So what's the motive? be somewhat apologetic while acting like a candidate? I wondered myself that Paul has a golden opportunity and yet instead, he just berates The Bernank....accomplishing only to alienate himself further.....my answer to that is so what Ron Paul....who cares. Make the The Bernank sweat....that's the way to get at them. In the end, there is not one person who can battle against the Fed and the elites, they are too powerful, Murdochs, Rockefellers....this requires a lot more than people can imagine....

To end the Fed, Paul will have to start questioning it

Submitted by cpowell on 06:03PM ET Wednesday, February 29, 2012. Section: Daily Dispatches
9:08p ET Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

At a hearing today of the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, Rep. Ron Paul did an entertaining job of berating Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about the Fed's long debasement of the dollar. Video of Paul's comments has been posted at GoldSeek's companion Internet site, SilverSeek, here --

http://www.silverseek.com/article/ron-paul-assaults-ben-bernanke-parallel-currencies-video

-- and Forbes' Agustino Fontevecchia produced a fair and complete written account, which is appended.

But as much as advocates of free markets in the monetary metals may have enjoyed the proceedings, to GATA they were another waste of the most precious opportunity -- the opportunity to pry gold information out of the Fed or to show the Fed concealing its most sensitive secrets.

Paul knows these issues intimately. GATA's officers have discussed them with him and his staff several times. He is fully informed about GATA's work. Indeed, in his comments to Bernanke today Paul referred, without naming him, to the case of Liberty Dollar proprietor Bernard von Not Haus, who is facing a federal prison sentence for his conviction on a ridiculous charge of (sort of) counterfeiting, and to the campaign in Mexico led by the president of the Mexican Civic Association for Silver, Hugo Salinas Price, for the introduction of a silver coin as part of a system of parallel money.

But talking about these things today, Paul once again let the Fed's great vulnerabilities escape notice.


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For example, Paul could have pressed Bernanke about the Fed's admission, in the course of GATA's freedom-of-information lititation three years ago, of its involvement in gold swap arrangements with foreign banks, an admission contradicting the Fed's many denials of involvement with the gold market:

http://www.gata.org/files/GATAFedResponse-09-17-2009.pdf

Paul could have asked: Exactly what are those gold swap arrangements? What are they for if not surreptitious intervention in markets? How do they work? Have they ever been implemented? Why must they be kept secret?

And Paul could have asked Bernanke about the Fed's many other gold secrets, acknowledged during but carefully preserved against GATA's lawsuit against the Fed, secrets whose locations were specified by U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huevelle in her decision in the case a year ago:

http://www.gata.org/files/GATAFOILawsuitRuling-02-03-2011.pdf

Paul could have cited the judge's decision and asked Bernanke: Why all these secrets about gold? And will the Fed provide the committee with the documents at issue? If not, why not? What are you hiding from the American people and the markets, and why?

But it didn't happen, as it hasn't happened at any of the dozens of other hearings where Paul has been allowed a few minutes to question Fed officials. Instead Paul has been content to lecture, even though nearly everyone has heard it all before and simply turns it off.

That is, despite his long and heroic work, it seems that Paul just has not wanted to be the one to go down in history as having pulled the plug on the institution he has denounced as parasitic and totalitarian, the institution whose abolition he advocated in his recent best-selling book, "End the Fed."

Just a few carefully targeted questions posed in a congressional forum -- questions about its constant and surreptitious intervention in the gold market and other markets -- well might end the Fed. All advocates of free markets and transparent government may wish for his election as president, but that is at best a long shot. As he isn't seeking re-election to the House, Paul now has only nine months left in which he is sure to have the chance to hold the Fed to account.

So, Representative Paul, if you really want to end the Fed, stop making speeches and start questioning the Fed.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.