The Case Against the fed Murray N. Rothbard Ludwig von Mises Institute INSTITUTE Auburn, Alabama 36849-5301 The Ludwig von Mises Institute acknowledges with gratitude the generosity of Mr. Doug Casey and the Eugene B. Casey Foundation and the Hon. Ron Paul and CTAF, Inc., who made the publication of this book possible. Copyright © 1994 by Murray N. Rothbard All rights reserved. Written permission must be se- cured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except for brief quotations in critical re- views or articles. Published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama 36849-5301. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-073591 ISBN: 0-945466-17-X Cover photo by David Hittle. Contents Introduction: Money and Politics 3 The Genesis of Money 12 What is the Optimum Quantity of Money? 18 Monetary Inflation and Counterfeiting 20 Legalized Counterfeiting 27 Loan Banking 29 Deposit Banking 33 Problems for the Fractional-Reserve Banker: The Criminal Law 40 Problems for the Fractional-Reserve Banker: Insolvency... 45 Booms and Busts 54 Types of Warehouse Receipts 55 Enter the Central Bank 57 Easing the Limits on Bank Credit Expansion 62 The Central Bank Buys Assets 64 Origins of the Federal Reserve: The Advent of the National Banking System 70 Origins of the Federal Reserve: Wall Street Discontent 79 Putting Cartelization Across: The Progressive Line 82 Putting a Central Bank Across: Manipulating a Movement, 1897-1902 90 The Central Bank Movement Revives, 1906-1910 106 Culmination at Jekyll Island 114 The Fed at Last: Morgan-Controlled Inflation 118 The New Deal and the Displacement of the Morgans 129 Deposit "Insurance" 134 How the Fed Rules and Inflates 137 What Can Be Done? 145 Index 153 The Ludwig von Mises Institute • 1 Introduction: Money and Politics B y far the most secret and least accountable operation of the federal government is not, as one might ex- pect, the CIA, DIA, or some other super-secret intel- ligence agency. The CIA and other intelligence operations are under control of the Congress. They are accountable: a Con- gressional committee supervises these operations, controls their budgets, and is informed of their covert activities. It is true that the committee hearings and activities are closed to the public; but at least the people's representatives in Con- gress insure some accountability for these secret agencies. It is little known, however, that there is a federal agency that tops the others in secrecy by a country mile. The Federal Reserve System is accountable to no one; it has no budget; it is subject to no audit; and no Congressional committee knows of, or can truly supervise, its operations. The Federal Reserve, virtually in total control of the nation's vital mone- tary system, is accountable to nobody—and this strange situation, if acknowledged at all, is invariably trumpeted as a virtue. Thus, when the first Democratic president in over a decade was inaugurated in 1993, the maverick and venerable Democratic Chairman of the House Banking Committee, Texan Henry B. Gonzalez, optimistically introduced some of The Ludwig von Mises Institute • 3 The Case Against the Fed his favorite projects for opening up the Fed to public scru- tiny. His proposals seemed mild; he did not call for full- fledged Congressional control of the Fed's budget. The Gonzalez bill required full independent audits of the Fed's operations; videotaping the meetings of the Fed's policy- making committee; and releasing detailed minutes of the policy meetings within a week, rather than the Fed being allowed, as it is now, to issue vague summaries of its deci- sions six weeks later. In addition, the presidents of the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks would be chosen by the president of the United States rather than, as they are now, by the commercial banks of the respective regions. It was to be expected that Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan would strongly resist any such proposals. After all, it is in the nature of bureaucrats to resist any encroachment on their unbridled power. Seemingly more surprising was the rejec- tion of the Gonzalez plan by President Clinton, whose power, after all, would be enhanced by the measure. The Gonzalez reforms, the President declared, "run the risk of undermining market confidence in the Fed." On the face of it, this presidential reaction, though tradi- tional among chief executives, is rather puzzling. After all, doesn't a democracy depend upon the right of the people to know what is going on in the government for which they must vote? Wouldn't knowledge and full disclosure strengthen the faith of the American public in their monetary authorities? Why should public knowledge "undermine market confidence"? Why does "market confidence" depend on assuring far less public scrutiny than is accorded keepers of military secrets that might benefit foreign enemies? What is going on here? 4 • The Ludwig von Mises Institute Murray N. Rothbard The standard reply of the Fed and its partisans is that any such measures, however marginal, would encroach on the Fed's "independence from politics/' which is invoked as a kind of self-evident absolute. The monetary system is highly important, it is claimed, and therefore the Fed must enjoy absolute independence. "Independent of politics" has a nice, neat ring to it, and has been a staple of proposals for bureaucratic intervention and power ever since the Progressive Era. Sweeping the streets; control of seaports; regulation of industry; providing social security; these and many other functions of govern- ment are held to be "too important" to be subject to the vagaries of political whims. But it is one thing to say that private, or market, activities should be free of government control, and "independent of politics" in that sense. But these are government agencies and operations we are talking about, and to say that government should be "independent of poli- tics" conveys very different implications. For government, unlike private industry on the market, is not accountable either to stockholders or consumers. Government can only be accountable to the public and to its representatives in the legislature; and if government becomes "independent of politics" it can only mean that that sphere of government becomes an absolute self-perpetuating oligarchy, account- able to no one and never subject to the public's ability to change its personnel or to "throw the rascals out." If no person or group, whether stockholders or voters, can dis- place a ruling elite, then such an elite becomes more suitable for a dictatorship than for an allegedly democratic country. And yet it is curious how many self-proclaimed champions The Ludwig von Mises Institute • 5