The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is responsible for the sixth district, which covers the states of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, 74 counties in the eastern two-thirds of Tennessee, 38 parishes of southern Louisiana, and 43 counties of southern Mississippi. The Sixth District operates branches in Atlanta, Birmingham, Jacksonville, Miami, Nashville, and New Orleans. These branches provide cash to banks, savings and loans, and other depository institutions; transfer money electronically; and clear millions of checks.
The bank is currently located at 1000 Peachtree Street NE in Midtown Atlanta. Prior to 2001, the bank was located in downtown Atlanta at 104 Marietta Street NW, which is now the home of the State Bar of Georgia.
The current president, Dennis P. Lockhart took office March 1, 2007, as the 14th president and chief executive officer of the Sixth District Federal Reserve Bank, at Atlanta.
The Atlanta Fed has three main functions: monetary policy, operation of nationwide payment system, and bank supervision and regulation. It is his job to decide the interest rates, and he meets with other bank presidents and board members. The Bank’s board of directors makes recommendations on the levels of discount rates.
Famous quotes containing the words federal, reserve and/or bank:
“Goodbye, boys; I’m under arrest. I may have to go to jail. I may not see you for a long time. Keep up the fight! Don’t surrender! Pay no attention to the injunction machine at Parkersburg. The Federal judge is a scab anyhow. While you starve he plays golf. While you serve humanity, he serves injunctions for the money powers.”
—Mother Jones (1830–1930)
“Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are cheques drawn on insufficient funds.”
—René Daumal (1908–1944)
“Life is a long Dardenelles, My Dear Madam, the shores whereof are bright with flowers, which we want to pluck, but the bank is too high; & so we float on & on, hoping to come to a landing-place at last—but swoop! we launch into the great sea! Yet the geographers say, even then we must not despair, because across the great sea, however desolate & vacant it may look, lie all Persia & the delicious lands roundabout Damascus.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)