Posted on 09/17/2002 7:14:29 AM PDT by Red Jones
Bill to eliminate the Fed introduced Rep. Paul: Legislation seeks to 'restore financial stability' to U.S.
By Jon Dougherty © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
A Republican lawmaker has introduced legislation to abolish the Federal Reserve as a way to "restore financial stability" to the country and re-establish the once-used gold standard.
"Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, middle and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy," said Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, in a speech to colleagues on the House floor.
"In addition, most Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies. This represents a real, if hidden, tax imposed on the American people," he said last week while introducing the bill.
The Texas Republican went on to blame each economic downturn from the Great Depression of the 1930s to 2001's "dot-com bubble" on Fed policies.
"The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial 'boom' followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts," said Paul.
On the gold standard, however, which the congressman described as "stable currency," U.S. "exporters will no longer be held hostage to an erratic monetary policy.
"Stabilizing the currency will also give Americans new incentives to save as they will no longer have to fear inflation eroding their savings," he added.
"Those members concerned about increasing America's exports or the low rate of savings should be enthusiastic supporters of this legislation," he said.
Paul's office did not return phone calls before press time.
The libertarian lawmaker also introduced into the congressional record a column by Llewellyn Rockwell, a former WND columnist and current president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian economic policy think tank based in Auburn, Ala.
Entitled, "Why Gold?" Rockwell writes, "The Fed has been inflating the dollar as never before, driving interest rates down to absurdly low levels, even as the federal government has been pushing a mercantile trade policy, and New York City, the hub of the world economy, continues to be threatened by terrorism. ..."
"The government is failing to prevent more successful attacks by not backing down from foreign-policy disasters and by not allowing planes to arm themselves. These are all conditions that make gold particularly attractive," he said.
But, he continued, "there is no stash of gold held by the Fed or the Treasury that backs our currency system. The government owns gold, but not as a monetary asset. It owns it the same way it owns national parks and fighter planes. It's just another asset the government keeps to itself."
Rockwell said the dollar, which has not been based on gold for nearly three decades, is virtually worthless or, at most, whatever the Fed says it's worth.
"The dollar, and all our money, is nothing more and nothing less than what it looks like: a cut piece of linen paper with fancy printing on it," he wrote.
Paul said he believed the system was inherently unfair to ordinary Americans.
"Though the Federal Reserve policy harms the average American, it benefits those in a position to take advantage of the cycles in monetary policy," he said. "The main beneficiaries are those who receive access to artificially inflated money and/or credit before the inflationary effects of the policy impact the entire economy."
He also said most politicians used the Fed's "inflated currency" to hide the "true costs of the welfare state."
"It is time for Congress to put the interests of the American people ahead of the special interests and their own appetite for big government," said Paul. "Abolishing the Federal Reserve will allow Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over monetary policy."
The ugly one :-P
It could be that I misunderstood him, or that I am recalling the article incorrectly.
If what I described was a Taliban gold standard, I think what you describe is an Iraqi gold standard, with promises that can be depended upon unless tested.
As I understand it, the Fed and Congress control the money supply in several ways. Greenspan and his team vote to set the short-term rate at which banks can borrow from the source of it all, Federal Reserve member banks. Then Congress sets the amount of money that all banks must have on hand. This money typically comes from borrowing from Fed member Banks, customer deposits, and profits. The amount that they must retain determines how much they can then loan out to customers in order to make money for themselves. I forget that amount, something like 1 -3 %.
There may only be a few hundred billion American paper dollars floating around in people's pockets at any point in time, but that's not representative of our money supply. Commerce is conducted in virtual dollars, and there are perhaps hundreds of times that much invested from America alone.
If the gold standard didn't apply (in Taliban fashion) to virtual dollars, and the Fed and Congress could continue to manufacture them on the fly like you're concerned with, what good would it do? Just guessing, but at current prices I doubt there's enough gold in America to cover a minor confidence crisis where less than 1 percent wanted their virtual dollars exchanged. I bet the Saudis or Chines alone could more than purchase all our reserves.
My guess is that the first thing that would happen around the upcoming time of standardization would be that gold prices would rocket, your guess is as good as mine as to how much. Why invest in industry when you can become wealthy buying gold? So all the money would then poor out of the market and into gold to ride the wave, and our economy would be left without cheap financing. That's the significant change.
His is the lone voice of liberty in Congress. Now if only these people crying for small limited government would only vote that way, we'd get back to what the US is supposed to be as drawn out in the US Constitution.
As it is, Democrats and Republicans alike are using the US Constitution as toilet paper.
Actually he doesn't have anti-US attitudes and his foreign policy is a complete 180 from leftist. Paul believes that our government should stick with the US only and not be a world police. He never said the US was responsible for the attacks just that our policy of intervening with others just exacerbates these people who are likely to commit these sort of crimes. AS for the 'US caused millions of deaths in Iraq', care to provide a quote with that?
You obviously do not know facts/history. Hemp/marijuana was made illegal by one of the biggest leftist/socialist presidents in this country EVER--FDR and Bill Clinton had more people arrested and spent more on the drug war than any other president ever.
Do you doubt it?
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