Ron Paul asks Does the Bell Toll for the Fed?

Link to Senator Rand Paul’s Audit the Fed bill:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery…

More info on Audit the Fed:
http://www.campaignforliberty.org/aud…

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Does the Bell Toll for the Fed?
by Ron Paul

Last
week Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen hinted that the Federal Reserve
Board will increase interest rates at the board’s December meeting. The
positive jobs report that was released following Yellen’s remarks
caused many observers to say that the Federal Reserve’s first interest
rate increase in almost a decade is practically inevitable.

However,
there are several reasons to doubt that the Fed will increase rates
anytime in the near future. One reason is that the official unemployment
rate understates unemployment by ignoring the over 94 million Americans
who have either withdrawn from the labor force or settled for part-time
work. Presumably the Federal Reserve Board has access to the real
unemployment numbers and is thus aware that the economy is actually far
from full employment.

The decline in the stock market following
Friday’s jobs report was attributed to many investors’ fears over the
impact of the predicted interest rate increase. Wall Street’s jitters
about the effects of a rate increase is another reason to doubt that the
Fed will soon increase rates. After all, according to former Federal
Reserve official Andrew Huszar, protecting Wall Street was the main goal
of “quantitative easing,” so why would the Fed now risk a Christmastime
downturn in the stock markets?

Donald Trump made headlines last
week by accusing Janet Yellen of keeping interest rates low because she
does not want to risk another economic downturn in President Obama’s
last year in office. I have many disagreements with Mr. Trump, but I do
agree with him that the Federal Reserve’s polices may be influenced by
partisan politics.

Janet Yellen would hardly be the first Fed
chair to allow politics to influence decision-making. Almost all Fed
chairs have felt pressure to “adjust” monetary policy to suit the
incumbent administration, and almost all have bowed to the pressure.
Economists refer to the Fed’s propensity to tailor monetary policy to
suit the needs of incumbent presidents as the “political” business
cycle.

Presidents of both parties, and all ideologies, have
interfered with the Federal Reserve’s conduct of monetary policy.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower actually threatened to force the Fed
chair to resign if he did not give in to Ike’s demands for easy money,
while then-Federal Reserve Chair Arthur Burns was taped joking about Fed
independence with President Richard Nixon.

The failure of the
Fed’s policies of massive money creation, corporate bailouts, and
quantitative easing to produce economic growth is a sign that the fiat
money system’s day of reckoning is near. The only way to prevent the
monetary system’s inevitable crash from causing a major economic crisis
is the restoration of a free-market monetary policy.

One positive
step Congress may take this year is passing the Audit the Fed bill.
Fortunately, Senator Rand Paul is using Senate rules to force the Senate
to hold a roll-call vote on Audit the Fed. The vote is expected to take
place in the next two-to-three weeks. If Audit the Fed passes, the
American people can finally learn the full truth about the Fed’s
operations. If it fails, the American people will at least know which
senators side with them and which ones side with the Federal Reserve.

Allowing
a secretive central bank to control monetary policy has resulting in an
ever-expanding government, growing income inequality, a series of
ever-worsening economic crises, and a steady erosion of the dollar’s
purchasing power. Unless this system is changed, America, and the world,
will soon experience a major economic crisis. It is time to finally
audit, then end, the Fed.

–
Copyright © 2015 by RonPaul
Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted,
provided full credit and a live link are given.

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