“End The Fed” is a book Ron Paul wrote in 2009, and everyone should read it! Ron Paul is a true libertarian, smart, and should be elected as President. I just sent him some more dollars, even though I know he won’t make it. If only he was colorful and a great speaker! At any rate, his arguments for getting rid of the Federal Reserve are superb. I am jus going to do a few quotes as my column, as they are so good. (The book is an easy read, a couple hundred small pages, and pretty large type. I read it on the plane to New York and finished it before we landed,)
After pointing out that it is the Fed which creates money out of thin air, artificially controls interest rates, distributes money as it sees fit, and then refuses to tell where they sent it, he points out the total economic illiteracy of the Congress. “What the Fed and paper money have done for Congress is lead legislators to believe that there are no limits on what they can spend, on what they can propose, and what they can accomplish. They really do behave like college students on spring break, who are using their parents’ credit cards with no limit. They don’t think about money. They don’t think about who or what is paying the bills. The ability to do what they want is taken for granted.
“The day the Fed came into being in 1913, may have been the beginning of the end. The powers it obtained and the mischief it caused took a long time to become a serious issue, but now our wealth is drained. Our productivity is sharply diminished. Our freedoms are eroded. Our empire is fragile.
“Artificially low interest rates are achieved by inflating the money supply, and they penalize the thrifty and cheat those who save. They promote consumption and borrowing over saving and investing. Manipulating interest rates is an immoral act. It’s economically destructive. Only the Federal Reserve can inflate the currency, creating new money and credit out of thin air, in secrecy, without oversight or supervision. Inflation facilitates deficits, needless wars, and excessive welfare spending.”
Paul points out that without the Federal Reserve, it is doubtful that America would have ever gotten into Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan, because they would have to find the money to pay for those wars, and couldn’t pay them with printing press money. World War Two was paid for with printing press money, and prices exactly DOUBLED in those four years, thanks to the increase in the money supply. He says those bonds and war stamps were only a patriotic show to make people get behind the effort, and paid for virtually nothing. Paul correctly says that money should be issued by the Treasury Department, and not a private bank such as the Federal Reserve who produces money out of thin air, and loans it to the government and charges them interest. I’d like to have some shares of the Fed!
“Nothing good can come from the Federal Reserve. It is the biggest taxer of them all. Diluting the value of the dollar by increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister, tax on the poor and middle class. The Federal Reserve’s monetary policy has brought us to where we are today- in a tragic economic mess. Inflation and debasement of currencies has been around for a long time. Before modern day central banks, the government, a king, or a tyrant with monopolistic powers over the monetary system could choose to debase the currency for some ulterior motive, many times to pay for war and expand an empire.
“The durability of gold as money was verified once again by archaeologists who discovered nearly 300 gold coins dating back to A.D. 600. The coins are every bit as valuable today as they were 1400 years ago and more. One must wonder what our Federal Reserve notes will be worth when discovered in some hideaway a hundred or even a year from now. There’s no way a society can build a lasting and prosperous economic system without money of real value which lasts.”
You really should get a copy of this book. I see it on Amazon for less than $4, and it may be the best $4 you will ever spend!
P.S. a 15% correction is nothing new in metals or anything. How did it happen? In my opinion, when the Fed decided not to do QE3, and not print hundreds of billions more dollars, right now at least, and metals futures holders decided that was good for the dollar and bad for metals, so they sold millions of ounces of PAPER metals, driving the price of physical metals down. In my opinion, it’s a buying opportunity, not sell one! Be smart. Buy on the way down, and sell on the way up!