Patriot, Great news! This week, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) once again introduced the Federal Reserve Transparency Act! As it was in the previous term, its bill number is H.R. 24. H.R. 24 already has 29 cosponsors! First introduced years ago by our Chairman, Ron Paul, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, has a greater chance of passage this year than it has in a long time. Should the Federal Reserve Transparency Act – or as we simply call it, “Audit the Fed” – become law, it would finally show the American people the Federal Reserve System leads to: >>> Ever-expanding Big Government boondoggles like ObamaCare Now that politicians have figured out the Fed will just print money out of thin air to pay the bills if taxing and borrowing can’t make ends meet, the floodgates are wide open for even more of the statists’ utopian plans. >>> Constant economic crises The 2008 housing crisis and the resulting chaos is just one example of an economic bubble created by centrally planned interest rates and money manipulation. Today, inflation is out of control, and the stock market is a bubble ready to burst. >>> The destruction of the middle class As food, housing, medical care, and education costs soar, everyone who is NOT on the government dole is forced to make do with less as the value of their money sinks. >>> Currency destruction History shows us riots, violence, and a full-scale police state can result when people finally realize their money isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and businesses REFUSE to accept it. For the past four years, the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) refused to schedule a hearing on Audit the Fed. Now this vital piece of legislation has a real chance of having hearings and a vote on passage for the first time since it passed the House in 2014! We are preparing a full-court press on this landmark legislation in the coming weeks, and we wanted to share this with you right away. You and I can put the pressure on Congress to grow the number of co-sponsors significantly and force a vote on the House floor. In the meantime, enjoy a replay of Dr. Paul’s April 2022 column on the Fed’s responsibility for the rampant inflation we face. Once again, Ron Paul is right! And if you support our ongoing efforts to audit, expose, and ultimately end the Fed, consider chipping in a contribution today to make our work possible. For Liberty, John McCardell Executive Director, Campaign for Liberty Blame Powell, Not Putin or ‘Greedy’ Corporations, for Price Hikes The Biden administration and its allies continue to use Russian President Vladimir Putin as the convenient excuse for their economic failures. The most recent falsehood is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused March’s 8.5 percent year-over-year increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Prices were surging long before Russian troops entered Ukraine. Furthermore, Putin did not stop exporting food and gas; it was the Biden administration and Congress that imposed sanctions, making US consumers suffer additional price increases. The blame for the economic effects lies with the US government, not Russia. The United States has for years been meddling in Ukraine’s affairs with the explicit goal of moving US and NATO military forces ever closer to Russia. The most notorious example was the 2014 US-orchestrated coup that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected government. Russia has a legitimate grievance over the US supporting expanding NATO to include Ukraine, despite the US having promised not to support expanding NATO beyond Germany’s borders during negotiations over how to end the Cold War. Foreign policy experts, including George Kennan, the architect of the Cold war “containment” strategy, warned that Russia would respond adversely to NATO expansion near Russia. Before the Ukraine conflict, Biden and his fellow Democrats blamed price increases on “greedy” corporations, going so far as to claim that increasing antitrust prosecutions would somehow bring down prices. Then Putin became the new excuse. The main culprit behind rising prices is neither Putin nor “greedy” corporations. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues are to blame. Starting in September 2019, when the Fed panicked over a spike in interest rates in the “repurchasing” market that banks use to give each other overnight loans, the Fed has engaged in an unprecedented spree of money creation. The Fed further stepped up its easy money and low, and even zero, interest rate policies in response to the lockdowns. Increasing prices are the direct result of the Fed’s policies. The Fed is planning to try to tame prices by increasing interest rates and reducing its balance sheet. This will likely tip the economy into a recession. Increasing interest rates will also cause the federal government’s debt payments to increase, which is a reason the Fed will not increase rates to anywhere near where they would be in a free market. The best-case scenario may be a return to 70s-style “stagflation.” The worst-case scenario is that the Fed’s failure to rein in inflation, fueled by Congress’s failure to stop spending, combined with the continued resentment over the US’s hyper-interventionist foreign policy, will cause a rejection of the dollar's reserve currency status and lead to a major financial crisis. Such a crisis could result in widespread poverty, as well as violence, crackdowns on liberties, and even the rise of a totalitarian government. The crisis could still be avoided, but only if Congress becomes serious about cutting spending, starting with the military industrial complex. Congress should also start to reform monetary policy by auditing the Fed, legalizing alternative currencies, and exempting precious metals and cryptocurrencies from all capital gains taxes. The welfare-warfare-fiat money system will end. What is not known is when it will end and whether it will be replaced by an even more authoritarian government or by a return to limited, constitutional government. Join Ron Paul’s
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