12 U.S.C. § 248 — Enumerated powers

Note: the source text labels two different subsections both "(s)" — a duplication carried over from the underlying law. Both are covered below in order. (a) Examination of accounts and affairs of banks: (1) The Board can examine any Federal Reserve bank's or member bank's books and accounts, and require reports it needs. It must publish a weekly statement on each Reserve bank's financial condition, plus a combined statement for all of them, showing assets, liabilities, reserves, and investments. (2) The Board can also require reports from other depository institutions about their assets and liabilities, to help monitor money and credit. Member banks and institutions with reserve requirements above zero report straight to the Board. Everyone else reports through the FDIC (state-insured savings associations, state nonmember banks, and savings banks), the National Credit Union Administration (insured credit unions), the Comptroller of the Currency (federal savings associations), or a state regulator the Board picks. The Board must try to avoid unnecessary paperwork burdens and duplicate reporting, and other federal agencies must share their data with the Board unless a law says otherwise. The Board can sort institutions into classes and apply different rules to each class. (b) Permitting or requiring rediscounting of paper: The Board can allow, or — with at least 5 members voting yes — require, Reserve banks to rediscount each other's discounted paper, at interest rates the Board sets. (c) Suspending reserve requirements: The Board can suspend any reserve requirement in this chapter for up to 30 days at a time, and renew the suspension in up to 15-day chunks. (d) Supervising and regulating issue and retirement of notes: The Board, through the Treasury Secretary, oversees issuing and retiring Federal Reserve notes (except destroying unfit notes and the accounting for that), and sets rules for how the Treasury delivers notes to Reserve agents. (e) Adding to or reclassifying reserve cities: The Board can add cities to the list of "reserve cities" where national banks face reserve requirements, or reclassify or drop existing reserve cities. (f) Suspending or removing officers or directors of reserve banks: The Board can suspend or remove any Reserve bank officer or director, and must tell that person and the bank in writing why. (g) Requiring writing off of doubtful or worthless assets: The Board can make Reserve banks write off bad or worthless assets from their books. (h) Suspending operations of or liquidating or reorganizing banks: If a Reserve bank breaks this chapter's rules, the Board can suspend its operations, take it over, run it during the suspension, and liquidate or reorganize it if needed. (i) Requiring bonds of agents: The Board can require Reserve agents to post bonds, and make rules to protect collateral, bonds, notes, money, or property those agents hold. The Board performs its duties under this chapter and can make any rules needed to do so. (j) Exercising supervision over reserve banks: The Board generally supervises the Reserve banks. (k) Delegation of certain functions: The Board can delegate most of its functions — except rulemaking and core monetary/credit policy — to administrative law judges, Board staff, or Reserve banks, by published order or rule. The Chairman decides who's responsible for each delegated function. On one member's request, the Board must review delegated decisions under its own rules. The Board cannot delegate to a Reserve bank its power to set policy for supervising depository-institution holding companies and other Board-supervised financial firms. (l) Employing attorneys, experts, assistants, and clerks: The Board can hire attorneys, experts, assistants, and clerks it needs, set their pay and fees in advance, and pay them like Board members are paid. These hires skip normal civil-service appointment rules, though the President can still choose to put them in the classified service. (m) [Repealed] (n) Board's authority to examine depository institutions and affiliates: The Board can examine any depository institution and its affiliates in connection with any loan, discount, or request for one, made to that institution under this chapter. (o) Authority to appoint conservator or receiver: The Board can name the FDIC as conservator or receiver for a state member bank under section 1821(c)(9). (p) Authority: The Board can act and sue in its own name, through its own attorneys, to enforce this title, its regulations, or other laws — including in any case involving its regulation of a bank, bank holding company, or other entity. (q) Uniform protection authority for Federal reserve facilities: (1) The Board can authorize its own personnel to act as law enforcement officers protecting Board and Reserve bank premises, property, staff, and operations. (2) The Board can let a Reserve bank do the same for its own premises. (3) These officers can carry firearms and make warrantless arrests for federal crimes committed in their presence, or for felonies committed on Board or Reserve bank property if they have reasonable grounds to believe it happened. They can access law-enforcement information needed to protect Board or Reserve bank property or staff. (4) "Law enforcement officers" means staff trained and authorized to carry firearms and make these arrests. (5) These powers can only be used under regulations the Board writes and the Attorney General approves. (r) Voting; documentation of determinations: (1) If fewer than 5 members are on the Board, an action normally needing 5 affirmative votes can instead pass with a unanimous vote of all members currently serving. (2) Certain lending actions under section 343(3) can be taken by unanimous vote of just the available members if: at least 2 are available and all of them vote; they unanimously find that unusual emergency conditions exist and the borrower can't get credit elsewhere, that acting is needed to prevent serious economic or financial-system harm, that they truly couldn't reach the other members despite trying every means, and that acting can't wait until enough members can be reached; and any credit given under the action is payable on the Board's demand. The available members must write down these findings, include them in the Board's official record and minutes, and send copies to the absent members and to the Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee chairs. (s) Federal Reserve transparency and release of information — first subsection labeled (s): (1) The Board must disclose, on the schedule below, the names and details of borrowers, participants, and counterparties in emergency credit facilities, discount window programs, and open market operations; the amounts they borrowed or transferred; the interest rate or discount they got; and details on collateral or assets pledged. (2) For a credit facility, disclosure happens 1 year after the Board ends the facility. For a "covered transaction," disclosure happens at the end of the eighth calendar quarter after the transaction. (3) The Chairman can release this information earlier if it serves the public interest without hurting the facility's effectiveness or the transactions' purpose. (4) "Credit facility" and "covered transaction" are defined by cross-reference to other statutes — covering certain open-market transactions and advances made after July 21, 2010. (5) A credit facility is legally treated as ended 24 months after it stops making new loans, unless the Board ends it sooner. (6) Until the release date, this information stays confidential (including under the Freedom of Information Act), unless the Chairman decides early release serves the public interest without causing harm. (7) None of this requires disclosing private personal information about someone referenced in pledged collateral, unless that person is themselves a borrower, participant, or counterparty. (8) The Board's Inspector General must study how this FOIA exemption has affected public access to information about these programs, make recommendations on whether to keep it, and report to Congress and publish the report within 30 months of July 21, 2010. (9) Nothing here affects FOIA lawsuits filed on or before July 21, 2010. (s) Assessments, fees, and other charges for certain companies — second subsection also labeled (s): (1) The Board must collect enough in assessments, fees, or charges from the companies in (2) to cover the Board's costs of supervising and regulating them. (2) These companies are: (A) bank holding companies with $100 billion or more in assets; (B) savings and loan holding companies with $100 billion or more in assets; and (C) nonbank financial companies the Board supervises under section 5323. (3) For companies with between $100 billion and $250 billion in assets, the Board must adjust the fee to reflect any change in its supervisory duties caused by the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.