End the Fed Speech

On Sunday, November 22, I participated in an End the Fed rally in Philadelphia. It was organized by the Truth, Freedom and Prosperity movement. We marched with a police escort from Independence Hall to the Federal Reserve building, and then to the Independence Visitor Center a few blocks away, where there was an indoor event at which I, along with Jake Towne, Dr. Liberty, Larken Rose, and Jacob Hornberger gave speeches. It was a fun event. I wish there were more people there (maybe some 200 people attended), but it's still great that things like this even exist. It's refreshing to find so many people in one place who are actually champions of liberty and limited government. It's such a change of pace from the norm. I am grateful for the chance to attend, and for everyone else who attended.

As the event was breaking up, a young man approached me and asked me if I had a transcript of the speech. I told him I'd post it online when I got the chance. What I said while at the podium is pretty much exactly what I have written down (plus minimal ad libbing), and so is testament to my not being used to writing and reading speeches. But, in any case, here it is:

Recently I had the chance to ask an economics teacher about why we need the Fed. He told me it wasn’t a good thing, but was "absolutely necessary", and the banks needs a lot more oversight. He says we need the Fed to oversee the banks. So then I asked, who oversees the Fed? I guess you know how he responded to that one. No one. I thought....well isn’t that nice. I’m sure whoever is running that show is a great bunch of guys looking out for my best interests.

No mention of the fact that our fractional reserve banking system is one big web of corruption as it stands.

If you ask me, this whole issue is about the power and the purpose of government. The same government that can’t keep crime off the streets or drugs out of its prisons, can’t educate our children, can’t keep our roads paved...the government that has torpedoed the housing market and the medical industry, the government that can’t balance a budget or even protect our basic rights....is going to somehow undertake the Herculean task of managing our national economy? You mean they’re going to spend money in such a precise way so as to create prosperity for millions of people? I’m not an economist, but I understand that spending money in and of itself does not somehow create prosperity. And given the track record of government in so many arenas, I find these arguments laughable. And all we’re going to have to show for all this is a guaranteed lowered standard of living for all Americans for generations to come through a monstrous debt.

A little over a week ago, our the national debt clock topped 12 trillion dollars. It’s so easy to say that with a straight face, as many people do, without really understanding how much it is. If you started repaying a debt at the rate of one dollar per second, it would take a little over sixteen minutes to pay a thousand dollars. It would take about eleven and a half days to pay a million.

But the numbers aside, I can’t believe there are actually people out there who think it’s a good thing that the government has access to an unlimited supply of credit. I don’t care what kind of up-side there might be; any American patriot knows that giving the government that kind of power is a terrible idea. If you’re new to this movement and you’re watching this on YouTube or hearing this message for the first time, believe me, the Federal Reserve affects you. Individually.

If there is any issue that transcends all party politics and impacts every one of us, this is it. Because unless you’re a Wall Street Banker or you were well-connected enough to get any of that bailout money firsthand, then, brother, you’re getting hosed. This should be the number one issue on everyone’s list, because the Federal Reserve is the ultimate source of power for the government. Who needs any kind of financial discipline when they have an infinite supply of credit? And the people handing it out aren’t the ones paying it back. It’s you, me, and our children. And their children.

It is the Federal Reserve that has enabled the government to fund all the agencies (of which there are literally hundreds) that regulate every aspect our daily lives.

It is the Federal Reserve that has allowed the government to steal our wealth by robbing the dollar of over 95% of its purchasing power since 1913. Just think, every time you see those hundred dollar bills rolling out on the evening news, it’s like they’re laughing at you. If you or I tried that, we would be thrown in prison.

It is the Federal Reserve that has allowed our government to wage wars for political purposes, to send money overseas in foreign aid, and to create a permanent underclass of people who depend on the state for their basic needs.

The only thing making all this possible is the Fed with its fiat money. No citizens of a free country would ever put up with the kind of direct taxes necessary to finance these kinds of activities. No, the money has to be extracted from us indirectly. And with a currency backed by nothing but politics, they can do exactly that. But it can’t last forever, and it’s bound to collapse sooner or later. There’s got to be some kind of check. And if that check isn’t us, I worry about what that might be. But slowly people are starting to catch on. The only defense against the tyranny of government is our education. And our guns, of course. And that’s what makes events like this so great. It shows that we’re out here, we’re paying attention. We have the chance to fix this.

Do everyone a favor and talk about money. Ask people What is it? Where does it come from? What gives it its value? Educate one another. Point out to people that our money is tied directly to the government. Without the government artificially setting the value of what we know as money, it would be truly be worthless. All the paper we have is just that. And so, to that extent, we’re all living in poverty. It’s a staggering fact—a great system of control, and it’s happening right out in the open. And if we’re ever going to be able to claim we live in a free country, it’s got to be stopped, and sound currency-commodity currency-needs to be restored.

Think about what would happen with sound money. You’d have your property back. Your wealth would be yours, it would retain its value. It couldn’t be stolen by any politician, and, hopefully, you’d never turn it over to Uncle Sam because of some unconstitutional executive order. You’d be more free than you are now by an order of magnitude. Such freedom is hard to imagine because our generation has never known it.

Remember what I said earlier: the Federal Reserve answers to no one. Our own members of Congress (the highest lawmakers of the land with all their powers to tax and spend and wage war) not even they know what’s going on with the Fed’s books. A good first step is with Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, HR 1207. It will throw back the curtains on the operations of the Fed- where the money goes, who gets what, how much there is, etc. Far from being the typical Washington bill, it’s only three pages long. And I have a feeling that once that ball starts rolling, it’s going to set off a deluge of information that We The People will find very interesting.

If you’re like me, when you say End the Fed, you mean End the Fed. An audit’s nice, and it’s a good first step, but I want to see the Fed abolished. And by abolished, I mean demolished. I want to see the D.C. temple torn down. I personally want to operate the wrecking ball that reduces it to rubble. And then we can hand out the pieces as souvenirs, like they did with the Berlin Wall twenty years ago this month, so we can tell stories to our grandchildren about something that was once called "The Fed". "Oh yeah, it was this independent institution that used to print money."

How much money? A lot of money. It took eleven and a half days to count out a million seconds. Twelve trillion would take over 380,000 years.

As you may have gathered, I am a person of great pessimism, but about this, I remain optimistic. As long as we stay vigilant and stay angry, I think this thing will spread and we’ll be in good shape. In 1913 we opened Pandora’s box by creating the Fed, and have since been struggling with all its ill effects: rising prices, war, poverty, loss of independence, loss of freedom, higher taxes, imperialism, and an unbelievable growth of the state. The situation seems dire. But still, in spite of all that, after all was said and done, after all the evils were unleashed from Pandora’s box, do you remember what was lying at the bottom?

Hope.