A Facebook video claims the Rothschild family1 controls the majority of the world's central banks.
The video (archived here2) details a list of 16 banks allegedly controlled by the well-known banking family including the Reserve Bank of Australia,3 the US Federal Reserve4, the Bank of England5 and European Central Bank6.
The post also alleges that the Rothschilds control another 100 central banks outside of the specific examples given in the video.
The claim that the Rothschilds secretly control the world's banking system is not new. It is a common manifestation of a long-running anti-Semitic conspiracy theory7 that has been debunked countless times before (examples here8 and here9).
The Rothschild family is commonly used10 to support an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that wealthy Jewish people control the world economy.
The claim is false. The Rothschilds do not own the Reserve Bank of Australia, or any of those listed in the claim. Central banks11 are generally publicly-owned institutions. As such they operate with a great deal of transparency around their operational structure and decision-making.
The Reserve Bank of Australia for example, has publicly available information about its structure12, leadership13 and history14, all of which make it clear that the bank is "wholly owned by the Commonwealth of Australia".15
The Reserve Bank was created by an act of government in 191116, originally named the Commonwealth Bank. It was renamed and reorganised into its current structure by the Reserve Bank Act of 195917, which separated the commercial activities of the Commonwealth Bank from its central banking functions18.
Likewise, the European Central Bank19 is not privately owned. The ECB website explains20 that the organisation is owned collectively by the central banks of EU member countries. Each nation's bank contributes according to the size of its economy and decisions are made by a governing council21 of representatives from the various central banks.
Resources published by the Bank of England (BoE) make it clear that the bank is a publicly-owned, independently-run entity. The BoE's website explaining governance22 states that the bank is a public institution.
"We are a public body that must answer to the people of the UK through parliament," it reads.
The BoE also states it is owned by the government23 and is run by a group of directors who make decisions independent of the government24. The BoE was nationalised by the Bank of England Act of 194625 and has remained publicly owned since.26
Similarly, the US Federal Reserve is not owned privately and is classed as an agency of the federal government. It reports directly to - and is accountable directly to - congress.27
False – The claim is inaccurate.
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