End The Fed, Part II

In End The Fed, Ron Paul informs readers that the nineteenth century saw many protests against the national bank system and the attempt to centralize money and credit in a government-sponsored, government-backed institution that operates in complete secrecy.

One might say that this is a populist cause. It is also a libertarian cause, one that would be cheered by Thomas Jefferson, a dedicated opponent of the Fed’s predecessor, the Bank of the United States, and by Thomas Paine, who saw paper money as the enemy of individual liberty on grounds that it always gives rise to despotism.

Paine, the same writer who inspired the American Revolution with his pamphlet Common Sense, also said this: “As to the assumed authority of any assembly in making paper money, or paper of any kind, a legal tender, or in other language, a compulsive payment, it is a most presumptuous attempt at arbitrary power….”