An end to Federal Reserve Board?
Rep. Paul sponsors bill
to abolish economy's policeman
By Stephan Archer
c 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
In an attempt to spur on public discussion about how to handle impending dips in the nation's economy, Rep. Ron Paul, R-TX, introduced a bill that would repeal the Federal Reserve Act and abolish the Federal Reserve Board, an entity which the congressman blames for the negative aspects of the country's economic cycles.
H.R. 1148, which was referred to the Committee on Banking and Financial Services last week, has a general plan for the phasing out of the Federal Reserve Board. Although Paul doesn't believe the bill will pass, it is his hope that the bill will bring the problem of the country's national debt and the impending recession to the forefront of political discussion.
Paul believes that the current Federal Reserve Board system has been the reason for much of the nation's economic problems in the past, including the Great Depression, and wants to go back to a money system as described in the U.S. Constitution.
"I believe in sound money, that is, constitutional money," Paul said. "The Constitution says that we must have commodity money such as silver or gold. It's something that Alan Greenspan agreed with most of his life, and it's still something he has a lot of sympathy for." Paul went on to say that, although the nation is enjoying an economic "boom" now, it won't last forever. According to Paul, what happened to Japan's economy will eventually happen in the U.S., and the only way to fix it would be to get rid of the Federal Reserve Board that creates "money out of thin air."
Paul explained that, in the 1800s, the U.S. followed a gold standard that kept the nation's economy generally stable. Problems that did occur tended to creep in because the nation drifted away from the gold standard.
Now there is no gold standard, and money can literally be created "out of thin air" to bolster the economy. Paul referred to this creation of money as "counterfeiting" and believes that it will eventually come back to haunt the U.S. as the existing units of money lose their value thus creating inflation.
Paul also explained that government officials like the creation of money from nothing because it enables them to finance the deficit while bragging about a budget surplus in spite of the $113 billion which was added to the national debt last year.
"All this is, is the creation of a huge, financial bubble which is going to end," said Paul. "Someday, we'll have to address the subject of why this (financial) problem came to be."
If his bill were to pass, Paul told WorldNetDaily the government would be forced to get money by doing what most Americans do already -- save it. No more printing of paper money would be allowed because there wouldn't be any more Federal Reserve Board to do it. At the same time, the national debt would be reduced by half a trillion dollars since a good portion of the national debt is owed to the Federal Reserve Board which would have been abolished, he said.
Paul said that a good number of people across the nation already support the idea of a bill that would abolish the Federal Reserve Board, but he wants more people to be educated about the subject. Only when a majority of the U.S. population knows about the happenings within the Federal Reserve Board does he believe a bill such as H.R. 1148 will catch on and have a chance of being ratified by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Summarizing his belief about the issue, Paul said, "If one is interested in preventing all inflation, deflation, business cycles such as booms and busts, recessions, depressions and unemployment, you must get rid of the central management of money because it is the engine of the inflation which produces the recession."
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