At last night's 25th anniversary Competitive Enterprise Institute
dinner, BB&T chairman and former CEO John Allison gave a
rollicking keynote address attacking the bailout, the
"misregulation" of the financial industry, and the spirit of
"altruism" that he said dominates our politics. But more
surprisingly, he also suggested that the Federal Reserve should
be replaced with the gold standard and a more privatized banking
system.
Afterward, I asked a staffer for Congressman Ron Paul if Allison
had been a Paul donor in 2008. "He should have been!" he replied.
During that campaign, I was mystified by Paul's insistence on
talking about the Federal Reserve and monetary policy. Although I
broadly agreed with his Austrian analysis, it seemed to me that
his time would have been better spent emphasizing fiscal policy:
the fact that he'd never voted for a tax increase or an
unbalanced budget, his opposition to most major spending
programs, his support for all of the Reagan and Bush tax cuts.
Yet on the campaign trail, I repeatedly saw kids with pink hair
and nose rings shouting, "End the Fed!" Paul himself seemed
surprised by the reaction, noting that at one campaign appearance
college students started burning Federal Reserve notes (that's
quite a few 25-cent drafts they were sacrificing in the process).
The financial crisis has increased the salience of the monetary
issue in some quarters. Paul's bill to audit the Fed now has more
than 218 cosponsors -- 222 at last count -- including members of
the House Republican leadership, the head of the Republican Study
Committee, and the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
