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Townhall...
Politicization of the
Fed a Dangerous Trend
By Star Parker
It might help getting our minds around what is so wrong in America
today by thinking about the local police force.
It’s not hard to understand that the job of the police is to protect
lives and property.
Suppose we decided to broaden their mandate. Suppose each municipality
decided that the job of the police was not just protection but to make
every community more fair and just and to improve the quality of life.
To do this, we’d have to let them decide what is fair and just and give
them authority to implement their sense of these things.
They could force families they thought had too much money, or who
earned their money in a way they thought not fair, to turn some of
their resources over to others who the police concluded more deserving.
Or, if they happened to hear parents yelling at their child, they could
enter the house and instruct them how they should be raising their
children.
It seems pretty absurd. But it’s exactly what is going on in Washington
and why things are such a mess. The very entity – our government - that
is supposedly there to protect us now has incredibly wide latitude to
invade our lives and property.
Even worse, not only is there considerable latitude to do this openly,
but it can occur insidiously in ways where citizens don’t even realize
it’s happening to them.
In the former instance, at least Congress openly votes to pay for
expanded programs and spending by raising taxes.
But even with a license to steal, government power brokers know they
can just take this so far. Spending may provide a path to political
popularity for some, but paying for it all through taxes is a path to
popularity for few.
Over the last couple years, we’ve had a vast expansion of government
spending to bail out banks, automobile companies, those with mortgages
they can’t afford, expand unemployment insurance, create all kinds of
projects under the headline of “economic stimulus,” etc.
If government is spending a trillion and half dollars more than it is
taking in through taxes, which is the case with a deficit of the size
that we have now, where’s the money coming from?
We can turn to Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve, who this past
week held the very first press conference ever held by a Federal
Reserve chief.
This reflects the fact the Federal Reserve has been transformed into a
political entity.
The Fed should, in principle, be a special kind of police force. Their
job should be to protect one very unique aspect of our property – our
money.
But instead, the Fed has, allegedly within the scope of the law,
assumed a broader mandate to provide another way to finance government
spending – printing money.
Like police with a responsibility for protecting property but also with
a license to steal, the latter will eclipse the former. The Fed either
is going to protect the value of our money or it is going to print it
to pay for spending. Unfortunately, it has chosen the latter.
Like everything else in our country, money has become relative and
politicized.
When the dollar was tied to gold, the official price was $35 per ounce.
Since we severed this link in 1971 and totally politicized our money,
it now takes over $1500 to buy an ounce of gold.
Our taxes get raised indirectly through higher prices and the eroded
value of our savings.
Politicization of the Federal Reserve and our money is a particularly
dangerous development in a trend that is ruining America - the erosion
of law and the distortion of the role of government.
There is no way around the fact that freedom and prosperity only exist
when government protects property, and this includes our money.
Read it at Townhall
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