The latest Bloomberg Businessweek notes the concern among some Republican power brokers and business interests that Texas Rep. Ron Paul could soon land the chairmanship of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee panel that oversees monetary policy.
If he gets the subcommittee gavel, Paul says he plans a thorough review of Fed policy. Fear of inflation is what motivates him the most. Next to the doorway in his Washington office are six framed German bank notes dating from the 1920s hyperinflation era. The notes are sequentially dated “to show how quickly the zeroes were added onto the bills” as inflation skyrocketed, Paul says. The notes are arranged around a quote by one of Paul’s favorite Austrian School economists, the late Hans F. Sennholz, who Paul once met and calls “a tremendous influence on me.” Paul is a devotee of the Austrian School, which teaches that manipulating money supply and interest rates are responsible for history’s boom-and-bust cycles. “The Fed creates all of the bubbles and they create the inevitable bursting of all of the bubbles,” says Paul.
He believes his oversight role is long overdue. “There has been a politically cozy relationship between Congress and the Federal Reserve,” he says. That includes past efforts to keep him from heading the subcommittee. “Republican leadership, with the Fed’s influence, has been working to keep me away from this for a long time. That’s not going to happen this time.”
Earlier this year, Thomas Woods gave Carolina Journal Radio listeners an Austrian School perspective on the Fed?s role in the recent financial crisis:
