What do you think these highlighted areas mean?:

What are the Federal Reserve's responsibilities?

Today, the Federal Reserve's responsibilities fall into four general areas:

conducting the nation's monetary policy by influencing money and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of full employment and stable prices.

supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation's banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers

maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets

providing certain financial services to the U.S. government, to the public, to financial institutions, and to foreign official institutions, including playing a major role in operating the nation's payments systems

Enlighten me, please.

What does: maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets, mean?

Like I said, this isn't a conspiracy theory, its on their website:

http://federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/faq/faqfrs.htm#3