Ron Paul’s bill to Audit the Fed, HR1207, went through committee hearing on Friday. You can watch the whole hearing in 5 parts below.
Tag Archive for 'federal reserve'
The Campaign for Liberty and other diverse organizations have formed a coalition to promote HR 1207 and S 604 and the need to audit the fed. Go to their site and sign the petition and then check on your Congressman and Senators to see if they are supporting it. Thank them if they are and ask them to support it if they aren’t already.
Then head over to Amazon and order a copy of Ron Paul’s upcoming book End the Fed.
Mises.org has posted an excellent article on free-market education to their site. I recommend that you go read it for yourself, but will give a short synopsis here. A teacher in a San Diego high school decides to sell advertising on tests and quizzes to local area businesses and parents. This helps the teacher to do his best job in class without incurring more expenses himself. People allowed to operate within the free-market will figure out a profitable way to do the best thing for all parties involved. Taxpayer funded schools (or anything else for that matter) are nothing but a drain on the taxpayer and will always do a poor job. Think of the irony of congress getting a pay raise while they demand pay cuts for the automaker executives. We need to remember the housing bubble which precipitated the current crisis started with the fed and it’s socialist manipulation of credit. Congress could control or abolish the fed if they cared. Shouldn’t they take a pay cut – or be fired?
Ron Paul before the U.S. House of Representatives, 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.
Although it is obvious that the Keynesians were all wrong and interventionism and central economic planning don’t work, whom are we listening to for advice on getting us out of this mess? Unfortunately, it’s the Keynesians, the socialists, and big-government proponents.
Who’s being ignored? The Austrian free-market economists—the very ones who predicted not only the Great Depression, but the calamity we’re dealing with today. If the crisis was predictable and is explainable, why did no one listen? It’s because too many politicians believed that a free lunch was possible and a new economic paradigm had arrived. But we’ve heard that one before–like the philosopher’s stone that could turn lead into gold. Prosperity without work is a dream of the ages.
Over and above this are those who understand that political power is controlled by those who control the money supply. Liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats came to believe, as they were taught in our universities, that deficits don’t matter and that Federal Reserve accommodation by monetizing debt is legitimate and never harmful. The truth is otherwise. Central economic planning is always harmful. Inflating the money supply and purposely devaluing the dollar is always painful and dangerous.
The policies of big-government proponents are running out of steam. Their policies have failed and will continue to fail. Merely doing more of what caused the crisis can hardly provide a solution.
The good news is that Austrian economists are gaining more acceptance every day and have a greater chance of influencing our future than they’ve had for a long time.
The basic problem is that proponents of big government require a central bank in order to surreptitiously pay bills without direct taxation. Printing needed money delays the payment. Raising taxes would reveal the true cost of big government, and the people would revolt. But the piper will be paid, and that’s what this crisis is all about.
There are limits. A country cannot forever depend on a central bank to keep the economy afloat and the currency functionable through constant acceleration of money supply growth. Eventually the laws of economics will overrule the politicians, the bureaucrats and the central bankers. The system will fail to respond unless the excess debt and mal-investment is liquidated. If it goes too far and the wild extravagance is not arrested, runaway inflation will result, and an entirely new currency will be required to restore growth and reasonable political stability.
The choice we face is ominous: We either accept world-wide authoritarian government holding together a flawed system, OR we restore the principles of the Constitution, limit government power, restore commodity money without a Federal Reserve system, reject world government, and promote the cause of peace by protecting liberty equally for all persons. Freedom is the answer.
Original at The Austrians Were Right.
The important fact to remember when considering the current economic crisis is to remember that people like Ron Paul, who hold to austrian economics, predicted it. They pointed out years ago that what Greenspan was doing would cause such a crisis eventually.
The Mises Institute has just republished Murray Rothbard’s book The Mystery of Banking. I hope to get this soon and add it to my reading list. This book in addition to America’s Great Depression, The Case Against the Fed, A History of Money and Banking in the United States, and What Has Government Done to Our Money? should help anyone to have a better understanding of the current crisis and the government bailouts. The problem is that many of our congressmen and senators don’t seem to understand basic economics or they do understand and are trying to use this crisis to nationalize as many industries as possible.
You can also read The Mystery of Banking for free at the Mises website by downloading the pdf of the book.
Ron Paul spoke to the House on Tuesday, January 29, concerning the economic stimulus package that is being debated in Congress. He points out that:
. . . instead of taking the fiscally responsible course and pairing the tax cuts with spending cuts, this bill simply adds to the national deficit. Madame Speaker, unless Congress acts soon to reign in its excessive spending, the American people will face confiscatory tax rates or skyrocketing inflation.
The full text of The Dangerous Stimulus is available by following the link.
Ron Paul was at the Peace Center amphitheater in downtown Greenville on Saturday night. A crowd of probably at least 500 showed up at 7:30 p.m. to hear Ron Paul speak. Watch the video to see his consistent non-interventionist, pro-life, small government, message of freedom.
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