Blame Bernanke and Federal Reserve for Economic Crisis
Ron Paul

The Fed should go back to being steady and independent

To say that the Federal Reserve has simply overstepped anything is a grand understatement:

The Fed is the chief culprit behind our economic crisis.

Since 1913, the dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy. In its unchecked power to print money out of thin air, the Federal Reserve continues to devalue the dollar while the middle class continue to see their savings eaten away by inflation.

Who benefits from this inflation?

Big-spending politicians and politically favored bankers.

Who is hurt?

Hard-working Americans, who, when they take a financial risk and lose, are never bailed out.

It was the Federal Reserve that caused the housing bubble by lowering the interest rate to an artificial low, far beyond what the market could bear, which encouraged people to buy homes who could not afford them. With the mortgage crisis, the Fed hurt a lot of Americans by not allowing the free market to work on its own. It is the Federal Reserve that cannot account for trillions in off-sheet balances, except the money we do know about that went to overseas banks.

The Fed continues to do all of this with no oversight, no accountability, and no transparency.

The most important boundaries the Federal Reserve oversteps every day are the legal parameters of the U.S. Constitution. Many of the Founders feared a central bank because they predicted it would cause the kind of damage characteristic of the Federal Reserve today. I've written about ending the Fed, but until then we should at least be able to take a look at what it's doing. Given their routine behavior, few Americans should be surprised that Chairman Ben Bernanke and his friends are reluctant to allow this -- which is why I keep demanding it.