In this Forbes piece, Alex Chafuen of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation writes about the Federal Reserve, which to a large extent operates in secrecy. Last year, the House passed a bill (with heavy support from both parties) requiring an audit of the Fed and its actions. Unfortunately, Harry Reid doesn’t want the bill to move in the Senate. Chafuen argues that if we could turn over the rock to see what’s going on, we might well have the next abuse of power scandal.
Read the piece for its current political relevance, but also for its good discussion of the history of money. Going back centuries, governments have debased their currencies, thereby transferring wealth from people who produce to rulers who want to consume more of their output. Over the century we’ve had the Fed, the dollar has lost 98 percent of its value.
