Courtesy of Washingtons Blog
Libertarians Support Wall Street Protest to End the Fed
Ron Paul says that the Wall Street protests are legitimate, and that they are really protesting against the Federal Reserve.
One of the protest organizers tells me that a large proportion of the protesters are Ron Paul supporters. Most of them believe that ending the Federal Reserve is the most important step to restore our country’s prosperity. See this and this.
Remember, even the Wall Street Journal has called for the Fed to be broken up.
As I have extensively documented, the Fed is largely responsible for the economic crisis, and has failed to meet a single one of its stated mandates (let alone its implied ones).
The Fed has been enabler-in-chief for the corruption rampant on Wall Street.
And as I noted Tuesday:
Some very well-known economists also support ending the Fed.
For example, Milton Friedman said:
This evidence persuades me that at least a third of the price rise during and just after World War I is attributable to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System… and that the severity of each of the major contractions — 1920-1, 1929-33 and 1937-8 is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities…
Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes — excusable or not — can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic — this is the key political argument against an independent central bank…
To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is much too serious a matter to be left to the central bankers.
Austrian economists such as Murray Rothbard also would like to end the Fed:
Given this dismal monetary and banking situation, given a 39:1 pyramiding of checkable deposits and currency on top of gold, given a Fed unchecked and out of control, given a world of fiat moneys, how can we possibly return to a sound noninflationary market money? The objectives, after the discussion in this work, should be clear: (a) to return to a gold standard, a commodity standard unhampered by government intervention; (b) to abolish the Federal Reserve System and return to a system of free and competitive banking; (c) to separate the government from money; and (d) either to enforce 100 percent reserve banking on the commercial banks, or at least to arrive at a system where any bank, at the slightest hint of nonpayment of its demand liabilities, is forced quickly into bankruptcy and liquidation. While the outlawing of fractional reserve as fraud would be preferable if it could be enforced, the problems of enforcement, especially where banks can continually innovate in forms of credit, make free banking an attractive alternative.
Congressmen Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich have introduced bills to abolish the Fed.
And as I noted last week, most Americans want the Fed ended or at least reined in:
At least 75% of the American people want a full audit of the Fed, and most were against reconfirming Bernanke.
Indeed, as Bloomberg noted last December:
A majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the nation’s independent central bank, saying the U.S. Federal Reserve should either be brought under tighter political control or abolished outright, a poll shows.
***
Americans across the political spectrum say the Fed shouldn’t retain its current structure of independence. Asked if the central bank should be more accountable to Congress, left independent or abolished entirely, 39 percent said it should be held more accountable and 16 percent that it should be abolished. Only 37 percent favor the status quo.
As I have extensively documented, the Fed is largely responsible for the economic crisis, and has failed to meet a single one of its stated mandates (let alone its implied ones).
Obama Is Not the Answer
Libertarians also point out that – while the Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee are trying to hijack the Wall Street protests – they have been part of the problem, not part of the solution.
They point out that Obama has appointed Wall Street insiders to all of his key economic posts, andaccepted more money from Goldman Sachs and the other big Wall Street banks than anyone else (andis still raking it in). As such, despite his populist rhetoric, he’s with Wall Street, not the protesters. Indeed, he is Wall Street.
They point out that Obama has continued the process of turning the U.S. into a banana republic, and whether you call it communism, fascism or crony capitalism, Obama has been at least as bad as Bush.
They point out that Obama has been a wolf in sheep’s clothing, someone who thinks high levels of unemployment are good.
They point out that Obama has been more brutal than Bush and has destroyed our liberties even fasterthan Bush.
For these reasons, libertarians correctly state that re-electing Obama is not the answer. And they note that Ron Paul’s consistent, decades-long positions are much closer to the American peoples’ demands than Obama’s.
Postscript: Anyone who still thinks Obama will save us is high.
On the other hand, libertarians have been out of power for a long time. Neoliberals and Neoconservatives – two masks on a single face of corruption – have been in the driver’s seat for decades. Libertarians should welcome the protests as a chance to challenge the status quo, to promote liberty and to end the Fed – the chief enabler of corruption in our country today.
Folks dismissing the Occupy protests as being Obama propaganda or left-wing haven’t yet learned the facts, are blaming the fact that the mainstream Democratic party is trying to infiltrate the movement on the protesters, or are letting Fox, Drudge or other mainstream news sources blow a sub-set of the overall protests out of proportion. See this, this and this.
