Ron Paul Vs. Bernanke... the Last Showdown

With Ron Paul retiring... it's sad to say, that one of the greatest voices of dissent in opposition of the Federal Reserve will no longer be the voice of reason.

www.csmonitor.com...

“Whose responsibility is it under the Constitution to manage monetary policy?” he asked.

“Congress has the authority and it's delegated to the Federal Reserve. That’s a policy decision that you’ve made,” Bernanke replied.

Paul was unimpressed.

“But [Congress] can’t transfer authority. You can’t amend the Constitution by just by saying ‘We’re going to create some secret group of individuals and banks.’ That’s amending the Constitution. You can’t do that, and then all of a sudden allow this to exist in secrecy,” Paul fumed.

Bernanke parried by saying Congress has given that authority and they could decide to take it away. He wouldn’t recommend it, as he argued independent central banks have delivered better economic results than nonindependent ones. But Congress could do so.

Paul’s reply?

“Congress ought to get a backbone, we have a right to know, we have an obligation to defend our currency,” he said.

Man I wish I was there!

And that launched a soliloquy that was picture-perfect Paul.

“It’s the destruction of the currency that destroys the middle class. There’s a principle of free market thinking that says destroying the value of the currency through inflation, you transfer the wealth from the middle class and it gravitates to the very wealth. The bankers, the government, the politicians – they all love this. It is the fact that the Federal Reserve is the facilitator. If you like big government, love the Fed. They can finance the wars and all the welfare you want ... but your country ends up in a crisis. It’s a solvency crisis, and it can’t be solved by printing a whole lot of money,” he concluded.

Paul, whose warnings about debt, deficits, and inflation have been his calling card during some 20 years in public service, later offered another line of argument that could stand in as an essential statement of his critics during his time in Congress.

“We’re in deep doldrums and we never change policy. We never challenge anything. We just keep doing the same thing. Congress keeps spending the money, welfare expands exponentially, wars never end, and deficits don’t matter,” Paul said.

Well... this chapter, is seemingly at a close. People need to start seriously pressuring Congress to do something about these scumbags.

I proposed this question last night, as the question that I would ask:

"How does risk management become accurately assessed, when there is a complete lack of responsibility which results from creating money out of thin air?"

I'm glad that Ron Paul touched base on this, although in a different manner. Now maybe the question needs to go before Congress... "How does risk management become accurately assessed by a Congress who is bought and paid for by corporations and backdoor deals? At the same time protecting small businesses, the middle, and lower classes?"

Burnished by double a member’s usual time allotment – fellow libertarian Rep. Walter Jones (R) of North Carolina gave up his time so Paul could speak at greater length – Paul uncorked one of his standard diatribes about the Federal Reserve’s secret deliberations over monetary moves.

Rep. Walter Jones! I personally think everyone should have just stepped back and let Ron Paul question Ben Bernanke, there would have been some true revelations manifesting from such lines of questioning!

“I have over the years obviously been critical about what goes on in monetary policy, but it hasn’t been so much the chairman of the Federal Reserve, whether it was Paul Volcker or Alan Greenspan or the current chairman, it’s always been the system,” Paul said. “I think they have a job that they can’t do because it’s an unmanageable job, it’s a fallacy, it’s a flawed system, and therefore we shouldn’t expect good results.

Here's the segment from Youtube -