Here we encounter one of the major pieces of evidence that the Federal Reserve Bank is an avowedly neoliberal institution, and one that relies upon its major symbiotic relationship with the American economics profession to skew its membership in a neoliberal direction. I have just demonstrated that the last two chairmen of the Federal Reserve System were card-carrying neoliberals; but moreover, the entire governance structure of the Federal Reserve has evolved to guarantee responsiveness to its main constituency, the pinnacle of finance. As Dean Baker has written, few realize that “The Fed has been deliberately designed to insulate it from democratic control and leave it instead a tool of the financial industry.” The member private banks “own” stock in the regional Feds, and indeed, are paid dividends on their stock. The twelve regional Feds are governed by nine-member boards, six elected by member banks, and the remaining three by the Board of Governors. Each of the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks is a separately incorporated not-for-profit that is privately owned by the member banks in its district. Further, the entire Fed system is self-funded from its operations, freeing it from the rigors of an external budgetary control or any serious accountability.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 522