During the Q&A following the Saturday night banquet address I delivered at last week’s Florida Liberty Summit, I promised I would post a link to a useful article that explains some of the mechanics of the Federal Reserve, and in particular discusses who owns shares in the Fed, what the nature of these shares is, etc.  So here it is.  I disagree with the author’s view that the Fed’s reserve requirement is bad because it forces banks to keep more cash on reserve than they believe necessary; in recent years the de facto reserve requirement has been practically zero, so I think the argument that the Fed makes the banks too conservative has things completely backwards.  But this piece is still very useful in clearing up a lot of misunderstanding.