Update: HR 1207 - 143 co-sponsors!

HR 1207 continues to gain steam in the House of Representatives and has now collected 143 co-sponsors. You can see the full list here and if your Representative is not on that list please contact them via phone or email. You can go to http://www.house.gov/ to find out who your representative is and how to contact them. This bill is getting bipartisan support as it is now, more then ever, the time to reign in the Federal Reserve. With all of the bailouts and stimulus programs it is vital that the American People can see where their money is going. On top of that, Obama now wants the Fed to be a regulatory "supercop" (story here) which would give it even more power. If we ever hope to take back our nation, we have to start with the money.

A Step in the Right Direction

On February 26, Representative Ron Paul (R-TX 14) introduced H.R. 1207, which will create transparency in the Federal Reserve by allowing congress to audit its actions. The bill is currently in the House Committee on Financial Services and has recently acquired 92 cosponsors. (The full bill and its status can be found here.) These cosponsors run the political gambit from far left to far right because people are finally waking up to the fact that the Federal Reserve cannot be allowed to operate freely any longer. Even if they have different reasons, from wanting to allow the free market to work unhindered again to simply being weary of an organization with that much unchecked power, Americans are beginning to call for some reigns on the Fed, if not its dismantling.

If you are an American citizen please contact your Representative (you can find out who they are here) and ensure that they are supporting and will continue to support this bill. If they are not a cosponsor yet, please write them and insist that they become one. There are also petitions and events in support of this bill which can be found at campaignforliberty.com. This is a small but very important step in reclaiming some of our control over the Federal Reserve. If we the people do not step up and demand that our employees (and their agents) be accountable for their actions, then there is little hope for this Republic. It is time that the American people know every cent that the Federal Reserve spends (prints) so that we can stop being run into these crises, which of course gives them more power. We cannot remove the Fed in one blow, but we can finally start to chip at it.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." ~Thomas Jefferson

Printing Money for Fun and Profit

As the Federal Reserve and the Treasury keep printing money and forcing credit rates at artificially low numbers, it is important to consider why this is such a bad thing. As the above video illustrates, it may seem like a great idea at first. Who doesn't want more money? There are two major problems with this line of thought however.

The first, and most obvious, is that the more of something you have, the less it is worth. Imagine if you had an original Mickey Mantle baseball card or the first issue of a Super Man comic. You would be very happy because they would have an incredibly high value. Wouldn't it be great if everyone could also have those things? The problem is that they would then be almost worthless. The same thing happens to the money supply as the Federal Reserve keeps creating more out of thin air!

The other problem is a much more devious one. The government and the businesses that get this money directly from the Federal Reserve never have to see this inflation when they introduce this new money into the market. Just like the boys in the video, they get to spend the money at the current market value. It is not until this new money circulates that the overall value decreases. Since they do not feel any of the pain of their practices, they continue pumping the market with this money, and the rest of the American public are left seeing what they have decrease in value.

If these practices did not hurt the value of a currency, then why is counterfeiting illegal?