It's weirder than that. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve is an agency of the US federal government. The system as a whole has "a combination of public and private characteristics".

See the section "The U.S. Approach to Central Banking" of https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/structure-federal... .

Thanks for this clarification. I had a hunch it was a weird mix of the two. In reality I'm glad congresspeople don't have a lens into the money printing business.

But they do. They control the Treasury and US Mint, who are the real money printers. The Fed controls the price of money for everyone else.

What do you mean by this? As far as I know, the Fed was established by an Act of Congress and it is overseen by a Board of Governors whose members are appointed by the President and report to the Congress. To me it doesn't necessarily seem too different from many other government agencies, the biggest difference being that it is self-funded.

Because of its autonomy it doesn't seem to fall well within any of the three classical branches of government, but it sure seems to me like a part of the government nonetheless.