How Rand Paul Can Free Americans From The Fed
by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,
ZeroHedge.com
Aug 23, 2017
Ever since entering the Senate, Rand Paul has continued his father’s work in advocating for an audit of the Federal Reserve. This week, writing for the Daily Caller, Senator Paul renewed his efforts, illustrating how the recent era of unconventional monetary policy has made an audit all the more important:
In 2009, then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was able to refuse to tell Congress who received over two trillion in Fed loans, and it took congressional action and a Bloomberg lawsuit to force the Fed to reveal the details of what it did in more than 21,000 transactions involving trillions of dollars during the 2008 financial crisis. A one-time audit of the Fed’s emergency lending mandated by Congress revealed even more about the extent to which the Fed put taxpayers on the hook.
When pushed to defend the lack of transparency for the Federal Reserve, officials like Janet Yellen and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin point to the myth of the Fed independence – a position that requires outright ignorance of the history of America’s central bank and the executive branch. Of course it’s quite usual for the Senate to base the merits of legislation entirely off of fallacious arguments, so they have continued to be the legislative body holding up a Fed audit with little indication they are prepared to move.
Given that reality, it is time for Senator Rand Paul to change his approach and introduce another piece of legislation from his father’s archives: the Free Competition in Currency Act.
While not as catchy as “End the Fed”, this piece of legislation – inspired by the work of F.A. Hayek – was perhaps Ron Paul’s most radical pieces of legislation. The idea was quite simple: eliminate legal tender laws mandating the use of US Dollars and remove the taxes Federal and State governments place on alternative currencies – such as gold and silver. While the original legislation did apply to “tokens,” an updated version should explicitly include the growing market of cryptocurrencies as a good with monetary value that should not be taxed.
The Rest…HERE
