Pairing Ron Paul with Paul Krugman - Economics and Politics

Texas congressman Ron Paul has long been a fierce critic of the Federal Reserve. In fact, last year he published a book called End the Fed, calling for an end to the central bank and a return to the gold standard. Now, Paul has been appointed head of the House subcommittee on domestic monetary policy, which, among other things, oversees the Federal Reserve. So, does Paul see this as his chance to try to end the Fed? "In a partial sense, but not directly," he tells NPR's Guy Raz. "What I'm really asking for is competition, to get rid of the monopoly power of the Fed, because they don't have legitimate power to do what they do."

This snippet's from NPR's All Things Considered. The podcast for this show can be found here. The full All Things Considered story can be found here. Here are some other books that are also by Paul: The Revolution: A Manifesto, A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship, Liberty Defined: The 50 Urgent Issues That Affect Our Freedom, Pillars of Prosperity. According to ABC News, Paul recently said, "Now that doesn't mean that the first week in January I send over a subpoena for (Fed Chairman Ben) Bernanke and demand that he come over with a pile of papers, I don't think that would be logical." View that full ABC story here. Paul Krugman opposes Ron Paul's ideas. [Funny how they both have "Paul" in their names.] He writes a regular column at The New York Times, and recently, he's said that "[Paleomonetarism] I used that term — it’s probably not original, but who knows? — in a recent post about the increasingly obscure meaning of the money supply. The best example would surely be Ron Paul, who’s now going to have oversight over the Fed. If you read his stuff, it’s very clear: money is a well-defined quantity that the Fed controls, and inflation comes from — indeed is defined as — increases in that quantity." Read that full NYT post here. Here are a few Krugman titles that you can pair Paul with: The Conscience of a Liberal, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century (Updated and Expanded), A Country Is Not a Company (Harvard Business Review Classics)