Wall Street Protesters Target the Federal Reserve

The “Occupy Wall Street” protesters have targeted the Federal Reserve as one of their central platforms.

The “Occupy San Francisco” branch of the protests is taking place – not in the Financial District, where the big banks are located – but in front of the San Francisco Federal Reserve bank.

High-Level Economists, Congressmen and Many Americans Want to End the Fed

This is not as radical and controversial as it might appear at first blush.

High-level economists support the Occupy Wall Street protests. And some very well-known economists also support ending the Fed.

For example, Milton Friedman said:

This evidence persuades me that at least a third of the price rise during and just after World War I is attributable to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System… and that the severity of each of the major contractions — 1920-1, 1929-33 and 1937-8 is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities… Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes — excusable or not — can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic — this is the key political argument against an independent central bank… To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is much too serious a matter to be left to the central bankers.

Austrian economists such as Murray Rothbard also would like to end the Fed:

Given this dismal monetary and banking situation, given a 39:1 pyramiding of checkable deposits and currency on top of gold, given a Fed unchecked and out of control, given a world of fiat moneys, how can we possibly return to a sound noninflationary market money? The objectives, after the discussion in this work, should be clear: (a) to return to a gold standard, a commodity standard unhampered by government intervention; (b) to abolish the Federal Reserve System and return to a system of free and competitive banking ; (c) to separate the government from money; and (d) either to enforce 100 percent reserve banking on the commercial banks, or at least to arrive at a system where any bank, at the slightest hint of nonpayment of its demand liabilities, is forced quickly into bankruptcy and liquidation. While the outlawing of fractional reserve as fraud would be preferable if it could be enforced, the problems of enforcement, especially where banks can continually innovate in forms of credit, make free banking an attractive alternative.

Congressmen Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich have introduced bills to abolish the Fed.

And as I noted last week, most Americans want the Fed ended or at least reined in:

At least 75% of the American people want a full audit of the Fed, and most were against reconfirming Bernanke. Indeed, as Bloomberg noted last December: A majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the nation’s independent central bank, saying the U.S. Federal Reserve should either be brought under tighter political control or abolished outright, a poll shows. *** Americans across the political spectrum say the Fed shouldn’t retain its current structure of independence. Asked if the central bank should be more accountable to Congress, left independent or abolished entirely, 39 percent said it should be held more accountable and 16 percent that it should be abolished. Only 37 percent favor the status quo. As I have extensively documented, the Fed is largely responsible for the economic crisis, and has failed to meet a single one of its stated mandates (let alone its implied ones).

Indeed, the Founding Fathers despised the British central bank, and said that the right to create their own credit and currency was one of the core battles in the Revolutionary War.

Jones Launches a Second Wave of Protests

Media personality Alex Jones believes that protesting the Fed is the most important and high-leverage way to change our economic system for the better. Steve Watson – frequent contributor to Jones’ websites – writes today:

In spite of a large number of protesters who are clearly aware of the fact that the greatest threat to the global financial system comes not directly from Wall Street but from the privately owned Federal Reserve cartel, the official “list of specific demands” of the Occupy Wall Street movement makes absolutely no mention of the Fed whatsoever.

So Jones has launched his ow “Occupy the Federal Reserve” movement:

The Occupy Wall Street crowd has become predictably focused on issues like taxing the middle class and moderately “rich,” ending capitalism and even re-electing Obama to ‘fight’ the very elites who pushed him into power. Focus should instead be on the real source of power for the out-of-control bankster class- the private, unaccountable Federal Reserve bank that creates money out of thin air, issues secret loans to insiders and foreign governments and systematically institutes debt on the American people through their undue powers. With this in mind, Alex Jones is calling on patriots to “occupy” branches of the Federal Reserve, with plans to appear at three locations in Texas this weekend in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. The times and locations appear below. Further, people everywhere should converge upon Fed locations in their area to raise awareness about the real culprit behind the economic crisis. Well meaning protesters who have joined the Occupy Wall Street effort, including solidarity activities in cities everywhere, need to be educated about the power held by this insidious institution, as well as the false solutions that have been proposed by leading figures on the left and right that only further expand the scope of big government, all while avoiding the elephant in the room.

Given that Alex Jones has millions of TV viewers and readers, his announcement might result in a dramatic new front in the nationwide protests currently occurring.