Hi all, thanks for the positive comments last week. No I'm not in banking and I didn't do a thesis on banking. This isn't the sort of subject you get taught though. You need to proactively do your own research (or join a central bank!) I don't write for the Independent either! That'll be the day, when the press talk openly about fractional reserve banking!
As to who owns the central banks, there is a lot of information now about the Fed, even a congressman Ron Paul openly talks about this on Youtube. There is much less about the BoE. The Fed is owned by the largest banks in the world, which in turn are owned by a small number of families with staggering wealth in the $trillions - some have been mentioned in the thread already. You wont find them in the Sunday Times Rich List though! Most of thew Western central banks are probably owned or controlled by the same bunch. One of the videos below claims the Russian Revolution was funded by them because the Tsar refused to have a central bank. After he'd gone, one was set up.
G edward Griffin has written a great book called the Creature from Jeckyl Island explaining how central banks work and who is behind them. The bankers themselves and their biographers have even bragged about how they did it in their memoirs. He focuses on the Fed but it was modelled on the BoE. There's a video of the same name on one of the video sites which summarizes the book.
He even explains that its not just governments who can call up the central banks and ask them to switch on the printing presses and devalue our savings and spending power. Other agencies such as the IMF can just call the central banks up and have them create as much money as they like and the contral banks are more than happy to oblige as they get even more interest. So the trillions in loans agencies like the IMF dish out to OTHER COUNTRIES knowing that they will probably never be able to pay them back, has been paid for by us and other wealthy nations, though no-one realizes because it hits us as inflation rather than a named tax.
The BoE was officially nationalized in 1946, but this page claims the original shareholders still profit from it.
http://mypage.direct.ca/l/lbouchar/chapter2.htm
But the SAFE website claims in 1979 it was effectively reprivatized by the creation of a privately owned subsidiary company:
http://www.safe-online.org/BOE-NOMINEES.html
There are some great videos out there which go into a lot of detail about the central banks. You can download them on Bittorrent and put them on DVD or just watch them online (for now at least!) Well worth watching even if only to know where to place your investments.
America:Freedom to Fascism - directed by an acclaimed Holywood director
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NpTVXitOQk
Monopoly Men - presented by actor Dean Stockwell who stars in Quantum Leap and several David Lynch films
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7065177340464808778#
The Money Masters - this is the one to watch if you want all your questions answered. This remarkable 3.5 hour documentary made in 1999 goes into detail about the history of central banking, the central banks nowadays, who the bankers are, and even predicts the credit crunch and bank collapses 8 years before they happened. More predictions about what is coming are made too
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936&hl=en&emb=1