Fighting greedy bankers, an American tradition
Long before OWS, celebrated patriots from Jefferson to Lincoln battled powerful, corrupting financiers
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/28/fighting_greedy_bankers_an_american_tradition/singleton/
Despite its clear progressive slant, I like Salon a lot, the vast majority of the articles appear to be well researched and relatively objective and when I have researched the articles I have come up with similar conclusions.
As the article mentions, I was also under the impression that the Fed was a government institution and thought that their dogged reluctance to open their books was some quirk of politics, not some legal issue because they are a private institution. When Paul talks about doing away with the Fed he always sounds like he wants to do away with the mechanism all together (he also seems to want to go back to the gold standard, which, according to my research, would amplify any economic swings even worse than they already are). I think the Fed has a valuable purpose, but I would make it a public institution and any profits would be returned to the treasury (something I presumed was already happening). Presuming the tenants of the article are true (because my past efforts at researching Salon articles have met my expectations I am less likely to do such research and trust them) the iron grip of Wall Street is a lot easier to understand.
Death to all bankers!
