The Latest BBC worldservice program on the US federal reserve system
was a sham and little more than pure right wing propaganda.

not a single serious issue was adressed nor were  any of the
thousands of serious economists and political analyst critics
of the Federal Reserve "system" invited, interviewed or heard.

Here the BBC and its political/economical journalists
shows a frightening low standard and low degree of 
impartiality, balance and lack of respect towards their audience. 


For the benefit of the journalist who was having 
trouble finding mainstream criticism of the Fed :
(both from wikipedia and other links world wide) 

-----
Criticisms of the Fed

A large and varied group of criticisms are often directed against the
Federal Reserve. Some of these criticisms relate to inflation and
fractional reserve banking more generally, and an in-depth treatment
these issues may be found in their respective articles. There are also
specific issues relating to the chairmanship of Alan Greenspan,
specifically, that the Fed’s credibility is based on a cult of
personality around him, but this line of argument is also more
thoroughly addressed in his article. Nonetheless, critics still point to
a number of specific criticisms about the methods and actions of the
Fed; these are treated below.


Historical Criticisms

Criticisms of the Fed are not new, and some historical criticisms are
reflective of currect concerns, Specifically, Austrian School economists
blame the Fed’s expansionary monetary policy in the 1920’s, allowing
misallocations of capital resources and supporting a massive stock price
bubble. Others argue that the Fed then deepened the resulting Great
Depression by contracting the money supply at the very moment that
markets needed liquidity. These criticisms resemble concerns that the
current Fed over-emphasizes consumer spending, and has thus not been
aggressive enough in reducing US dependence on oil and energy-intensive
capital goods, and allowing household debt to accumulate to excessively
large levels.


Economic Indicators

Some critics argue that the Fed’s concentration on GDP or other
aggregate indicators risks ignoring important changes in regional
economies, and is an unsuitable proxy as an indicator of well-being.

For example, critics argue that the Fed’s focus on reducing national
inflation made it unable to adequately respond to the economic problems
in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Specifically, the Fed began to
tighten interest rates almost immediately after the Hurricane, which
some see as evidence that the Fed has ignored the large losses in that
devastated region. They argue that the Fed’s concern with aggregate
national inflation measures, and the inflationary aspects of the large
reconstruction effort (especially the potential for larger government
budget deficits), made it unable to deal properly with the highly
unusual but particularly devastating situation.

Another criticism is that the Fed places too much emphasis on GDP as a
measure of well-being. Critics point to programs in the UK and Canada,
such as the Genuine Progress Indicator, which are intended to be a
better indicator of both the benefits and costs of economic growth. Even
more conservative commentators believe Net Domestic Product is a far
better indicator than GDP of economic growth, as GDP hides uneconomic
growth and can lead to improper decisions.

However, this idea remains controversial. The Fed is notoriously
tight-lipped about the measures and metrics which are used to make its
decisions (see Opacity, directly below), and there is no support in the
released transcripts (available for meetings up until 1999) for the
notion that the Fed is overly focused on GDP and inflation alone.
Rather, the transcripts indicate that the Fed watches a very wide basket
of indicators, and that the members of the FOMC are certainly aware of
the limitations of the GDP measure.


Opacity

Another criticism of the Federal Reserve is that it is shrouded in
secrecy. Meetings are held behind closed doors, and the transcripts are
released with a lag of five years. Even expert policy analysts are
unsure as to the logic behind Fed decisions. Critics argue that such
opacity leads to greater market volatility, as the markets must guess,
often with only limited information, about how the Fed is likely to
change policy in the future. The jargon-laden fence-sitting opaque style
of Fed communication is often called "Fed speak." (see e.g. [14][15]
[16] [17])


Furthermore, the lag in the release of FOMC transcripts, as well as the
extremely limited and carefully worded minutes and statement, leads to
the public being unaware of the issues of major concern to the Fed, and
leaves it with an inadequate understanding of the logic and rationale
behind the decisions. Some argue that this is a concerted attempt to
keep Congress and the public at arm’s length, but this criticism has not
gained much widespread acceptance


-------------------
[..]

The early summer of 1994 finds the American presidency under attack from
British-directed forces on both sides of the Atlantic. The objective of
the attack is not simply to remove the American President, Bill Clinton,
from office, but to destroy the effective functioning of the institution
of the presidency, the most powerful potential force for good in the
world. 

At the same moment, we sit on the edge of the greatest financial
collapse in history. We have been treated to a parade of bankers and
financial speculators, such as George Soros, individuals who are
operatives of these same London financial interests, appearing before
Congressional committees to beg for expansion of their looting policies
and privileges. In the deepening crisis ahead, the American presidency
is the only institution powerful enough to carry out the policies that
might reverse humanity's plunge into a barbaric New Dark Age that will
slaughter billions of human beings as we enter the new millennium. 

Those who doubt that this is true need only look back to the time some
60 years ago, when the forebears of those British-linked forces now
attempting to destroy our nation sought to plunge the depression-wracked
United States into chaos, and to impose a fascist bankers' dictatorship.

The story of this plot, and how the institution of the presidency in the
hands of Franklin Roosevelt defeated it--a story which was told in the
daily Establishment press while it was unfolding--has today been wiped
from our history. It is a story that must be told, for its lessons have
great bearing on the events unfolding before us today. 
The Setting
It is the winter of 1932-33, the darkest days of the Great Depression.
In Germany, the London and New York axis, the banking houses of the City
and Wall Street, are about to put Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, the banker
Hjalmar Schacht's protégé, into power and to set a certain course for a
new world war, one that would destroy both Germany and Russia, they
hoped, for all time. In Italy, the fascist Mussolini has been in power
since 1921, placed in Rome by these same oligarchical interests. 

In the United States, with unemployment rising and bread lines growing,
with factories shut and banks collapsing at a record pace, the bankers'
own candidate, the man who had helped deliberately destroy the U.S.
economy on behalf of this cabal, Herbert Hoover, has been sent to a
crushing defeat in the November presidential elections by Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, the former governor of New York. 

Roosevelt, the cousin of the Anglophile agent and arch-racist who helped
set the stage for the World War I, the evil Teddy Roosevelt, is, like
the Morgans, or the Warburgs, or the Rockefellers, a member of the
patrician class. But because he was a patrician, Roosevelt knew one of
the secrets of political life known only to handful of truly powerful
elites: He knew that policy was not made or controlled by the power
brokers in the political parties. Policy, in fact, was dictated by this
Anglo-American oligarchy, an international elite of powerful families
that ruled above kings and above elected governments. 

[..]

Since the 1876 Species Resumption Act, U.S. economic and credit policy
had essentially been dictated from London. Since 1913, the main vehicle
for the implementation of that policy had been the Federal Reserve, a
private bank, established by British policy interests. Overseeing its
operations was a club of private bankers: the Warburgs, the Meyers of
Lazard Freres, Otto Kahn of Kuhn Loeb, the Harrimans of Brown Brothers,
Harriman and J.P. Morgan, Jr. of the House of Morgan. 

In this ``secret government'' which defined the parameters and often the
details of critical policies, the House of Morgan held the most
important portfolio, as the most important agent of Anglo-Venetian
interests in the United States. The Morgan partners held directorships
in 167 industrial concerns, banks, railroads, and utilities, and they
controlled, through their banking relationships, the most important
media in the United States, including The New York Times. And most
importantly, the Morgans, along with the other merchant banks,
controlled the public debt of the United States, in concert with the
Federal Reserve. 

This cabal was confident that there would be no effective
counter-reaction, no organized defense of the principles of the American
republic: The United States was to emerge from the depression a
British-controlled police state, to be effectively brought back into the
British Empire.


http://www.members.tripod.com/american_almanac/morgan1.htm