What You Can Do to End the Tyranny of the Federal Reserve

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 by: Barbara L. Minton
Tags: Federal Reserve, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) The bailout opposed by so many Americans was nevertheless negotiated by the Federal Reserve with the help of Congress and the Administration. The final bill for the hotly debated rescue of the rich is over 1 trillion dollars including the ear marks and special interests sops that were included. But this is small change compared to the money that is being pumped into the monetary system by the Federal Reserve without any debate or consent. New money is being printed at record rates, insuring that the currency you have in your pocket will buy less and less everyday. As more people wake up to the threat to American's future posed by the Federal Reserve, interest is being renewed in the Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act (HR2755).

This legislation introduced by Congressman Ron Paul in June, 2007 would kill the Federal Reserve Act and would then phase out the Federal Reserve altogether one year after the bill becomes law. Although legislators have yet to bring Paul's bill to the floor, mounting interest in the bill in the face of recent Fed actions suggests it will be revived from its current state of languish in the House Committee on Financial Services.

Although people are just beginning to hear about this proposed legislation in the main stream media, the internet and alternative press reveal the depth of public support for this initiative. Even Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin has placed abolishing the Fed as one of the top planks in his platform that calls for a return to fiscal responsibility for the U.S.

What the Federal Reserve is all about

The Federal Reserve is called that to fool you. It is actually a private corporation run by bankers dedicated to controlling the nation's money supply for the benefit of themselves and other wealthy and powerful people. Its mandate is to control the rest of the people by controlling their access to money and credit.

Since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the American middle and working classes have been victimized by boom and bust monetary policy. Most Americans have suffered steady erosion of purchasing power at the hands of the Fed's inflationary policies. The result of these policies represents an insidious and onerous tax imposed on the people on top of their already burdensome overt taxation.

The heavy hand of the Fed can be seen by any student of the Great Depression, the torturous stagflation of the 1970's, the dotcom bubble, the housing bubble, and today's financial panic and collapse. Its hand print is on every economic downturn that has robbed American's of their money for the past 80 years, as the Fed has followed a policy of flooding the economy with their easy money and credit. When everyone is in debt up to their eyeballs, the bubble bursts and is followed by a painful recession or depression. To save us from the total devastation they have created, the Fed then rides to our rescue with its printing press causing excessive inflation and the erosion of the purchasing power of the dollar. These policies have made slaves of us all with the exception of the power elite.

A dollar created during the birth of the Fed in 1913 is now worth about a penny thanks to the policies of the Fed. The repeal of its mandate would signal the return of a stable currency. It would provide Americans with incentive to save as they would no longer have to fear inflation eroding their savings. These saving could then be used to return America to the status of producer and exporter to the world.

What Ron Paul tried to explain in the presidential debates

Between interruption, ridicule and unscheduled station breaks, Ron Paul tried to tell us how the Fed policy benefits a few at the expense of many. The beneficiaries are those in position to take advantage of the cycles in monetary policy, with the main beneficiaries being those who receive access to artificially inflated money and/or credit before the inflationary effects of the policy impact the entire economy. They are the people who get to use the newly printed money first.

Think of it like this. Suppose you are the first person in your town to be allowed to print money in your basement. You print up a million or two and go out to spend it. You can buy almost anything you want, because now you are richer than almost everyone else. Then permission to print money is granted to 25% of all the people in your town. They all print up a bucket full of money and go out to spend it. Obviously, there are only so many palaces and luxury cars available, so with that many people wanting to buy them the prices move up swiftly. And finally everybody in your town is allowed to print money in their basements. At this point the money has become virtually worthless because it has lost all meaning. This is the point at which an economy collapses.

The people's appetite for big government has tacitly condoned Fed policy. It has allowed the politicians from both parties to use inflation to cover up the true costs of their welfare-warfare spending of American's future.

The Congress has no authority under the Constitution to delegate control of the nation's monetary policy to the Federal Reserve. The Constitution does not empower the government to erode the American standard of living through inflationary monetary policy. Constitutional mandate regarding monetary policy whould permit only currency backed by stable commodities such as gold and silver to be used as legal tender. Abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to a constitutional system would enable America to return to a monetary system where the value of money is consistent because it is tied to a real store of value. This is the type of monetary system that is the basis of a true free-market economy.

Your money and gold

The dollar is nothing more that what it looks like – a piece of paper with some fancy design and some numbers on it. It has no intrinsic worth like a loaf of bread, a tank or gas, a person to fix the plumbing, or a gold coin. The name for it is fiat currency, meaning it is a currency that is backed only by thin air.

Throughout most of history, gold has served as the basic money of all people wherever it has been available. It has been chosen by the markets of the world as the most valuable commodity on earth. Why is this no longer the case? Governments have destroyed the gold standard because they regarded it as too inflexible. This inflexibility is the friend of free markets, making governments keep their financial houses in order. Banks are more careful about lending when they can't rely on a lender of last resort like the Fed, with access to a printing press. Inflexibility means prices are more stable. The problems of inflation and business cycles disappear completely. Gold and economic freedom are inseparable. Deficit spending is a scheme for the confiscation of wealth and the enslavement of the people.

When money is as good as gold, the government cannot manipulate the money supply for its own ends. The gold standard puts severe limits on the government's ability to spend, borrow, and create hair-brained programs. The government is forced to raise revenue through taxation, rather than inflation, a task not so easily achieved. Without a gold standard, the government is free to conspire with the Fed to print money without limit. Under the gold standard, the supply of money regulates itself. What the government and the Fed are doing now is creating the spread of mass misery for most people in the U.S., people they were mandated to serve.

Can the gold standard be reinstituted? Certainly it can. The dollar can be redefined in terms of gold. Interest rates can reflect the real laws of supply and demand. The doors of the Fed can be permanently shuttered and no one would miss it except for the few who benefited from its policies. What would motivate us to do this? We would have to be willing to renounce our enslavement. We would have to fall in love with freedom again.

What we can do

The outcry for the abolition of the Federal Reserve is growing louder. Commodities investor par excellance Jim Rogers is calling for the Fed to be abolished to save the world from massive inflation. TV host Glenn Beck is criticizing the Fed for its role in the current financial debacle. According to Beck, "When everyone was meeting with our Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson, I thought to myself: 'Who the hell is representing the American people?'"

Wall Street Journal financial editor Steven Moore is asking, "Who elected Ben Bernanke? Who Elected Alan Greenspan?"

The time is right. People have had enough. Now is the time for Americans to come out of their debt induced comas and start calling their congressmen and women, asking them to support Paul's bill to abolish the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is as deadly to the future of Americans as the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry. There can be no end to these manufactured financial crises until the Fed's rule is replaced by an honest, debt-free money policy.

See Mike Adam's wonderful article about the threat posed to you by the Federal Reserve. It contains a listing of the members of Congress if you need to find out who your representatives are. Call them, email them and write them that you are vehemently opposed to the continuation of the Federal Reserve. Tell them you support the passage of House Resolution 2755.

About the author

Barbara is a school psychologist, a published author in the area of personal finance, a breast cancer survivor using "alternative" treatments, a born existentialist, and a student of nature and all things natural.