May

8

The Malicious Myth of the ‘Libertarian’ Fed

Filed Under Austrian Economics | 5 Comments

The Malicious Myth of the ‘Libertarian’ Fed
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

In the history of American politics the statists have always been advocates of a central bank, whereas the defenders of liberty – libertarians – have opposed it. Legalized governmental counterfeiting has always been every totalitarian’s dream and every right-minded libertarian’s nightmare.

A Federal Reserve publication entitled “A History of Central Banking in America” correctly calls Alexander Hamilton “the founding father of central banking in America.” His nemesis, Thomas Jefferson, strongly opposed Hamilton’s Bank of the United States as a mortal threat to liberty and economic stability. So did Jefferson’s political heir, Andrew Jackson, who vetoed the re-chartering of Hamilton’s Bank of the United States. By that time (the late 1830s) the face of the Hamiltonian/statist cabal in American politics was the face of the Whig Party, and no one was a more strident advocate of a central bank than the young Whig Abraham Lincoln. After being snuffed out by the 1840s, central banking was revived by Lincoln’s National Currency Acts in the 1860s, and then finally cemented into place fifty years later with the creation of the Fed. Read more