Nov 20, 2011

Ron Paul, Andrew Jackson and the Bank Wars

Dr. Ron Paul has been trying to expose the truth of the Federal Reserve Bank for the last forty years or more and as the 2012 election approaches, the Federal Reserve is fully in the public eye and its every action is undergoing close scrutiny by both the financial institutions and the common people.

What many may not be aware of is that the fight that Dr. Paul is waging against the Federal Reserve was waged by another president of the United States against a similar institution. President Andrew Jackson, who was in office from 1829 to 1837, waged a war to destroy the Second Bank of the United States which handled many similar duties to those handled by the Federal Reserve today - and, most important of all, Jackson won.

The Second Bank of the United States was criticized during Jackson's term for giving out money to politicians and people of power in order to win over their votes on certain issues. Today the Federal Reserve is involved in many similar shady deals as evidenced through the information obtained from it's partial audit. As Dr. Paul so eloquently puts forward "the Fed was providing nearly 90% of its discount window loans to foreign banks! This included making over 70 loans to a bank partially owned by the Bank of Libya."

In addition, a central government bank seems to be have a talent of creating 'booms and busts' in the economy where the economy expands and then sinks into a depression. The Second Bank of the United States had that very problem in the early 1800s. The bank's actions in trying to control the banking industry allowed the American economy to expand following the War of 1812 but then the economy sank in 1819. In addition, in what little information was brought out about the bank through legal action following the economic depression in 1819, it was hinted that there was much fraud and corruption going on, but thanks to the bank's lending policies to wealthy lawyers and politicians, the full scope of the fraud and corruption was never brought out.

Today a similar problem is being discovered in the Federal Reserve's practices. The Federal Reserve is largely blamed for helping create the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession of the 2000s by it's actions in trying to control the banking industry. Many have complained over the Federal Reserve bailing out corrupt and failing banks and businesses and that there is a lack of transparency in the Federal Reserve's actions and lending practices. This has led to the efforts begun by Dr. Paul in 2009 and 2011 to pass the 'Federal Reserve Transparency Act' which would allow a full audit to be done of the Federal Reserve and for their actions to be laid out in the open. The Federal Reserve has fought this Act, claiming they are already audited by a private organization and that the public revelation of the names of those who were borrowing from and associated with the Federal Reserve "would make them feel stigmatized." However, the fight being put up by the Federal Reserve has also led to widespread suspicion amongst many ordinary Americans who are know asking the question: "Are they hiding something they do not want us to know? And if so, what?"

When President Andrew Jackson began his fight against the Second Bank of the United States, many predicted that Jackson's fight against the bank would lose him the Presidency in the 1832 election. Jackson was running for re-election and had vetoed an attempt to extend the Bank's charter which would allow it to keep running as the central government's bank past 1836, when it's original charter was due to expire. Though many had predicted that a veto of the bank charter extension bill would lose Jackson the election, it, in fact, did just the opposite. Jackson defeated his opponents, Henry Clay and William Wirt, by a landslide with a difference of over 300,000 popular votes between Jackson and his opponents. Jackson kept his promise to not renew the bank's charter and in 1836 the charter expired, making the Second Bank of the United States an ordinary private bank. Just five years later, in 1841, the Second Bank of the United States went bankrupt, unable to keep up the practices it had begun when it was supported by the government.

Ron Paul and his supporters should be encouraged by this historical parallel. Like Jackson in 1832, Paul is fighting against a formidable opponent in terms of government power in the Federal Reserve. However, with the rise of the Tea Party movement and the election of Tea Party conservatives who have made the elimination of the Federal Reserve a major topic, such as Senator Mike Lee in Utah, Paul's message is resonating with the common people and is helping his surge in popularity. This is one of the issues which Paul is strongest on, and with the Federal Reserve being blamed for the economic mess the nation is currently in, Paul's statement from the South Carolina debate in May rings true: "My theory is that people vote from their bellies, because it's whether they're hungry or not or have jobs and need things. That's why people vote and we're in big trouble, prices are going up, unemployment is continuing to go up and we have not had the necessary correction for the financial bubble created by our Federal Reserve System and until you allow the correction and the liquidation of debt, you can't have growth."

So, in the end, if History repeats itself, as it so frequently does, then Ron Paul will win the presidency in 2012 because, like Andrew Jackson, he understands the needs and desires of the common people and where the true heart of the economic problem lies, namely at the feet of the central banking system of the United States.

© 2011 The Subsidiarity Times. All rights reserved. This material may not be re-published, re-broadcast, re-written or re-distributed without written permission from blog author.

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