You would think that a 39 city protest involving thousands of people might warrant a national wire story, maybe a mention on cable news, but no. Reporters don't understand the issue and therefore they ignore it. Of course this can be said for most of the important issues that affect people's lives. Hence we get wall-to-wall coverage of the Obama daughter's educational preferences. Fiddling while Rome burns seems almost understated.

There was some local coverage (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and the Russians were all over it. Most of it misses the point, but what are you going to do? A few months ago this wasn't even an issue and many of us owe Ron Paul a considered debt of gratitude for raising it to prominence. Maybe one day, some reporter might even realize he's sitting on the biggest story of the last hundred years; the looting of the American people to the tune of 95% of our money's value.

Maybe that industrious reporter will open a history book and learn that the dangers of central banking were well understood by such radical fringe players as Thomas Jefferson and John F. Kennedy. He might learn that Woodrow Wilson realized that he had enabled the eventual destruction of America with the signing of the Federal Reserve Act writing, "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country.”

He might even figure out that this system impoverishes our most vulnerable citizen's by destroying their purchasing power and enslaving them in unnecessary welfare systems that need naught ever to have existed. He might learn that inflation is a means of paying for aggressive wars indirectly and therefore avoiding the direct cost of taxation which would raise opposition among the people.

He might also discover that the Constitution demands that our government control our nation’s money supply and that the Federal Reserve is a private bank that not even members of congress are allowed to oversee.

If he is really sharp, he might also figure out that fractional reserve banking and fiat money systems must necessarily fail over time and we have reached the end of the line. With a little evaluation, he may conclude that central banking has led us to the point of the complete collapse of the international economic order and the end of the dollar and our way of life with it.

Categories: Campaign For Liberty, Monetary Policy

Dr. Paul's statement from November 20, 2008:

Madame Speaker, many Americans are hoping the new administration will solve the economic problems we face.  That’s not likely to happen, because the economic advisors to the new President have no more understanding of how to get us out of this mess than previous administrations and Congresses understood how the crisis was brought about in the first place.

Except for a rare few, Members of Congress are unaware of Austrian Free Market economics.  For the last 80 years, the legislative, judiciary and executive branches of our government have been totally influenced by Keynesian economics.  If they had had any understanding of the Austrian economic explanation of the business cycle, they would have never permitted the dangerous bubbles that always lead to painful corrections.

Today, a major economic crisis is unfolding.  New government programs are started daily, and future plans are being made for even more.  All are based on the belief that we’re in this mess because free-market capitalism and sound money failed.  The obsession is with more spending, bailouts of bad investments, more debt, and further dollar debasement.  Many are saying we need an international answer to our problems with the establishment of a world central bank and a single fiat reserve currency.  These suggestions are merely more of the same policies that created our mess and are doomed to fail.

At least 90% of the cause for the financial crisis can be laid at the doorstep of the Federal Reserve.  It is the manipulation of credit, the money supply, and interest rates that caused the various bubbles to form.  Congress added fuel to the fire by various programs and institutions like the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, FDIC, and HUD mandates, which were all backed up by aggressive court rulings.

The Fed has now doled out close to $2 trillion in subsidized loans to troubled banks and other financial institutions.  The Federal Reserve and Treasury constantly brag about the need for “transparency” and “oversight,” but it’s all just talk — they want none of it.  They want secrecy while the privileged are rescued at the expense of the middle class.

It is unimaginable that Congress could be so derelict in its duty.  It does nothing but condone the arrogance of the Fed in its refusal to tell us where the $2 trillion has gone.  All Members of Congress and all Americans should be outraged that conditions could deteriorate to this degree.  It’s no wonder that a large and growing number of Americans are now demanding an end to the Fed.

The Federal Reserve created our problem, yet it manages to gain even more power in the socialization of the entire financial system.  The whole bailout process this past year was characterized by no oversight, no limits, no concerns, no understanding, and no common sense.

Similar mistakes were made in the 1930s and ushered in the age of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society and the supply-siders who convinced conservatives that deficits didn’t really matter after all, since they were anxious to finance a very expensive deficit-financed American empire.

All the programs since the Depression were meant to prevent recessions and depressions.  Yet all that was done was to plant the seeds of the greatest financial bubble in all history.  Because of this lack of understanding, the stage is now set for massive nationalization of the financial system and quite likely the means of production.

The Coming U.S. Break-Up?