Congressman Ron Paul delivered this Congressional lecture on "The Great Enabler: The Rise of the Federal Reserve and the Growth of Government." The introduction was given by Senator Rand Paul. As a continuing educational tool this lecture was filmed and is provided to the public.
Congressman Paul explains in this lecture the Federal Reserve's role as the enabler of big government. Through purchases of government debt, the Fed allows the government to spend beyond its means and contributes to the growth of the welfare-warfare state. If leviathan government is to be countered, understanding monetary policy and the fundamental role it plays in the relentless growth of government is a necessary first step.
Ron Paul Lecture - "The Great Enabler: The Rise of the Federal Reserve and the Growth of Government"
Rep. Ron Paul sponsored this Congressional lecture on "What Is the Fed's Future?", the final lecture in a three part series on the Federal Reserve System for Congressional staff. As a continuing educational tool this lecture was filmed and is provided to the public. The lecture was delivered by Dr. Roger Garrison, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Auburn University.
Dr. Garrison's lecture describes how the economic precepts on which the Fed operates are fundamentally flawed, making it only a matter of time before the Fed is the creator of its own demise. By contrasting the Keynesian macroeconomic theory upon which the Fed is based with the Austrian macroeconomic theory, what Garrison calls the capital-based framework, Dr. Garrison illustrates the market-distorting effects of the Fed's actions on the structure of production. Using this comparison, Professor Garrison provides a simple yet comprehensive explanation of how the Fed's monetary policy actions created the housing bubble and the subsequent financial crisis. He concludes by highlighting the bleak future for the Fed's ability to manage the economy, and emphasizes the necessity of decentralized banking.
"What is the Fed's Future?" with Roger Garrison -- Ron Paul Fed Lecture Series, Pt 3/3
Other lectures in the Fed series:
Pt. 1: Why Was the Fed Created? -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeIljifA8Ls
Pt. 2: What Does the Fed Do? -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRipVd5wxhI
Pt. 3: What Is the Fed's Future? -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdX60JgPTmA
Related: Ron Paul Money Lecture Series
Pt. 1: "What is Money" -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vowbrq_g5NM
Pt. 2: "What is Constitutional Money?" -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6gMkKmQSW4
Pt. 3: "What About Money Causes Economic Crises?" -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npJ0CUT8d_Y
Showing posts with label Audit The Fed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Audit The Fed. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Thursday, July 26, 2012
BREAKING! Federal Reserve Audit Bill Overwhelmingly Passes The House 327-98
In a rare moment of bipartisanship, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) to audit the Federal Reserve.
The bill, which has 270 co-sponsors, passed 327 to 98. All but one Republican -- Rep. Bob Turner of New York -- voted for it, along with 89 Democrats.
Paul teamed up with former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) in 2010 to pass similar legislation that became part of the final Wall Street reform bill. But Paul has said new audit legislation is needed because the 2010 bill didn't go far enough. Specifically, he states on his website that the audit called for in the 2010 bill only focused on emergency credit programs and procedural issues, rather than on the substantive details of the lending transactions. The 2012 bill doesn't limit the focus of the audit.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke recently told the House Financial Services Committee that he agrees with the "basic premise" that the Fed should be transparent, but raised concerns that Paul's bill doesn't exempt monetary policy and deliberations from its reach.
Not including an exemption on this point could create "a political dampening effect on the Federal Reserve's policy decisions," Bernanke warned.
But Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) pointed out that the House vote on the bill comes on the same day that the Washington Post reported that the New York Fed "did not communicate in key meetings with top regulators that British bank Barclays had admitted to Fed staffers that it was rigging LIBOR,” the index which sets interest rates worldwide.
"The Fed creates trillions of dollars out of nothing and gives it to banks. Congress is in the dark. The Fed sets the stage for the subprime meltdown. Congress is in the dark. The Fed takes a dive on LIBOR. Congress is in the dark. The Fed doesn’t tell regulators what is going on. Congress is in the dark," Kucinich shouted on the House floor, just before the vote.
"It is time for us to bring the Fed into the sunshine of accountability," he said.
Despite the broad support in the House, a senior Senate Democratic aide signaled the bill isn't likely to go anywhere in that chamber in the near future.
"Not this work period," the aide said about the Senate acting on the bill ahead of the month-long August recess. "Don’t know about September, but I doubt it."
Another top Senate Democratic aide concurred that the bill likely won't go anywhere, but speculated it could resurface in a different form.
"We probably won’t bring it up," said the aide, adding that Paul's son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), "will probably start insisting on this as an amendment to everything under the sun, so it's possible it comes up for an amendment vote at some point."
"It would not be the craziest amendment we've voted on," the aide said.
Source: HuffPo: Federal Reserve Audit Bill Overwhelmingly Passes The House
Congressman Ron Paul's Floor Speech on Audit the Fed July 24, 2012
Ron Paul's Audit the Fed Bill PASSES!
A Win For The Constitution - Ron Paul Gets His Bill To Audit The Fed Passed
Kucinich Stands for 99%, Demands Audit of the Federal Reserve
Harry Reid vows Federal Transparency Act will never be voted on in the Senate
Supporters of Rep. Ron Paul and sound monetary policy rejoiced online as they heard of the passage of H.R. 456, the Federal Transparency Act, on Wednesday. Their joy, however, was short-lived as within an hour of the bill passing word spread from the office of the Harry Reid. The Senate Majority Leader and Nevada Democrat has vowed the Federal Reserve Transparency Act will not be put to a vote in the Senate.
Source: Harry Reid vows Federal Transparency Act will never be voted on in the Senate
In '95 Harry Reid wanted to Audit the Fed, and now he doesn't want to because Republicans have supported it--the very definition of bipartisan hypocrisy. This is the most important institution that controls all of our money/interest rates. Very important and he won't even put it to a vote in the Senate.
Harry Reid: "I think we should audit the Federal Reserve" in 1995!
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Monetary Policy and the State of the Economy | Ron Paul vs Ben Bernanke
Before the United States House of Representatives, Committee on Financial Services, Hearing on Monetary Policy and the State of the Economy, July 18, 2012
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for calling this hearing today on monetary policy and the state of the economy. For the past few years the Federal Reserve has received criticism from all sides of the political spectrum, and rightly so, for its unprecedented intervention into the economy and its bailouts of large Wall Street banks and foreign central banks. Yet this criticism risks losing sight of the most insidious result of the Fed's actions, which is to enable the growth of government.
For nearly the first 40 years of its existence, the Fed operated as an adjunct of the Treasury Department, tasked with purchasing government debt in order to keep the government's borrowing costs low. Even after gaining its vaunted "independence" from Treasury in 1951, the Fed never shrank from enabling the growth of government. The extraordinary monetary policy of the last four years has reaffirmed that the Fed, its protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, is only too willing to enable growing government spending and massive fiscal deficits.
For centuries, banks have received special privileges from government in exchange for funding the government's wars. The creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 formalized and centralized this arrangement in the United States. From the very beginning, the Fed was intended to provide a more liquid market for federal government debt, enabling the growth of big government.
What we’ve seen over the last century is nothing less than the remaking of American government, thanks in large part to the Fed. Its loose monetary policy gave rise to: (i) the welfare state, encouraging dependency on government largesse and destroying the work ethic and family life of lower-income Americans; (ii) the warfare state, allowing the U.S. government to involve itself in wars of aggression around the world; and (iii) the regulatory state, the mammoth bureaucracy that relentlessly grinds away at the rights of the American people.
Little more than a decade ago, Fed economists were wringing their hands over the prospect that the federal government might pay off the national debt. Nothing could be worse for the Fed, because the Fed's monetary policy operations require the existence of government debt. Treasury debt is purchased from or sold to banks on the open market in order to influence interest rates. Without government debt, the Fed would have no idea how to conduct monetary policy. From a free market perspective this would be wonderful, as it is Fed monetary policy which largely creates the booms and busts of the business cycle. Unfortunately, the federal government has run up the national debt to unprecedented levels over the past decade, and the Federal Reserve has been right there, monetizing that debt to ensure that none of it goes unsold.
While the desire of foreign countries and private investors to purchase Treasuries was drying up, the Federal Reserve was only too willing to step in and enable the government to continue its deficit spending. The Fed's balance sheet exploded as it purchased over one trillion dollars in Treasury debt over the past few years. And before it did that, the Fed also purchased over a trillion dollars of overrated mortgage-backed securities from Wall Street banks, giving those banks the cash they needed to purchase Treasury debt of their own. Were it not for the Federal Reserve's actions, the federal government would not have been able to run trillion-dollar deficits for the past several years.
In fact, had the Federal Reserve never been created, the federal government never would have been able to run up a $16 trillion debt. No market actor would lend money to such a major debtor at such low interest rates. The only reason that banks are willing to buy Treasury debt at such low interest rates is because they can easily resell that debt to the Fed.
Without the Fed, interest rates would rise to such levels that the federal government would have no choice but to curtail its expenditures and focus only on doing what is truly necessary. With market discipline allowed to prevail, the size of the federal government would be drastically smaller. If Congress were really serious about limiting the size of government, it would eliminate the most important enabler of government profligacy by ending the Fed.
Source: Ron vs. Ben, for the Last Time
Ron Paul "We Talk About Solving A Worldwide Problem Of Insolvency By Just Printing Money"
Ron Paul "It's The Destruction Of The Currency That Destroys The Middle Class!"
Ron Paul "Under Your Philosophy I'd Say You've Done A Pretty Good Job! You Tripled Monetary Base..."
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for calling this hearing today on monetary policy and the state of the economy. For the past few years the Federal Reserve has received criticism from all sides of the political spectrum, and rightly so, for its unprecedented intervention into the economy and its bailouts of large Wall Street banks and foreign central banks. Yet this criticism risks losing sight of the most insidious result of the Fed's actions, which is to enable the growth of government.
For nearly the first 40 years of its existence, the Fed operated as an adjunct of the Treasury Department, tasked with purchasing government debt in order to keep the government's borrowing costs low. Even after gaining its vaunted "independence" from Treasury in 1951, the Fed never shrank from enabling the growth of government. The extraordinary monetary policy of the last four years has reaffirmed that the Fed, its protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, is only too willing to enable growing government spending and massive fiscal deficits.
For centuries, banks have received special privileges from government in exchange for funding the government's wars. The creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 formalized and centralized this arrangement in the United States. From the very beginning, the Fed was intended to provide a more liquid market for federal government debt, enabling the growth of big government.
What we’ve seen over the last century is nothing less than the remaking of American government, thanks in large part to the Fed. Its loose monetary policy gave rise to: (i) the welfare state, encouraging dependency on government largesse and destroying the work ethic and family life of lower-income Americans; (ii) the warfare state, allowing the U.S. government to involve itself in wars of aggression around the world; and (iii) the regulatory state, the mammoth bureaucracy that relentlessly grinds away at the rights of the American people.
Little more than a decade ago, Fed economists were wringing their hands over the prospect that the federal government might pay off the national debt. Nothing could be worse for the Fed, because the Fed's monetary policy operations require the existence of government debt. Treasury debt is purchased from or sold to banks on the open market in order to influence interest rates. Without government debt, the Fed would have no idea how to conduct monetary policy. From a free market perspective this would be wonderful, as it is Fed monetary policy which largely creates the booms and busts of the business cycle. Unfortunately, the federal government has run up the national debt to unprecedented levels over the past decade, and the Federal Reserve has been right there, monetizing that debt to ensure that none of it goes unsold.
While the desire of foreign countries and private investors to purchase Treasuries was drying up, the Federal Reserve was only too willing to step in and enable the government to continue its deficit spending. The Fed's balance sheet exploded as it purchased over one trillion dollars in Treasury debt over the past few years. And before it did that, the Fed also purchased over a trillion dollars of overrated mortgage-backed securities from Wall Street banks, giving those banks the cash they needed to purchase Treasury debt of their own. Were it not for the Federal Reserve's actions, the federal government would not have been able to run trillion-dollar deficits for the past several years.
In fact, had the Federal Reserve never been created, the federal government never would have been able to run up a $16 trillion debt. No market actor would lend money to such a major debtor at such low interest rates. The only reason that banks are willing to buy Treasury debt at such low interest rates is because they can easily resell that debt to the Fed.
Without the Fed, interest rates would rise to such levels that the federal government would have no choice but to curtail its expenditures and focus only on doing what is truly necessary. With market discipline allowed to prevail, the size of the federal government would be drastically smaller. If Congress were really serious about limiting the size of government, it would eliminate the most important enabler of government profligacy by ending the Fed.
Source: Ron vs. Ben, for the Last Time
Ron Paul "We Talk About Solving A Worldwide Problem Of Insolvency By Just Printing Money"
Ron Paul "It's The Destruction Of The Currency That Destroys The Middle Class!"
Ron Paul "Under Your Philosophy I'd Say You've Done A Pretty Good Job! You Tripled Monetary Base..."
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