“Why wasn’t the Fed providing these same sweetheart deals to the American people? The Fed was practicing socialism for the rich, powerful and the connected, while the federal government was promoting rugged individualism to everyone else.”-Warren Gunnels, adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders

The Federal Reserve is a privately run bank.  It operates to make a profit.  It is not interested in helping out the average U.S. taxpayer, because there is no profit in it. It’s only natural that the biggest customers of the Federal Reserve are corporations, like financial institutions and banks, including foreign banks, and governments.

Under court order it was revealed that the Federal Reserve made at least 46 “emergency” loans to the Arab Banking Corporation, and the Libyan government is a 59% stake holder in that bank.

The Federal Reserve has also bailed out two major European banks, as well as many U.S. corporations.  The “Fed” makes its money off the interest it charges for those loans.  That includes the money it “loans” to the United States.  That’s right, our money, the not so almighty dollar, is borrowed from the Federal Reserve.

We little guys are ripped off, because the big low interest lows made to credit card companies, and banks, are used to provide high interest loans to us.  I remember a time when the low interest loans to corporate America were supposed to be passed on to the consumer, in the form of low interest loans.  That’s what former President Ronald Reagan claimed when he argued for a drop in interest rates from the “Fed”.

Since the late 1990s interest rates to corporate America have been going down, while interest rates to us little guys has been going up.  Also notice that interest rates on your savings accounts have been going down as well (and they wonder why American’s don’t save their money in the banks!?).

It’s not just individual consumers that are getting ripped off.  If you’re not a big corporation, just a small business, you’ve been ripped off as well.  There’ve been several regional businesses where I live, that have folded up, not because they didn’t have sales, but because their banks refused to extend credit, or canceled their credit altogether.

Basically the Federal Reserve is now only interested in being able to turn a big profit off their low interest loans.  It can’t do that with small time businesses or individuals.  That’s because they’re operating a WalMart type of business plan, that is making profit off high volume, not high prices.  The only way you can make big profits off high volume, low price, is to have customers that can afford to buy in high volume.

If the Federal Reserve is charging half a percent interest, it needs to make loans in the billions of dollars, in order to make a profit from that half a percent interest.  Logically only big corporations and governments, can take on that big of a loan.

So maybe the Federal Reserve is not “…practicing socialism for the rich, powerful and the connected…” as an adviser to Senator Sanders claims, but is simply acting as any other big corporation would in search of big profits.  After all, the “Fed” is the most powerful corporation in the United States (again it is NOT a government agency).  But this is just more reason why our money should not be controlled by the Federal Reserve.

By the way, know how much the “Fed” made in profits last year?  $81.7 billion.