"The twelve district banks and their buildings survive as branch operations. Their mechanical tasks, notably the clearing of cheques, the routine movement of currency and the management of government financial transactions, are useful and vast. But the myth of the autonomy and importance also survives. A pamphlet published in 1971 by the Federal Reserve bank of Richmond, Virginia... shows the Board of Directors... deliberating... However... the text concedes the truth. The directors... do not establish dividends, control investment policy, supervise operations... (Nor... do they appoint officers or fix salaries.). They do establish, subject to the approval of the Board of Governors, the discount rates the Reserve Bank charges on loans to member banks. This is... the rediscount rate too is exclusively the domain of central authority. ...[O]nly one [function] remains that is categorical. The Directors... provide System officials with... "grass roots" information on business conditions. ...The textbooks, without exception, cooperate to sustain the regional myth. ...Perhaps there is something to be said for perpetuating legend, enhancing local pride... But truth and reality have their claims and these are that Aldrich's concession to the countryside was unworkable and has been undone these forty years."