"The Federal Reserve System puts itself forward as a non-profit organization that turns over its operating profits to the U.S. Treasury, after all expenses, including the 6% dividend to member banks. However this misses the point on several scores. First, the banking profits coming through the privileged money creation process mainly occurs at the member bank level of operation, and those profits are not turned over to the Treasury. That is, the net earnings from the member banks seigniorage privilege are not turned over to our government but kept by the private member banks. For England this amount has been estimated at 41 Billion Pounds per year. For the US we think it’s between $100-200 billion per year; but we need to know the amount more precisely from the Fed itself."

http://www.monetary.org/is-the-feder...zation/2008/02