Pittsburgh Celebrates the End of the Federal Reserve

OK, I have two questions. First, why is the Federal Reserve in the business of U.S. Savings Bonds anyway? Second, why is there even a Fed branch in Pittsburgh?

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette brings us the fantastic news:

The Federal Reserve Bank is selling its Pittsburgh branch headquarters Downtown after eliminating the jobs of all but 25 of its 320 employees.

The bank said in February it would eliminate about 200 jobs because of its plans to discontinue the paper sale of U.S. Savings Bonds and other securities. Bank spokeswoman June Gates said about 240 of the Pittsburgh branch’s employees were involved in those sales, which will [sic?] conducted electronically. Those operations were consolidated into the central bank’s Minneapolis branch.

The other 55 jobs eliminated in Pittsburgh were in human resources and other functions that supported paper bond sales, she said.

Ms. Gates said the branch has about 60 to 65 employees and that will be reduced to 25 sometime early next year. She did not have a timetable.

Those whose positions were eliminated took early retirement or were given severance packages based on length of service as well as help finding other jobs, she said.

“Remaining in our current building just is not a viable option,” she said.

Interesting about this is that Bill Bergman posed the question “WTF is up with Fed salaries and compensation” a few weeks back. If you remember Bill, he’s the one who got fired from the Chicago Fed (excuse me, his “position was eliminated”) when he started asking about suspicious money behavior leading up to 9/11/01. You guys all remember what happened that day.

Bill writes via Boiling Frogs Post:

But the ‘salaries and other benefits’ line item on the Reserve Bank income statements poses some questions.

If you simply add up the totals for what the individual Reserve Banks report for their salaries and other benefits expense, you get a smooth, unbroken upward trend seen in the chart below. But if you use the salary and benefits expense line reported on the Combined Financial Statements for the Reserve Banks, you get another result – with much faster growth from 2008 to 2010, amidst the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Interesting.

Bank spokeswoman June Gates said the remaining Pittsburgh branch staff will need 12,000 to 15,000 square feet. They include bank examiners, accountants, auditors and human resources.

Figures, the accountants are always the last to go.

Read more at Jr. Deputy Accountant