Ron Paul vs. the Fed

United States Republican Congressman Ron Paul from Texas was one considered an outlier in American politics. However, he has noticed an uptick in public attention.

It first began from his long shot run at the US presidency in 2008, where he was both adored and scorned. Now he is gaining a new round of attention for his repeated calls for the US Congress to audit the Federal Reserve, an idea he has been preaching for years. The Fed is under fire yet again, having recently revealed over $9 trillion dollars in emergency loans that were doled out to major US and foreign financial institutions, and other corporations – including Harley Davidson, Verizon and GE. With a rise in anti-Fed sentiment and many Americans outraged at continued US bailouts of major banks while the people suffer a declining economy and growing unemployment, Congressman Paul’s words have begun to resonate. “It’s bad, it’s probably worse than I thought and I’m not totally surprised what they’ve been doing. That’s one of the reasons I’ve wanted an audit for a long time. Even though we’re getting some figures out, it’s nothing near what an audit would reveal,” Congressman Paul told RT. He explained the Fed’s ability to make unilateral decisions unchecked, and continue to create money hurts our economy.“If the fed couldn’t create money, if we were spending too much and didn’t want to raise taxes we’d go to the market and barrow, but if we barrow too much interest rates will keep going up, up, up,” Congressman Paul explained. “If they Fed comes in, they allow that bubble and mal investment to continue, so they create the credit. If you allow the market to work the signals would be there and it would be turned off much sooner. The Fed shouldn’t be allowed to monetize debt.” The Fed cannot manage this issue; the world will soon lose confidence and trust in the US dollar, he argued. Public consensus appears to be in Paul’s favor when the Federal Reserve is the issue at hand. A new Bloomberg National Poll suggests a majority of Americans favor either further controls or the complete abolition of the Fed. Republicans have even named him the chair of the US House subcommittee that oversees the Fed.So, will Ron Paul end the Federal Reserve? “The American people, as they learn more about the Federal Reserve, the more they don’t like what is going on,” explained Michael T. Snyder, a blogger for TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com.The American people want greater transparency, he said. An audit of the fed will reveal a lot about what has occurred, but it is hard to predict the details since there has never been a audit of the Fed since its creation by Act of Congress in 1913.“The federal Reserve has been an absolute disaster,” argued Snyder. “We pull back the curtain and take a look at what’s really going on and expose to the American people how the Federal Reserve works and how it’s bad for the economy, then that’s going to increase the chances that one day the Federal Reserve, there will be enough support to actually end the Fed, which is Ron Paul’s ultimate goal.”Snyder added, “People are starting to wake up and realize what Ron Paul has been warning about all these years, is actually starting to happen.”

The recent US financial reform package that gave a onetime peak into the Fed is a positive step, said Davis DeGraw, a journalist and the author of “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III”.The American people want more. There must be greater openness, he argued. “The absurdity of this is staggering,” commented DeGraw.While the release of documents revealed a great deal of information, it pales in comparison to the information which remains secret.“If someone crashes the economy, you don’t reward them,” he argued. “They don’t have any allegiance to the American people. This is not a US government institution. This is a global banking cartel. The American people need to rally against the Fed and call for a change, call for an audit. “We need to start doing something urgently,” he said. “Our future is going up in flames in front of us.”