End the Fed: Book Summary (Chapters 10 - 12)

End the Fed By: Ron Paul Index Quotes Chapter Ten: Why End the Fed? The Federal Reserve should be abolished because it is immoral, unconstitutional, impractical, promotes bad economics, and undermines liberty. Its destructive nature makes it a tool of tyrannical government.. Page 141Money does not equal wealth, gold alone is not wealth. Page 147 One must wonder what our Federal Reserve notes will be worth when discovered in some hideaway a hundred, fifty, or even a year from now. Page 144   The Fed needs to be abolished because it is all bad and no good. For thousands of years gold has been used as a money supply. It’s used because it is rare, easy to work with and desired. Nations, such as the Byzantine empire, successfully used gold for hundreds of years. The Byzantine empire was a mighty and powerful empire, right until it diluted the gold in its coins to fund a war with Turks, their demise was a financial tragedy.The Federal Reserve exists only to dillute the money supply so that a tyrannical government can fund wars and projects it otherwise couldn’t. Our trade imbalance exists because of the Federal Reserve. The illusory wealth created by inflation and low interest rates created a housing boom, providing the appearance of false wealth that fooled the Fed. The cause of the current economic slump is the Federal Reserve’s poor monetary policy. A free people need a money that has value. More Information Review / Critique Ron Paul

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Damn! The opening paragraph was bad ass! (Well, as bad ass as a conversation about monetary policy can ever really be…) I quoted the whole thing up there, page 141. Damn! Smack that! The whole book right there in one paragraph. Ron Paul just grabbed that chicken by the neck and shook the hell out of it! Thems are fighting words!Kidding aside, it was a very good chapter. The book’s revving up towards the end and he’s making his sales pitch. It covers a lot of ground, and covers most of it pretty well. Plus the little bit of history on the Byzantine history was cool (can get a woot from everyone in the crowd who loves reading about the Byzantine empire?) Quotes Chapter Eleven: The Philosophical Case The entire operation of the Fed is based on an immoral principle. Page 150Big government breeds corruption. If government has nothing to sell, bribery is useless. Page 152

To put it simply, the system is morally corrupt. Page 153

The tragedy is only recognized when the fraud of an immoral unsustainable monetary inflation comes to an end. Page 154

Very simply, there can‘t be a more immoral system of money than one based on a banking monopoly that can counterfeit money in secret with no oversight… Page 156

 

The entire purpose of the Fed, inflating money and devaluing our money and debt is immoral and theft. It is immoral to devalue your money supply. It is immoral to transfer wealth through inflation. Providing the power to fund programs the government otherwise couldn’t afford breeds corruption. The power of congressman to borrow and spend allows for legal bribes called donations.The moral weakness is shared by all. The people allow the immorality to continue because they expect the government to everything, and not to tax them. Congressman benefit by sending home the pork to their constituents. Businesses embrace the immorality as a way to privatize their profits and socialize their losses. Some embrace the immoral Fed in a distorted attempt to achieve fairness and equality.

Meanwhile, those who fight back against this immorality are labeled ideologues, as if the immoral act of pragmatically stealing money right out of people’s hands is morally superior. Then, afterwards, when the immoral actions returns home bringing economic turmoil, it’s the free market that is blamed, and more immoral laws are considered to more properly take away freedoms and more fairly distribute wealth. The moral argument should be enough to do away with the Fed.

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Well, this is by far the best chapter so far. This is his emotionally, moral and philosophical argument. This is ethics. This is his heart and soul, and it damned impressive reading. I didn’t even know what to quote. Every line was quotable. Every paragraph. The book is worth it for this chapter alone.I found the chapter extremely compelling, well thought and blunt. His argument was equally compelling and very convincing. It is an impassioned plea meant to strike at the core beliefs in all of us that stealing is wrong.

To the left I included two links to posts I wrote that deal with completely different topics, but relate heavily to morality in making decisions. I think they’re fairly relevent.

Quotes Chapter Twelve: The Constitutional Case The gross distortion and undermining of the Constitution by McCulloch v. Maryland has done great harm throughout our history and explains how we‘ve ended up with the size of government we have today. Page 167-168Noble reasons are always used to justify the inflation, but the real reasons are far more sinister. Page 171

I believe the conditions are more conductive today for achieving some real success in getting an audit than at any time since the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. Page 178

Article I section 10 states clearly and simply that states can only use gold or silver as legal tender. Article I section 8 explains all the things the congress can do. Paper money is not listed, nor is a central bank. The Tenth Amendment then says that Congress can’t do anything other than what they’ve been told to do. Right there, as simply as possible, is the constitutional argument for why fiat money and a central bank are unconstitutional.The beginning of the growth of the federal government was McCulloch v. Maryland, in which case the Supreme Court ruled that the Congress could pass any law they wanted, regardless of the Constitution specifically prohibiting such an interpretation. This decision led directly to the first national banks and then to the Federal Reserve. This fight, between federalist and anti-federalists, Jefferson and Hamilton, was won by Hamilton and the Federal government has grown ever since.

The power of the Fed is only dwarfed by its secrecy. At first, the secrecy was a result of no law specifically forcing them to report to Congress. When a law was passed, it was watered down to a point that their reports have no value. I, and many others, have been trying to audit the fed for years. The powers that the Fed possess are comparable to that of Congress and the White House, if not superior. Congress has a constitutional requirement of oversight, oversight we do not exorcise due to legal restraints we’ve placed on ourselves. I hope that after a full audit reveals all the mischief performed by the Fed, people will reevaluate its value.

More Information Review / Critique US ConstitutionArticle I Section 10

(Only Gold or Silver can be used as gold)

Article I Section 8

(Things Congress can do)

The 10th Amendment

(Can’t do anything else)

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Free Speech Abridged. (post)

Impeach Chief Justice Roberts. (post)

This was a much drier chapter than the previous one. It’s very well put, but the subject is of law and history and the constitution which just tends towards dryness. Still, he presents the material well and argues his case pretty good.The simple fact is, America has never really followed the constitution in its entirety. The 10th Amendment is uniformly ignored. The Commerce Clause is abused and the coinage issue is ignored. But we also ignore the fact we can’t technically have an Air Force. To the left I put some links to posts I’ve done on the first Amendment and Freedom of Speech. It’s not directly related to the Fed, but it does focus on how the Courts have interpreted the First Amendment.

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