The Fed and the Golden Fleece (Bill Anderson)

Bill Anderson tells us what we are not supposed to know about money and central banking:

When I teach my economics classes about money, I pass around a $10 gold coin that is a replica of those that were in circulation around 1913, the year Congress created the Federal Reserve System. The coin is made from one-half of an ounce of gold, dating from the time when the dollar was based upon a standard of $20 an ounce.

If I were to value that coin today, according to current gold prices, it would sell for more than $400, which means that according to this way of measuring the value of money, the dollar is worth about 1/40 of what it was when the Fed came into being. Now, this is not necessarily the best or most accurate measure of the decline of the dollar, but it is good enough for the purposes of this article.

Whether or not the dollar has declined to 1/40 or 1/50 or even 1/30 of its value of what it was before the Fed was created really does not matter, or at least a precise numerical measurement is not particularly vital for our understanding. What we do need to understand, however, is that the dollar is a mere shell of that currency that existed about a century ago, and that the predations of the Federal Reserve System are the main reason why this has happened.

A popular chant at Ron Paul rallies was "End the Fed," but if we are going to call for the closing of the nation's "central bank," we first must understand the role of this agency in the financing of government activities. Furthermore, we have to understand what it is that the Fed has done in order to justify our condemnation and our demands that it be eliminated from our body politic.

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