[lazaroclapp]

> Isn't this pretty much the description of every company?

For the most part, sure. But that's the parent's point, I think. Central banks are not companies, they are part of the public financial infrastructure of a nation (or, in the EU case, group of nations).

[jameshart]

> Central banks are not companies

Actually... it's complicated. The Bank of England, for example, was nationalized only in 1946, and it remains technically a company which is owned by the state, not actually part of the government.

In the US, the Fed is... well, it's not a company, but it's also not not a company... or group of companies...

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Bank

[tialaramex]

Yeah, the Bank of England even used to offer account services to employees after it was nationalized. Which would be scandalous if we found it in some dubious ex-Soviet republic today, albeit there maybe they're lending the Bank's President $10M with no real security and the Bank of England was offering employees mortgages and similar modest run-of-the-mill secured loans.

The UK owns a whole bunch of banks and entities that would need a banking license if they weren't owned by the government, of which only the Bank of England acts as a central bank, but there are also a bunch of commercial banks in (or at least operating in) the UK that are named after parts of the UK even though they're not owned by the government, including the Bank of Scotland.

[dragonwriter]

The decision-making body of the Federal Reserve System – the thing that sets monetary policy, among other things – is a government agency (the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.)

The rest of the system is, as you note, complicated, but the rest of the system doesn’t set monetary policy.