This report is from Fortune. It says that the Federal Reserve System made $51 billion in 2009, and it returned over $46 billion to the government.
If you are a regular reader of my reports, you are well aware of this. I write articles on this at least once a year. Why? Because so few critics of the FED understand this. I keep getting questions on the forums about how the FED works.
The Federal Reserve System is not about making money at the expense of the government. It is about using a government-granted monopoly over money to regulate the economy to the benefit of a handful of large banks. This has always been its primary function.
The banking system is a cartel. The Federal Reserve System is the cartel’s protector and enforcer.
. . . .
Who owns the FED? Member banks. How much money did the FED make in profit? About $1.4 billion. That’s not bad on $51 billion of income. It’s about 2.7%. But it is a far cry from the standard criticism from anti-FED critics that the FED makes huge profits by creating money out of nothing.
For 2.7%, why does anyone care who owns the FED?
I have heard these anti-FED criticisms for 45 years. The FED is deservedly criticized, but not on this issue: profits.
The concern over a peripheral issue deflects serious criticism, namely, its control over the monetary base. It creates the economy’s boom-bust cycle. It never gets blamed for this by academic economists or the mainstream media.
The news release on what the FED paid to the Treasury is the first that I can remember in 45 years of monitoring the FED. It got a lot of coverage. 
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