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Last week I was very pleased that the Financial
Services Committee held a hearing on the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, HR
1207. The bill has 295 cosponsors
and there is also strong support for the companion bill in the Senate. This hearing was a major step forward
in getting the bill passed.
I was pleased that the hearing was well-attended,
especially considering that it was held on a Friday at nine o’clock in
the morning! I have been talking
about the immense, unchecked power of the Federal Reserve for many years,
while the attention of Congress was always on other things. It was gratifying to see my colleagues
asking probing questions and demonstrating genuine concern about this
important issue as well.
The witness testifying in favor of HR 1207 made some
very strong points, which was no surprise considering the bill is simply
common sense. It was also no
surprise that the witness testifying against the bill had no good arguments
as to why a full audit should not be conducted promptly. He attempted to make the case that the
fed is already sufficiently accountable to Congress and that the current
auditing policy is adequate. The
fact is that the Fed comes to Congress and talks about only what it wants to
talk about, and the GAO audits only what the current laws allow to be
audited. The really important
things however, are off limits. There
are no convincing arguments that it is in the best interests of the American
people for anything the Fed does to be off limits.
It has been argued that full disclosure of details
of funding facilities like TALF and PDCF that enabled massive bailouts of
Wall Street would damage the financial position of those firms and
destabilize the economy. In other
words, if the American people knew how rotten the books were at those banks
and how terribly they messed up, they would never willingly invest in them,
and they would fail. Failure is
not an option for friends of the Fed.
Therefore, the funds must be stolen from the people in the dark of
night. This is not how a free
country works. This is not how
free markets work. That is crony
corporatism and instead of being a force for economic stabilization, it
totally undermines it.
If the Fed gave its actual arguments against a full
audit, they would not have mentioned anything about political independence or
economic stability. Instead they
would admit they don’t want to be audited because they enjoy their
current situation too much. Under
the guise of currency control, they are able to help out powerful allies on
Wall Street, in exchange for lucrative jobs or who-knows-what favors later
on. An audit would expose the Fed
as a massive fraud perpetrated on this country, enriching a privileged few
bankers at the top of our economic food chain, and leaving the rest of us
with massively devalued dollars which we are forced to use by law. An audit would make people realize
that, while Bernie Madoff defrauded a lot of
investors for a lot of money, the Fed has defrauded every one of us by
destroying the value of our money.
An honest and full accounting of how the money system really works in
this country would mean there is not much of a chance the American people
would stand for it anymore.
Ron Paul
www.house.gov/paul
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other articles by Ron Paul
Congressman Ron Paul of Texas enjoys a national
reputation as the premier advocate for liberty in politics today. Dr. Paul is
the leading spokesman in Washington for limited constitutional government,
low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies based on
commodity-backed currency. For more information click on the Project Freedom website.
Published with the authorization of Dr. Paul.
Copyright Dr. Ron Paul
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