I agree with Jefferson's words on the dangers of overly powerful banks - especially as it applies to international bankers (and no, that is NOT code for any particular group):
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 currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. – Thomas Jefferson
And I agree with George Washington's words on the dangers of political partisanship and loyalty to party over loyalty to the republic:
I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. -- George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
But I also (sadly) accept, even if I don't want to agree with it, the line from Machiavelli's The Prince(?):
"He who builds on the people, builds on the mud.”
It simply takes too much money to gain real power in this nation now. And if it hadn't been so easy to corrupt and bastardize a grassroots movement, and mislead well meaning, though extremely naive people, the TEA Party could have been another United We Stand. But it took a billionaire to make United We Stand what it (initially) was. And now the TEA Party is just a radical right mouthpiece of the GOP, where chameleon-like neocons and paranoid schizo xenophobes have taken up residence.
I've listened and read a lot about what Ron Paul (and several others) have had to say about the Fed's continued existence. My struggle is, OK, but we have what we have now... so if you simply dissolve the Fed, who takes over monetary policy? The Congress? The President? Can you imagine how completely & totally fucked we would all be if Obama and Johnny Boner were arguing over monetary policy the way they have fiscal policy???
I'm not a fan of the Fed. But in light of the glaring FACT that we are currently running without a real fiscal policy in this country (blame whichever side you want... or to be fair, both), if not for Bernanke and the Fed, I have no doubt that things would be a whole lot worse right now. I'm not giving the Fed or bankers in general a pass (they're a slimy, slithery bunch... I know, I used to be one), but it was Volker who made the biggest difference in the 80's and Bernanke in the 2000's. And yeah, Weird Al Greespan made a pretty big difference in the late 90's... though not for the good. So my only question is, what body would replace the Fed? Who would decide and execute monetary policy in its absence??? Would we, of the great unwashed masses, decide monetary policy by our votes? We The People... who can't balance our checkbooks or manage our credit card debt? :dunno: