Power Without a Mandate

You will hear people say “End the Fed!” or “Audit the Fed!”

It’s probably time.

A Creature of Convenience

The Federal Reserve—affectionately known as “the Fed” by economists and loathed by anyone who’s watched their savings devalue—was born in 1913 under the guise of stability. Market crashes and banking panics were frequent, and Congress, with the help of elite bankers, cooked up a hybrid beast. It would be part-government, part-private, entirely powerful, and almost totally unaccountable.

Why the Fed Exists (The Rationale)

Let’s start with the textbook version:

• Stabilize the currency
• Curb inflation
• Maximize employment
• Prevent financial panics
• Be the lender of last resort

Sounds reasonable. But read between the lines, and the Fed’s true function emerges: to centrally plan monetary policy in a way that serves the interests of financial institutions and political expediency—while distancing elected officials from the consequences of their spending habits.

Private? Public? Or Just Shadowy?

The Fed is a Frankenstein’s monster of governance:

• Board of Governors: Appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate. Sounds legit.
• 12 Regional Banks: Owned by commercial banks, which receive a 6% dividend by law. That’s right—private banks get guaranteed returns from the central bank.
• Not Funded by Congress: The Fed prints its own money and returns excess profits to the Treasury. Independent? More like unchained.

Despite its sweeping influence, you can’t FOIA its private branches, you can’t vote on its leadership, and it answers only selectively to Congress.

The Fed’s Toolkit: Inflation by Design

One of the most insidious elements of the Fed is its inflation targeting. The goal? Keep inflation at 2% per year. Translation: make sure your money loses value annually.

This quiet confiscation erodes purchasing power, enables runaway government debt, and punishes savers while rewarding asset holders—particularly those with close ties to the Fed’s credit window.

Oh, and if you think they’re done after printing trillions for quantitative easing, guess again. That same policy has made homes unaffordable, inflated stock prices, and encouraged moral hazard across the board.

Moral Hazards: Rewarding the Reckless

In 2008, the Fed bailed out institutions that should’ve failed. In 2020, it doubled down, buying corporate bonds and backstopping junk debt. And every time, it blamed “systemic risk” while ignoring the root cause: its own cheap credit policies that inflated those bubbles in the first place.

When you reward irresponsibility, you get more of it. The Fed has become the enabler-in-chief of financial gluttony.

Accountability? Don’t Make Us Laugh

Unlike Congress, the Fed doesn’t face elections. Its decisions affect mortgage rates, job markets, and national debt burdens, but voters have no say. The only real scrutiny it receives is from a handful of congressional hearings filled with sound bites and softball questions.

Even when its policies fail spectacularly—as they did during the 2008 collapse or the inflation spike post-2020—there are no firings, no reforms, just more opacity.

Recent use of the Fed that has really piled on the straw about to break the ‘camel’s back’ illustrated in this graphic: (hink of the Y-AXIS as representing the generic value of the money in your wallet

Why Does the Government Allow This?

Simple: it benefits from it. Congress can run massive deficits, the executive can hand out stimulus like candy, and the Fed cleans up the mess—by printing more money, buying more debt, and quietly taxing the public via inflation.

The Fed provides plausible deniability for politicians. “We don’t set interest rates,” they’ll say. “We don’t control the dollar.” Yet the institution they created does—without democratic legitimacy.

Maybe It’s Time to Rethink the System

1. Audit the Fed: Shine some light. End the secrecy. Expose who gets the bailouts.  Find out how money is made out of nothing.
2. End the Fed: Repeal the Federal Reserve Act. Return monetary policy to Congress—where it belongs constitutionally.
3. Reform the Fed: Elect Governors. Cap its asset purchases. Tie it to tangible metrics.
4. Competing Currencies: Legalize and support decentralized currencies like Bitcoin. Let the Fed compete, or die trying.

A Monetary Mandate Without Consent

The Federal Reserve was created as a tool of economic stability. What it became is a central planner with few limits, fueling boom-bust cycles, rewarding recklessness, and undermining the value of labor and savings. It is time to break the spell.

In a functioning republic, no institution should be this powerful, this opaque, and this insulated from public accountability.  The cowardice of congress prevents it from acting to restore legitimate control and power over our currency.

If our money isn’t free, neither are we.