Federal Reserve Governance & Monetary Policy
PROPOSED / DRAFT — FEDERAL RESERVE GOVERNANCE & MONETARY POLICY
The Federal Reserve should operate solely in the public interest. Reform must accurately recognize that it is a hybrid public-private system rather than an ordinary privately owned bank.
Policy should reduce preferential governance influence by regulated member banks, strengthen meaningful public representation, enforce strict conflict-of-interest rules, expand lawful audits and transparency, and require clear public accounting for emergency lending and other extraordinary actions.
Monetary decisions should remain protected from personal political retaliation while remaining democratically accountable under law. The system should prioritize price stability, currency stability, financial stability, fair banking competition, and the purchasing power of wages and savings.
A programmable retail central-bank digital currency capable of tracking, restricting, or programming lawful personal transactions is opposed.
GOVERNANCE & CONFLICTS
Regional-bank and national governance should include meaningful public representation, transparent selection standards, financial disclosure, enforceable recusal rules, and limits on regulated institutions influencing decisions that directly affect their own interests.
EMERGENCY LENDING & AUDITS
Emergency facilities should disclose their legal authority, purpose, eligibility rules, collateral standards, pricing, duration, risk allocation, and aggregate use. Counterparty and beneficial-recipient information should be disclosed after any narrowly justified delay needed to protect financial stability or lawful confidentiality.
Independent audits should examine governance, procurement, conflicts, financial controls, facility compliance, and the accuracy of public reporting without allowing political officials to dictate individual interest-rate decisions for personal or partisan advantage.
PUBLIC CONTROL, NOT PRIVATE-BANK CONTROL
Congress created the Federal Reserve and should define its legal mandate, powers, accountability standards, and limits. The President and Senate should remain responsible for selecting and confirming the national governing board. Public authority must ultimately answer to elected government under the Constitution.
Commercial banks and other regulated private financial institutions should not select any director, regional-bank president, or monetary-policy official exercising governmental authority over them. Congress should replace member-bank stock and director elections with a fully public governance structure. Required Reserve Bank stock should be redeemed or converted into nonvoting reserve interests that carry no governance right and no private dividend.
The 12 regional Reserve Banks should become federally chartered public instrumentalities governed by public boards accountable to the Board of Governors. Regional boards should include qualified representation from workers, consumers, small businesses, agriculture, community banks and credit unions, industry, economics, and state or local government. No active officer, director, lobbyist, or controlling owner of a regulated financial institution may serve.
Regional Reserve Bank presidents should be selected through a public application and hearing process by the public regional board, approved by the Board of Governors, and confirmed by the Senate before exercising a monetary-policy vote.
DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY WITH OPERATIONAL INDEPENDENCE
Elected branches should control the law, mandate, appointments, oversight, audit authority, and structure of the system. The publicly accountable board should make individual interest-rate, open-market, and emergency-lending decisions under that law. Neither a President, Member of Congress, private bank, donor, or regulated company should be able to secretly order a particular rate decision, loan, bailout, or enforcement outcome for personal, partisan, or financial benefit.
Governors should serve staggered terms long enough to prevent one election from capturing the entire board, but no appointment should be so insulated that meaningful democratic accountability disappears. Removal should be available for defined serious cause, including corruption, incapacity, deliberate legal violation, or material breach of fiduciary duty, not merely because an official refuses political pressure over rates.
FULL PUBLIC AUDIT AUTHORITY
The Government Accountability Office and an independent Inspector General should have authority to audit every Federal Reserve entity, account, facility, vendor, transaction, control system, and decision process, including areas currently excluded from ordinary GAO review.
Auditors should receive immediate access to complete records. Public release of market-sensitive details may be delayed for no more than 180 days when immediate disclosure would create a specific and documented threat to financial stability, an active law-enforcement matter, or protected personal information.
Every Reserve Bank and the Board of Governors must publish annual audited financial statements, internal-control findings, procurement records, payroll by position, contractor costs, asset valuations, realized losses and gains, and corrective-action status.
A material audit failure requires a corrective plan within 30 calendar days, quarterly public progress reports, and the same leadership and fraud-accountability standards applied to other public institutions.
EMERGENCY FACILITIES & PUBLIC RISK
Emergency lending must identify the legal authority, public need, eligibility rules, interest rate, fees, collateral, valuation method, duration, taxpayer risk, private beneficiaries, and conditions for repayment. The Board, GAO, Inspector General, and designated bipartisan congressional oversight members should receive this information immediately.
Recipients, controlling beneficial owners, collateral, material terms, and losses should become public no later than 180 days after the transaction unless a court authorizes a shorter, specific extension to protect an active criminal investigation or personally identifying customer information. General embarrassment, political sensitivity, or fear of criticism is not a valid reason for secrecy.
Emergency aid should protect the financial system and the public, not guarantee private profits. When taxpayers assume extraordinary downside risk, the public should receive repayment priority, appropriate collateral, fees, warrants, equity, or another enforceable share of the potential upside.
CONFLICTS, TRADING & REVOLVING DOORS
Governors, regional presidents, senior staff, directors, spouses, and dependent children should be prohibited from trading individual bank stocks, securities directly affected by confidential policy information, or financial derivatives while the official serves.
Covered assets should be divested, placed in a qualified blind trust, or converted to broad diversified funds within 90 days.
A two-year cooling-off period should restrict senior officials from paid employment, board service, or lobbying for an institution they directly regulated or materially assisted.
Material meetings, recusals, outside income, gifts, and conflicts should be disclosed in a searchable public record.
WHAT WE WILL MEASURE
Public reporting should address inflation and purchasing power, financial stability, emergency-facility use and losses, market concentration, conflict recusals, audit findings, procurement, and the clarity and timeliness of major policy explanations.
PROPOSED / DRAFT — FEDERAL RESERVE PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY REFORM
The Federal Reserve should operate exclusively in the public interest and be structurally accountable to the American people. Because the current system combines federal public authority with regional Reserve Banks whose member banks hold stock and participate in selecting some directors, reform should remove preferential governance influence by the private institutions the system regulates.
MPA proposes stronger public representation in regional-bank governance, enforceable conflict-of-interest and recusal rules, transparent procurement and financial reporting, regular independent audits that protect genuinely sensitive market operations, and timely public explanations of major policy decisions.
Congress should define the Federal Reserve’s statutory goals and accountability standards. Day-to-day interest-rate decisions should remain insulated from personal political retaliation or demands for short-term electoral advantage. Net earnings should continue to serve the public through the U.S. Treasury after lawful operating costs and reserves.
This proposal does not endorse a retail central-bank digital currency. MPA opposes government systems that can track, restrict, or program lawful individual transactions.
Core MPA standard: The nation's central bank must be public in authority, public in purpose, independently audited, and accountable through elected government. Private banks may participate in the financial system. They may not govern the public institution that regulates them and directs national monetary policy.
Related policies: Changes in Government; Taxes; Digital Assets, Stablecoins & Financial Technology; Consumer Rights; Cost of Living & Economic Security; Privacy Rights; Public Money, Audits & Proof of Spending.
Status: Proposed / Draft — not yet formally adopted.
Originally published: August 24, 2026.
Last updated: September 27, 2026.
Version: Draft 0.4.