LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Something smells at the Fed

OPINION:

Stephen Moore makes a common but serious mistake when he calls the Federal Reserve a “powerful agency of government” (“Let the sunshine in at the Federal Reserve,”Web, May 5). The Federal Reserve is privately owned by a number of member banks, including J.P. Morgan Chase; Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin; Lazard Brothers Bank of Paris; Israel Moses Sieff Banks of Italy; Warburg Bank of Hamburg and Amsterdam; Lehman Brothers Bank of New York; Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York; and Goldman Sachs Bank of New York. This was confirmed during the 1980s by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 provided that the names of the member banks be kept secret, but R.E. McMaster, publisher of The Reaper financial newsletter, managed to obtain the list from Swiss contacts.

Basically, since the end of 1913 we have paid foreigners and international bankers hundreds of billions, maybe trillions, of dollars for the privilege of using what is supposed to be United States currency. Furthermore, the financial transactions of the Federal Reserve have never once been audited. Why does this situation exist?

THOMAS M. CRAWFORD

Laurel, Md.