of this.

Hence the term "FED board of governors"? Much as Ron Paul and the Ron Paul faithful wish it, the FED will probably continue to exist for a looooong time.


-Kerry O.

We are talking about the function of the Federal Reserve Bank, and the affect it has on the people and the economy. Not Ron Paul and what he believes.

When you bring up depositors making a small percentage of what banks make, this is conpletely ignoring what happens when you expand the money supply without an exact corresponding expansion of capital. That is called inflation. The banks interest does not expand as fast as inflation rates. This means that the good people thinking they are making a small profit, are actually paying an indirect tax. Basically, yes, you are losing money by keeping it in the savings.

Also, where is all this money coming from if not from the citizens of the U.S.?

..since it was OUR money..all i can say is..WHERE'S MY PHUCIN' CHECK...

it was your money they loaned

and it was your money that they paid back with

it's kinda like taking a bucket of water out of the deep end of the pool and pouring it into the shallow end of the pool and then claiming to have raised the water level of the pool

Thank god for drivinmenutz and heavenlyboy.

Well, yanno the people at work with a big chunk of KaChing in their 401k plans really took in the shorts in '08 and part of '09. I may have lost a little due to inflation, but nothing near what they did. They're going to have to make up a lot of ground pretty fast.

Where did the money go when the stock market went from 14,000 to 6500? Wanna talk about a big tax, that's over 50% if you were unfortunate enough to have to sell.

Say what you want about the FED, it has been a saner safety valve than just about any contrivance Wall St. has come up with. Quite frankly, I don't WANT to live in a Wild, Wild West version of 'free' markets with nothing like the FED to put the brakes on when it gets too far out of hand. There's always some slickster who figures ways around the rules that eventually pulls down the house of cards down on everyone.

Your best investment is always in bettering yourself and your community.

-Kerry O.