Will today be bring us closer to abolishing the Federal Reserve?

Finally, the house Financial Services Committee will begin hearings on HR 1207 today. I have my doubts whether the main stream media will give this any significant attention. There's the G20 diversion and the domestic terrorists diversion as well as it being on a Friday, the traditional 'news dump' day. Going to the CSPAN site, it's hard to tell if they will even cover it but there will be webcasts.





Still, it will be historic and despite the efforts to bury the story for the general public, the issue of the criminal Fed is one of the most important of our lifetime and will not die.

Thomas Woods will be one of the witnesses.

An excerpt from his prepared statement:

If there is any truth to the idea of Fed independence, it lay in precisely this: the Fed may reward favored friends and constituencies with trillions of dollars in various kinds of assistance, while keeping the public completely in the dark. If that is the independence we’re talking about, no self-respecting American would hesitate for a moment to challenge it.

I hope we are not asking Americans to believe that the decisions to bail out various financial institutions over the past two years, and in particular to allow them to become depository institutions overnight that they might qualify for assistance, were made on the basis of a pure devotion to the common good and were not political at all. Most Americans, not unreasonably, seem convinced of another thesis: that Goldman Sachs, for instance, might be just a little bit more politically well connected than the rest of us.

The superstitious reverence that Americans have been taught to have for the Federal Reserve is unworthy of the dignity of a free people. The Fed enjoys a government-granted monopoly on the creation of legal-tender money. It is not an unreasonable imposition for Americans to demand to know about the activities of such an institution. It is common sense. {more}

The opposition witness today is Scott G. Alvarez, General Counsel Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He too has a prepared statement.

Carl Herman has a series of articles which give a very relevant overview of monetary reform.

His basic statement is:

"The financial crisis in America today could be over almost instantaneously through monetary reform. Monetary reform is a fundamental shift in how America creates money. The shift is from a Robber Baron-era design of banks creating credit to lend to us at interest and ever-increasing debt, to our community (government) creating it for the direct payment of public goods and services. The benefits of monetary reform are conservatively $1 TRILLION every year, the end of the national debt, and full employment."

Many in congress, even a number of the co-sponsors, want to water down HR 1207. The Fed will fight to maintain their control through the usual means, bribery and blackmail, and possibly something even worse.

Will Congress fail the American people once again?