Although it functions as a government agency, its stock is privately owned by the member banks throughout the country, to which it pays annual dividends limited by law to six per cent per year. Although its top officers take a federal oath, they are not appointed by the President of the United States, or even by the Federal Reserve Board, but are elected by the bank’s own board of directors, and their salaries are paid not out of the federal till but out of the bank’s own income.
