Talk:History of central banking in the United States

message: Central banking is very different historically from banking. They do not fit well in same article, despite the similar titles. Rjensen 12:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge US Banking and Central Banking?

message: This article is chock full of assessments of what and who was good or bad, and there is usually little or nothing in citations to back up the opinions.
Agreed.  This article is filled with arbitrary assessments of what ideas are "right" or "wrong".  It fails to include a great degree of harsh criticism of the Federal Reserve and fails to mention the questionable constitutional grounds that this private organization was founded on.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.126.161.11 (talk) 22:09:27, August 19, 2007 (UTC) 
Edited section on "first central bank" for balance.  Also edited section on creation of Federal Reserve in regards to "correct" thought as opposed to simply stating facts.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.126.161.11 (talk) 22:25:46, August 19, 2007 (UTC) 
Agreed. This is a very controversial topic and no assumptions should be made about who is right or wrong and the legality of the federal reserve is questionable and this article should make no assumption of that  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.160.81.161 (talk) 21:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutral POV 

message: Profit
The section about First Bank of the US states that it "differed in many ways from today's central banks". The first given example to illustrate these differences is that "it was partly owned by foreigners, who would share from its profits".
If you carefully consider what the Federal Reserve System has to say about itself (http://federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/faq/faqfrs.htm, "Who owns the Federal Reserve") then you'll figure that the Fed issues shares (without telling anyone how many an to whom). The tonality in the Fed's FAQ appears to be carefully chosen to suggest that there are differences between private banks and the Fed, and in fact, it appears the Fed cannot be "owned" by someone due to restricted rights which apply to those shares (and probably the nomination process of chairpersons). However, as a matter of fact, these shares pay a 6% dividend by law, and the shaeholders are private banks which are then called "member banks".
This is the difference between the Fed and other central banks which give their profits to the respective treasuries. As an example, take the Dutsche Bundesbank (unfortunately, currently only the German Wikipedia article contains a section about the profits -- have added the issue to the english discussion page).
So when it comes to sharing profits, the current tonality suggests First bank was sharing profits while the Fed (which is implicitly assumed to be one of today's central banks) does not, which is not the case.
Next point, sharing profits with foreigners. Obviously, the Fed issues shares autonomously without disclosing the reipients. Given the founding history, so the public can't know. Given the founding history it doesn' seem unlikely at least a few european banks hold shares. 
So while the nature of the Fed's shares do not justify the notion of ownership, it may still be the case that it shares earnings with foreign shareholders, directly or indirectly through one of the US shareholding banks.
Again, this is not what the current tonality suggests.
Money Supply
Then, the next sentence is, "It was also not solely responsible for the country's money supply; its share was only 20%, while private banks accounted for the rest."
I don't see much difference to today's situation, where most of the fiat money is created by private banks; and especially given the first paragraph of the referenced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply : "There are several ways to define "money", but standard measures usually include currency in circulation and demand deposits."
Hence, I find the current wording somewhat misleading with respect to the underlying definition of money supply. I guess what's really meant is that when First was in business, "normal" banks were allowed to issue currency (bank notes) too but I'm not familiar with those historic details.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.187.104.56 (talk) 08:39, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  First Bank vs Fed: Profit, Money Supply 

message: What's with the short intro, that just paraphrases the title in bold?  Was it the subject of an edit-war that got stubbed, or just not developed.   71.224.206.164 (talk) 15:00, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Intro?

message: I just have to say that the usage of this term "Free Banking" is misleading.   I realize that all the scholars call the period from 1836-1862 by this name "Free Banking" but, in fact, it was relatively more regulated than the period from 1810-1835.  By "Free Banking", it is clear that the intent is the refer to federal banking regulation.  In that period, from 1836-1862, there was a high degree of state regulation on banks, and I would argue that it was a relatively high regulation period of time, higher in fact than the period during the "Second Bank of the US".   So, I want to suggest that the term "Free Banking" be corrected to "Federally Free Banking Period".   Going one step further, I think it would be more accurate to call the period of 1810 to 1835 as the "Free Banking" period and call the period from 1836-1862 as the "State Regulated Period".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Djangofan (talk • contribs) 16:27, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with your facts (and you obviously know your stuff).  However I think the wikipedians would say that this borders on "original research".  That is, they want the wikipedia to reflect a summary of accepted knowledge and break no new ground.  So, for example, you might instead write a refereed paper in an academic journal on use of the term 'Free Banking' and see if you get any traction.  Alternatively, if you had a strong outside source already making this point, you could edit the article here and reference it.  Just trying to be helpful ...  --LondonYoung (talk) 10:50, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should we call it "free banking" or not? 

message: "National banks were required to back up their notes with Treasury securities," - Could someone expand on this? Did they have to buy securities and keep them as reserve? Was it a fixed ratio of deposits? Or only some percentage of issued credit had to be backed by securities? Thanks Pas (talk) 02:30, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification of back up with Treasury securities