I'm confused about Ron Paul

If u don't like what the states are doing u can always move to another state. If u don't like with the federal government is doing then u can only move to another country. It's best to give the states the ability to chose what they want. That way power can not be in the hands of a few.

reply to post by WaterBottle

While I'd love to reply...I'm not sure what your point is specifically? That George Washington was a part of Hamilton's creation in the First Bank of the United States? Or are we somehow suggesting that bank has any relation or comparison to the Federal Reserve Bank as we see it today?

I don't want to assume here and end up replying off in the wrong direction. The part you quoted was relating to the intentions of the Founding Fathers and first national leaders to have a weaker central Government with strong state Governments. How is that relating to the issues of national credit and Hamilton's bank?

I'm honestly curious.... thnx

reply to post by muse7


Without reading anything but your OP I will say that Dr Ron Paul is not a Libertarian, he is a conservative republican who fully backs a movement called the "Liberty Movement". Big difference and i have thought on several occasions that it was and will continue to mis represent Dr. Paul and the direction he paved for the Liberty movement. If I had to guess about Dr Paul based solely on words, I would have guessed that he was or is a Constitutionalist, but even that would be wrong.

DR. Ron Paul + The United States Constitution = Republican

I think he's more Constitution Party than anything, but they aren't getting anyone in office. He's just pinning a nametag on that's the most likely to get him in office (as he did in the Republican primaries).

I can't speak FOR him, but I'll take a stab at the nutshell version of what he'd like to see. Minimal government with maximum civil liberties. I don't think he necessarily wants power to move from the federal government to the states. He wants federal government to only exercise those powers they are granted. And when states exercise power, he wants it to be constrained so as to not restrict what individuals are allowed under the Constitution.

I think the Union was formed as a centralized power in the areas where states had common interest. Efficiency was mentioned in a previous post, and I agree for some facets of federal government. The bigger reason is power, in terms of when a federal army/navy is raised and for the purposes of interstate and intercontinental commerce, which would encompass tariffs, duties, and treaties.

Ron wants to ditch the Federal Reserve as it stands now. The Constitution allows for a central bank, but it's supposed to be under the scrutiny of Congress. Our present Federal Reserve system has virtually no scrutiny and prints money (Congressional duty). It's also debt-based and we have a fiat currency, which never would have crossed the minds of the founders. The system is idiotic, complex, secret, and was designed with the sole purpose of putting power in the hands of the banks that are members of the system, and the real power is only in a select few of those.

Ron Paul is hardly a Republican.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

Or are we somehow suggesting that bank has any relation or comparison to the Federal Reserve Bank as we see it today?

Yes, it was nearly identical.

reply to post by WaterBottle

(sigh) How to reply... Hmm... Well, I'll start by saying my tone wasn't nice or, in this case, at all appropriate. It took research into your topic to see that you are, actually 100% correct and I never would have guessed it. The 1st United States Bank wasn't as bad as the 2nd incarnation which replace it after the initial 20yr charter expired, but they were both forerunners to the very thing the Fed exists to do today (and shouldn't have been created in the first place for)

I'll note one thing and it's no small thing. The fight back then over this was HUGE and pretty well drew in all the big names from our history books. Hamilton, Washington, Jefferson, Madison and more. All had an opinion and, I wish I could say otherwise, it was was entirely too split in favor of the central PRIVATE ..Commercial....bank to handle the nation's business.

Anyway.. We haven't always gotten along in posts. No secret there. I thought about not replying. Then..thought better. You replied to me and likely suspecting I was preparing a document dump style reply with poof of the contrary ..or at least had it in mind.

As it happens, I actually thank you for the reason to have looked all that up. I had no idea about the inner details and workings of the 1st US Bank or the second. I really mean the thanks. It was eye opening to see that this really did...in thinking anyway..extend all the way back to the days right after the Revolutionary War. A surprise, to say the least.

(To anyone who does look into this from a cold start? Please DON'T just read the quick hits and figure it's the story. They make a very very pretty picture of it in the P.R. story for the historic building. The icky, boring history text of it? That's a radically different set of historic fact...and it's about what Waterbottle said in general terms)

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


This is why I don't understand why people say the country died in 1913, there were central banks long before that, that did basically the same thing. I've had this fall of deaf ears on ATS due to all the founding father worship, (even though a bit of them did oppose it), and people not willing to research things themselves? I really don't know what exactly the reason is. I guess they can't go around saying that George Washington was a Marxist without looking silly?

It's just weird that this bank or the second bank isn't discussed at all in "conspiracy theorist" circles.


First Bank of the United States;

1. It was a central bank
2. It was semi-private, like the federal reserve
3. It engaged in crony capitalist loans just like the federal reserve does today.
4. Exists because it's on a charter, just like the FR is today. It was successfully destroyed because of this, but of course the banking cartel wasn't having that hence the 2nd bank then of course the FR.
5. Loaned money to the government just like the FR.

Shortly after Hamilton proposed the creation of a National Bank for the U.S. a bill was introduced into Congress to accomplish Hamilton's proposal. There was major opposition to the bill on the grounds that creation of such a bank with a monopoly on issuing money was unconstitutional. The bill passed and was signed into law in 1791 but it provided only a twenty year charter for a Bank of the United States. The charter would need to be renewed in 1811.

The Bank of the United States solved many of the monetary problems that troubled the country before 1791. But the Bank of the United States was a private institution and foreign buyers purchased ownership shares of the bank until the 70 percent of the bank was owned by foreigners. This was worrisome to American politicians but this high share of foreign ownership was not unusual in the American financial system. Britain had been supplying capital to the U.S. economy for some time.

www.sjsu.edu...

The First Bank acted as the federal government’s fiscal agent, collecting tax revenues, securing the government’s funds, making loans to the government, transferring government deposits through the bank’s branch network, and paying the government’s bills.15 The bank also managed the Treasury’s interest payments to European investors in U.S. government securities.16 Besides its activities on behalf of the government, the Bank of the United States also accepted deposits from the public and made loans to private citizens and businesses.

www.philadelphiafed.org...

But anyway back to the original argument, James Madison opposed the first central bank because he thought it make the states too subservient to the federal government.

James Madison, who represented Virginia in the House of Representatives, opposed the bank for similar reasons.8 In particular, he objected to the bank’s proposed 20-year affront to states’ rights and would make the states too subservient to the new federal government. Moreover, agreeing with Jefferson, many of the people who opposed the bank said that the Constitution did not grant the government the authority to establish banks. Still others thought that a national bank would have a monopoly on
government business, to the detriment of the state chartered banks.9

www.philadelphiafed.org...

I think the reason people pick the Federal Reserve and 1913, as I had before now myself, is that it's the unbroken and continuous form of what has made a living of sucking the life blood from our nation, by the very permission of our own elected leadership.

Naturally I'd heard about corruption and at levels which would make some of today look downright soft by comparison which came before the Fed was created. What I hadn't taken the time to learn until you challenged the topic to research was just how long that general feeling had been at the core of the nation's institutions. The arguments for the Bank vs. the ones against it could be torn from the forums of ATS, as I was reading it. Same arguments on BOTH sides ..between one side of the Founders and the other.

I don't see any unified conspiracy going all the way back before 1800, but then you're not suggesting it either. It is obvious..as much as I'd prefer not to have done the reading on this ...that selling out some of our nation to benefit it in other ways has been something at least a good % of our leaders have been quite happy to do all the way back.

Of course.. I'll bet those who were pushing the hardest were also benefiting and it wouldn't surprise me to learn now, shareholders of the bank after it's creation and re-creation. What a thing to read. So much for those pretty images of all our Founders having virtue beyond their own profit margins.