ENC Local on Ron Paul in NCT

Rise of the Ron Paul Republicans

By: CRAIG L. COMBS - Commentary

Recently I was honored with the opportunity of speaking to the California Federation of Republican Women on behalf of presidential candidate Ron Paul. Surely, I thought, these ladies would understand the one issue that is driving so many young people to the GOP, the one issue that gets the loudest cheers from the audience wherever Ron Paul speaks, the one issue that no other presidential candidate is discussing except for Ron Paul.

No, I am not talking about Dr. Paul's call for an immediate withdrawal of our troops from the Middle East (I knew that these gentlewomen do not necessarily agree with his foreign policy of peace). I am talking about his vow to abolish the Federal Reserve Bank.

As it turned out, I was wrong. In fact, not one person in the audience could tell me who owned the bank that creates the currency we use every day. These ladies, who certainly should know better at this late stage of their lives, were shocked when I told them what is common knowledge to the young people joining the Ron Paul Revolution: The Federal Reserve Bank is a privately owned corporation.

The Federal Reserve, an unelected and unaccountable private organization, pumps more dollars into the economy whenever it chooses. Basic economics tells us that the more there is of a commodity, the less valuable it becomes. This is also true of money: The dollar is worth 4 cents of what it was when the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. Every day, every dollar we hold is devalued. We pay an "inflation tax" without even realizing it because we are forced by a falling dollar to pay more for goods and services. Of all the presidential candidates, Republican or Democrat, only Dr. Paul is addressing this profound flaw in our economic system.

In 1802, then-President Thomas Jefferson wrote the following in a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin:

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Thomas Jefferson's words are proving prophetic indeed. Today, the economic bubbles created by the Fed have resulted in massive foreclosures across the country while China and Saudi Arabia, sitting on trillion-dollar sovereign wealth funds, snap up major interests in marquee American companies. America, once the world's greatest creditor nation, is now its greatest debtor.

Jefferson also stated in his letter to Secretary Gallatin that "the issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." Ron Paul, as well as the tens of thousands flocking to his campaign, is saying precisely the same thing: By legalizing competing currencies we can end the Federal Reserve's monopoly on our money supply and begin to restore value to the dollar.

Craig Combs lives in Encinitas.