The Federal Reserve has made many moves recently, and many friends don’t know much about the Federal Reserve. Let’s talk about the Federal Reserve today.

The Federal Reserve consists of the Federal Reserve in Washington and 12 Federal Reserve Banks distributed in various regions of the United States. The main monetary policies of the Federal Reserve are jointly formulated by the Federal Reserve Board members and the chairmen of the Federal Reserve Banks. This is to avoid excessive concentration of policy decision-making power in a few regions (such as Washington and New York).

The First Bank and the Second Bank of the United States were forced to close because they were not accepted by the public. One of the important reasons was that both banks were located in Philadelphia in the northeastern United States. Many people believed that they mainly served some wealthy businessmen in the northeast, not all Americans. The Federal Reserve learned this lesson seriously when it was established.

The headquarters of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks are located in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas and San Francisco. Each Federal Reserve Bank has branches in its jurisdiction. For example, the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank is headquartered in Dallas, but it also has branches in Houston, San Antonio, and El Paso.

The figure below shows the headquarters of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks and the jurisdictions they manage. Since each Federal Reserve Bank manages a large region, these banks are often referred to as regional Federal Reserve Banks. Obviously, most Federal Reserve Banks are located in the northeastern region of the United States. This is mainly because when the Federal Reserve was established in 1913, the economic center of the United States was mainly concentrated in the northeast. The code name of each Federal Reserve Bank consists of an English letter and a number. For example, the Boston Federal Reserve Bank was the first Federal Reserve Bank to be established, and its code name is 1A. The second one to be established is the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and its code name is 2B, and so on. The Dallas Federal Reserve Bank was the 11th to be established, so its code name is 11K. On the $1 bill, the names and codes of different Federal Reserve Banks are printed, indicating which region these $1 bills flowed to the market from.