[all the best]

It really would be America the Beautiful!

[wac3rd]

If you listen to the tin hat crowd, it cost a few people their lives opposing the Fed.

[TopQuark]

Ron Paul is off the deep end again...

[Nuc1]

Paul introduced a piece of follow-up legislation, entitled H.R. 833: The Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act which would wind down and eliminate the Federal Reserve over the course of the year.

Too soon. Audit them and get the truth out. Their mendacity will be their undoing. The public must be educated. Some years down the road it may be doable. What do we do with the current debt? Without massive economic growth it is not serviceable. With the dims and the greenies in charge there will be no economic growth. With the government we have there will be no freedom. Does any FReeper know if any government in history has ever reduced or eliminated its power and reach without the application of violence? I cannot think of any though I am not a great student of history.

[Leisler]

If we took the money creation power away from FedGov...why...why...they would be dependent on us.

That, totally won’t do. No Sir. /sarc off

[Tribune7]

Milton Friedman thought it would be best to get rid of the Fed.

[Jabba the Nutt]

The Fed is an engine of fraud, deceipt and theft. What would you except to result from an institution founded on the principle of stealing?

[snowsislander]

It's a good question. Certainly if the Fed continues to refuse to supply its creator and overseer, the Congress, the information that it requests then the Fed should be terminated.

As to what type of system we could use to replace it, certainly the op/ed piece's suggestion of the old Canadian system is one worth considering. We did get by without a central bank for a long time, and we can certainly do so again.

[puppypusher]

I think we would be alot less in debt and our government would be much smaller since it would not be able to spend beyond it’s means.

[wagglebee]

The rate of inflation has been substantially worse since the introduction of the Federal Reserve,

The problem with this is that it completely ignores the fact that the forty years between the end of the Civil War and the formation of the Federal Reserve were mostly DEFLATIONARY and this is arguably WORSE than inflation.

Annual Inflation Rates in the United States

[x]

Until 1907, many reformers simply hoped to abolish the restrictions placed on banks during the Civil War, and allowing them to issue notes and allowing banks to branch nationwide to standardize currency instead of the requirement to have the backing of government bonds. Reformers looked to Canada where a similar system had been functioning successfully for several decades.

Although Congress did consider several pieces of legislation similar to what Canada had, none of those made it out of Congress because local bankers were determined to block any proposal for branch banking that would threaten their local monopolies.

After the adoption of a system similar to Canada’s failed, only then did reformers consider the establishment of a central reserve bank. As a result, the Federal Reserve Act allowed for the creation of 12 new banks to do what other banks were prevented from doing themselves, establishing branch networks and issuing currency backed by commercial assets.

The Federal Reserve was a poor substitute for deregulation.

I'd want to hear more about that Canadian system, but I don't know if he's right about the history.

No way were we going to have deregulated nationwide banks in the populist/progressive era.

Even forty years ago, multistate banks with many branches were anathema to politicians (and probably voters too).