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The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is one of 12 regional Reserve Banks that, along with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the United States'
central bank A central bank, reserve bank, national bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the monetary policy of a country or monetary union. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the mo ...
. Missouri is the only state to have two main Federal Reserve Banks (
Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more t ...
also has a bank). Located in downtown
St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...
, the St. Louis Fed is the headquarters of the Eighth Federal Reserve District, which includes the state of
Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the West South Central region of the Southern United States. It borders Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma ...
and portions of
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
,
Indiana Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...
,
Kentucky Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...
,
Mississippi Mississippi ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the s ...
, the eastern half of
Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...
and
West Tennessee West Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee that roughly comprises the western quarter of the state. The region includes 21 counties between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, delineated by state law. Its geography consists ...
. It has branches in
Little Rock Little Rock is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Arkansas, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The city's population was 202,591 as of the 2020 census. The six-county Central Arkan ...
,
Louisville Louisville is the most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeast, and the 27th-most-populous city in the United States. By land area, it is the country's 24th-largest city; however, by populatio ...
and
Memphis Memphis most commonly refers to: * Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt * Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city Memphis may also refer to: Places United States * Memphis, Alabama * Memphis, Florida * Memphis, Indiana * Mem ...
. Its building, at 411 Locust Street, was designed by St. Louis firm Mauran, Russell & Crowell in 1924. The Eighth District serves as a center for local, national and global economic research, and provides the following services: supervisory and regulatory services to state-member banks and bank holding companies; cash and coin-handling for the District and beyond; economic education; and community development resources.


Board of directors

The following people serve on the board of directors .


Responsibilities


Monetary policy

Congress gave the Federal Reserve responsibility for setting monetary policy under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 so that actions taken by the central bank would be free from political concerns. Along with the other 11 regional Feds, the St. Louis Fed helps guide the nation's economy by participating on the Federal Open Market Committee. Advised by the research division staff, President
Alberto Musalem Alberto G. Musalem is an American economist and banker who is the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He assumed office on 2 April 2024, replacing James Bullard, who quit in order to be a dean at Purdue University. He is the secon ...
contributes informed opinions about national and district conditions, and participates in FOMC decisions concerning monetary policy, including setting the target range for the
federal funds rate In the United States, the federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions (banks and credit unions) lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight on an collateral (finance), uncollateralized basis ...
.


Supervisory functions

The St. Louis Fed supervises state-member banks and
bank holding companies A bank holding company is a Holding company, company that controls one or more banks, but does not necessarily engage in banking itself. The Compound (linguistics), compound bancorp (''banc''/''bank'' + ''corporation, corp
ration Rationing is the controlled distribution (marketing), distribution of scarcity, scarce resources, goods, services, or an artificial restriction of demand. Rationing controls the size of the ration, which is one's allowed portion of the resourc ...
') or banco ...
, and, since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, savings and loan holding companies. The Banking Supervision and Regulation division, led by senior vice president Carl White, is tasked with assessing the safety and soundness of financial institutions' assets and operations, the effectiveness of their risk management practices, and their compliance with laws and regulations governing activities and consumer protection. Examiners collect and verify data from financial institutions to ensure an accurate accounting of financial institutions' conditions, as well as data on the money and reserves in the banking system. The Federal Reserve is considered the "lender of last resort" for financial institutions, and the St. Louis Fed is tasked with ensuring adequate liquidity in financial markets by making loans to depository institutions through the "discount window" and allowing the prudent use of intraday credit. The St. Louis Fed processes bank applications for acquisitions and new activities. Twelve senior executives of banks, thrift institutions and credit unions in the Eighth District serve on the St. Louis Fed's Community Depository Institutions Advisory Council (CDIAC), which meets twice a year to advise the St. Louis Fed president on the credit, banking and economic conditions facing the members' institutions and communities. The chairman of the St. Louis Fed's CDIAC represents the Eighth District at the Board of Governors' CDIAC meetings, held twice annually. Banking-related publications include quarterly banking performance data, tailored to bank executives in the Eighth District. The publication ''Central Banker'' was discontinued in 2014.


Community development

As part of Banking Supervision and Regulation, the St. Louis Fed's Community Development department provides financial institutions and others with information on the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), community and economic development, and issues related to credit access. The department also facilitates partnerships between lenders and their communities and seeks to generate economic development and affordable housing throughout the Eighth District. Executives from organizations throughout the district serve on the St. Louis Fed's Community Development Advisory Council, which was created to keep the St. Louis Fed's president and community development staff informed about development issues and to suggest ways the bank might support local development efforts. The executives are all experts in community and economic development and represent nonprofit organizations, financial institutions, universities, local governments and foundations. Community Development holds many events throughout the year, covering such topics as the impact and possible solutions to foreclosures and vacancies, neighborhood revitalization, rebuilding household balance sheets, and reaching the
unbanked The unbanked are adults who do not have their own bank accounts. Along with the underbanked, they may rely on alternative financial services for their financial needs, where these are available. Causes Some reasons a person might not have a ban ...
and
underbanked The underbanked is a characteristic describing people or organizations who do not (or volunteer to not) have sufficient access to mainstream financial services and products typically offered by retail banks and thus often deprived of banking serv ...
. Publications include ''Bridges'', a quarterly publication for community organizations and leaders.


Economic research

The St. Louis Fed's research division, led by executive vice president Carlos Garriga, produces economic research for a wide range of national and international audiences. In the 1960s, the St. Louis Fed garnered a reputation as a maverick in the Federal Reserve System because of its espousal of
monetarism Monetarism is a school of thought in monetary economics that emphasizes the role of policy-makers in controlling the amount of money in circulation. It gained prominence in the 1970s, but was mostly abandoned as a direct guidance to monetar ...
. Spurred by bank president Darryl Francis and research director Homer Jones, the bank's economists published research showing a direct relationship between the growth of money and inflation. Monetarist theories have since been adopted widely. St. Louis Fed economists previously released the ''Burgundy Books'', patterned after the Federal Reserve System's ''
Beige Book The Beige Book, more formally called the Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions, is a report published by the United States Federal Reserve Board eight times a year. The report is published in advance of meetings of the Federal Ope ...
'', as an economic snapshot of the four zones in the district (Little Rock, Louisville, Memphis and St. Louis). The ''Burgundy Books'' collected data and anecdotal feedback from numerous sources to help track the district's consumer spending, commercial and residential real estate, manufacturing and industrial activities, banking data and more. Publication was discontinued after 2015. Research publications include the ''Review'', a journal of national and international economic developments, particularly focusing on their monetary aspects; ''Economic Synopses'', short essays and reports on the economic issues of the day; and ''The Regional Economist'', a magazine with articles written largely by economists but for readers who, for the most part, aren't economists. The St. Louis Fed's research division maintains
FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) is a database maintained by the Research division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis that has more than 816,000 economic time series from various sources. They cover banking, business/fiscal, consumer pri ...
, a database of hundreds of thousands
time series In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. ...
from national, international, private and public sources. Data series include interest rates, gross domestic product and its components, GDP and gross national product together, employment and population, consumer price indexes, monetary aggregates and Treasury constant maturity. FRED and the other free online data services—ALFRED, CASSIDI and FRASER—are collectively, with other research sites, accessed several million times a year. Writing at ''
Business Insider ''Business Insider'' (stylized in all caps: BUSINESS INSIDER; known from 2021 to 2023 as INSIDER) is a New York City–based multinational financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Inside ...
'',
Joe Weisenthal Joseph Weisenthal (born September 2, 1980) is an American journalist, television presenter and podcaster. He is the executive editor of news for Bloomberg's digital brands, the co-anchor of ''What’d You Miss?'' on Bloomberg Television, and co-ho ...
called FRED "The most amazing economics website in the world." The bank also maintains the
Research Papers in Economics Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in many countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, ...
(RePEc) database, a listing of economics authors and the Economics Departments, Institutes and Research Centers in the World (EDIRC) databases. Former
Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...
Prime Minister
Salam Fayyad Salam Fayyad (; born 12 April 1952) is a Palestinian politician and economist who served as the first prime minister of Palestine from January 2013 until his resigned in July of that same year. He was previously the fourth prime minister of the ...
once served on the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, where he did early research on the American Divisia Monetary Aggregates.


Economic education

The St. Louis Fed's Econ Lowdown provides a variety of free online tools for K-16 educators nationwide, including online modules, videos, audio podcasts, and
PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...
lesson plans. The economics topics covered include basic concepts such as
opportunity cost In microeconomic theory, the opportunity cost of a choice is the value of the best alternative forgone where, given limited resources, a choice needs to be made between several mutually exclusive alternatives. Assuming the best choice is made, ...
and
supply and demand In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a Market (economics), market. It postulates that, Ceteris_paribus#Applications, holding all else equal, the unit price for a particular Good (economics), good ...
to more complex topics such as
comparative advantage Comparative advantage in an economic model is the advantage over others in producing a particular Goods (economics), good. A good can be produced at a lower relative opportunity cost or autarky price, i.e. at a lower relative marginal cost prior t ...
and
monetary policy Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to affect monetary and other financial conditions to accomplish broader objectives like high employment and price stability (normally interpreted as a low and stable rat ...
. In personal finance, the topics include earning income, taxes, budgeting, saving, banks and credit cards. Economic education staff provide conferences for K-16 educators. Economic Education publishes a newsletter, ''Page One Economics''. Another newsletter, ''Inside the Vault,'' was retired in 2015. Another publication, ''In Plain English,'' is a multimedia online course on the structure and functions of the Federal Reserve System. Many materials, including personal finance online courses and personal finance chats, are available in Spanish as well as English.


U.S. Treasury support

The St. Louis Fed supports the U.S. Treasury with a number of functions. The Treasury Division includes the Treasury Relations and Support Office (TRSO), which manages the Federal Reserve System's overall relationships with the U.S. Department of the Treasury's
Bureau of the Fiscal Service The Bureau of the Fiscal Service (Fiscal Service) is part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Bureau consolidates the activities of the previous Bureau of the Public Debt and the Financial Management Service, under the Office of Fis ...
and Office of Fiscal Assistant Secretary. The St. Louis Fed's Treasury Division supports the following U.S. Treasury programs: Debt Management Services, Fiscal Accounting Operations, Information and Security Services, Payment Management, Revenue Collections Management, and Treasury Security Services. It also serves as the offering administrator for the Fed's Term Deposit Facility.


Payments support

Beginning in the mid-2000s, the Federal Reserve consolidated its check-handling services as the number of paper checks fell rapidly in favor of check cards, debit cards and electronic bill payments. The most recently completed payments study (released in late 2010) revealed that more than three-quarters of noncash payments in America were done electronically. On March 3, 2010, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland became the Fed's single paper check processing and adjustments site and the
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (informally the Atlanta Fed and the Bank), is the sixth district of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks of the United States and is headquartered in midtown Atlanta, Georgia. The Atlanta Fed covers the U.S. state ...
became the Fed's single electronic check processing site. The St. Louis Fed provides currency and coin handling services for the Eighth District and beyond, which includes helping to ensure that depository institutions have enough currency and coin to meet public demand through currency ordering and depositing services. The St. Louis Fed also checks currency for fit status (money that can still be circulated), destroys notes that can no longer be circulated and reports
counterfeit money Counterfeit money is currency produced outside of the legal sanction of a state or government, usually in a deliberate attempt to imitate that currency and so as to deceive its recipient. Producing or using counterfeit money is a form of fraud ...
to the
United States Secret Service The United States Secret Service (USSS or Secret Service) is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security tasked with conducting criminal investigations and providing protection to American political leaders, thei ...
.


General outreach

The St. Louis Fed holds several events annually for educators, civic and business leaders, bankers and more throughout the district. These include the "Dialogue with the Fed" events for the public, in which St. Louis Fed experts discuss economic matters such as the federal deficit, the financial crisis and unemployment; and "Economic Briefings", where a Fed economist or other expert discusses the current local and national economy. The St. Louis Fed also features research symposiums, educator workshops and special presentations on topics such as the cost of higher education and recession demographics.


Office of Minority and Women Inclusion

As with all Federal Reserve banks, the St. Louis Fed established an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion (OMWI) in January 2011, as called for by the Dodd-Frank Act. The St. Louis OMWI is designed to increase participation of minority- and women-owned businesses in Bank procurement needs, further diversify the St. Louis Fed's workforce at all levels, and support financial literacy efforts at inner-city, girls' and majority-minority high schools.


Past Leadership

When the Federal Reserve System was established in 1914, the
chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...
s of the regional banks were known as Governors. The position was renamed to President after the
Banking Act of 1935 The ''Banking Act of 1935'' passed on August 19, 1935, and was signed into law by the president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, on August 23. The Act changed the structure and power distribution in the Federal Reserve System that began with the '' Bankin ...
.


See also

*
Federal Reserve Act The Federal Reserve Act was passed by the 63rd United States Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on December 23, 1913. The law created the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. After Dem ...
*
Federal Reserve Bank A Federal Reserve Bank is a regional bank of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. There are twelve in total, one for each of the twelve Federal Reserve Districts that were created by the Federal Reserve A ...
* Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Little Rock Branch * Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Louisville Branch * Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Memphis Branch *
List of Federal Reserve branches There are 24 Federal Reserve branches. There were 25 branches but in October 2008 the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Buffalo Branch was closed. List of Federal Reserve branches * Boston * New York ** '' Federal Reserve Bank of New York Buffal ...
* Structure of the Federal Reserve System


References


External links

*
FRED home pageMap of the DistrictGreat Depression Project''In Plain English''Dodd-Frank Regulatory Reform Rules roadmapTracking the Global EconomyThe Financial Crisis TimelineFOMC SpeakHistorical resources by and about the St. Louis Fed
including annual reports back to 1915.
Statements and Speeches of Presidents of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. LouisFederal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Centennial Web Site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Federal Reserve Bank Of St Louis
St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...
Buildings and structures in St. Louis Downtown St. Louis 1914 establishments in Missouri