When I hear Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke heralded as the savior of our economy, I am reminded of Robert Higgs's description of a metaphorical street fair, "one of those happy community gatherings at which sellers of handcrafted ceramics, funky clothing, herbal remedies, and fresh vegetables congregate to display their wares for the strolling customers, who chat amiably with the stall-keepers and with one another. Suddenly, amid horrified shrieks and the roar of a giant engine, a truck plows through this placid setting, scattering twisted debris and broken bodies in its wake. Finally, after wreaking a hundred-yard swath of death and devastation, the truck stops, and the driver, Ben Bernanke, climbs down from the cab.

"'Do not panic. I am here to assess the damage,' Bernanke explains, 'and make recommendations for reforms that will prevent a recurrence of this unfortunate and wholly unforeseen act of God.'

"Undismayed by the swelling chorus of curses and groans, the truck driver addresses the gathering crowd of stunned onlookers. 'We must have a strategy that regulates the street fair system as a whole not just its individual components.' He then methodically lays out a series of recommendations for strengthening the construction material of stalls and regulating their placement along the street, for ensuring that each transient merchant has an adequate capital cushion against such crises, for monitoring fruitmongers and hippy artists deemed 'too big to fail,' to keep them from taking excessive risk . . .

"'Moreover,' he continues, 'street fairs are too important to be left to each town to regulate.' He proposes that the rules be harmonized among the mayors of all the world's great cities and that a global street-fair authority be created to monitor street-fair risks and protect the people from accidents like the one that just occurred . . ."

Of course Bernanke only drives the Federal Reserve truck, which is owned by international bankers who would also like to own the surviving free marketeers in the aforementioned scenario. The payoff to the bankers, whose interests Bernanke protects and promotes under the guise of stabilizing our economy, is that the street fair merchants would have to take out loans in order to meet the new, improved street fair standards.

Since a bank-controlled Congress abdicated its Constitutional responsibility to regulate the nation's money supply and gave the job to the Federal Reserve in 1913, the dollar has lost 90 percent of its purchasing power through the Federal Reserve's printing of unbacked paper money and debt creation. The growth of the banking community's control over our economy and government has been steady and quiet for most of the past 100 years, but early in this century the bankmeisters got greedy even by barnyard swine standards, made some wild gambles, lost their hides, and came to their man in the Treasury Dept. to bail them out with taxpayer money in concert with Congress and the Federal Reserve. This has worked out pretty good for the bankers and their shareholders -- for example, current U.S. Treasurer Tim Geithner's 98,000 shares of Goldman-Sachs have tripled in value since the bank bailouts began last fall.

But the taxpayer rescue of big banks has not had a soothing effect on those straining to pay the interest on their mortgages and pay off their student loans and credit cards. Their anger has helped them coax over 250 of their representatives in Congress to co-sponsor with Congressman Ron Paul a bill which would take some power from the bankers and return it to Congress.

In 1950, the law which created the Federal Reserve was amended to exempt the Federal Reserve from any auditing procedures. It is entrusted with our money supply, including hundreds or billions of dollars of bailout money and all it can print, and has zero accountability. The Federal Reserve Transparency Act, H.R. 1207, would subject the Federal Reserve to congressional auditing.

"If we get the audit and get the books open, make them answer the questions," Paul said, "I am convinced that the American people will be so outraged that then we will have reform of the monetary system . . . we will be forced to live within our means."

In 1942 in a short war propaganda film called Inflation, the devil consults with Hitler about how to defeat America. The devil's idea was to help Hitler by giving Americans easy credit and drowning us with debt so we'd be too poor to support the war effort. The devil's plan didn't work soon enough to help Hitler, but, though the film was fiction, the post-war proliferation of credit cards, debt, and inflation have grown into an ugly reality that has spread to the point that now we can barely support ourselves without government assistance -- and the government really has nothing to offer us but more debt.

Free enterprise is not to blame for our economic crisis. It is the subversion of our marketplace by an elite ruling class of control freaks aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve that has turned our once peaceful and prosperous street fair into a tattered remnant of its former self. If we can discipline ourselves to live within our means, and compel the keepers of the public trust to do the same, we can repair the damage and restore America to its status as a haven for those who value freedom, fairness, and opportunity.

While our descent from liberty to servitude proceeds at an ever-quickening pace, perhaps we can ascertain the crux of the problem by harkening back to the final days of the 2008 Presidential campaign.

Sharing the headlines with the candidates at the time was the bill to use $700 billion of the people's money to bail out corrupt, financially irresponsible banks. This bill had been defeated once in Congress, due to overwhelming bipartisan opposition by millions of people who took the time to let their congressmen know how they felt. Chief promoter of the bill, Henry Paulsen, U.S. Treasurer and former head of banking giant Goldman-Sachs, continued to twist congressional arms, and the bill quickly resurfaced, this time laden with $100 billion of extra fat to entice our more piggish representatives. At this point, many of us naively and idealistically expected one if not both of the presidential candidates to take the side of the people. Neither Obama nor McCain did.

Instead, both candidates gave nearly identical speeches -- it would probably be more accurate to say they read scripts -- in support of the bill, which passed the second time around. I had the distinct impression that the talking points on this subject had been provided to the candidates, as well as to Congress, by someone in Henry Paulsen's office, most likely written by someone in the Goldman-Sachs public relations department. All supporters of this heist, including Obama and McCain, were using the same catch phrases and buzz words -- "free up the credit markets . . . student loans . . . auto loans . . . loans to businesses so they can meet their payrolls, blah, blah, blah . . ." In other words, it was vitally important that America maintain its addiction to borrowed money.

Further evidence that the banking community is in control of our government came when President Obama appointed a Paulsen accomplice in the bank "bailout," Timothy Geithner, to head the so-called new and improved administration's Treasury Department. That is not change. Real change would mean putting someone in Treasury who has more allegiance to the people who supply the Treasury with money than those who take it.

Though we are losing money and liberty to this new government of the bankers, by the bankers, and for the bankers, we are gaining a deeper understanding of what Thomas Jefferson meant when he warned that "banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."

Today our most powerful banking institution, and thus the biggest threat to our liberty, is the Federal Reserve, created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which was most likely passed by congressmen who received large donations from bankers. Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., father of the famous pilot, said, "When the President signs this Act, the invisible government by the money power will be legalized."

Of all the Republicans and Democrats who ran for President in 2007-2008, only one, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, understood the relationship between our Federal Reserve ("Fedzilla," as some call it) money system and America's financial crisis. Recently he introduced a bill, HR 833, which would repeal the Federal Reserve Act and abolish the Federal Reserve.

"From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the current economic crisis caused by
the housing bubble," Paul said, "every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century can be
traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy
with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial 'boom' followed by a
recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts."

More than our pocketbooks and retirement accounts are threatened by the current economic crisis. Powerful people in powerful places are using this occasion to tranfer power from the people to an elite ruling class who feel they are more qualified to spend our money than we are. One man, Ron Paul, is trying to transfer power back to the people.

"The borrower is servant to the lender," as it says in the Book of Proverbs. The bankers and their allies in Congress seem determined to make servants of us all. Let them know that you prefer liberty. Let them know that you support HR 833.