Ben Bernanke Gives Ron Paul the “Idiot Treatment” (Watergate Payoffs)
By David Beito • Wednesday February 24, 2010 1:26 PM PDT • 12 Comments
After Ron Paul raised questions about possible past Federal Reserve misdeeds including allegations of involvement in Watergate payoffs, Ben Bernanke answered smugly: “These specific allegations you’ve made, I think are absolutely bizarre.”
The crowd reflexively laughed at Dr. No’s perceived looniness and pundits have already depicted his concerns as “wild” and “odd.”
Well, it seems that Paul may have been onto something . . . or at the very least raised legitimate questions that deserve investigation. A few minutes on Google News produced this 1982 story from the Milwaukee Sentinel by Richard Bradee of the paper’s Washington bureau:
Police who searched the room the Watergate burglars used found $4,200 in $100 dollar bills, all numbered in sequence. Proxmire asked the Federal Reserve Board where the money came from. As he explained in a letter to the late Rep. Wright Patman (D-Tex.), chairman of the House Banking Committee: “I got the biggest run-around in years. They ducked, misled, lied, and gave me the idiot treatment.”
Tags: American History, Corruption, Federal Reserve, Government subsidies, Media, Money and Banking, Transparency 
Seriously? That’s a vindication of Paul? Because, in 1982, a Democratic congressman said he was stonewalled by the Fed? The president had to resign, people went to prison, 1000 books have been written about Watergate, yet Ron Paul has just busted open the Feds’ hitherto unknown role in one of the most studied political events in American history. If he said there were WMDs in Iraq, I suspect his acolytes would believe it.
FedChairman | Feb 24, 2010 | Reply
In light of the controversy, Paul has entered this into the congressional record
BTW, FedChairman, I doubt his supporters would believe Ron Paul if he lyingly said there were WMD in Iraq. One reason he has such credibility among his supporters is his courageous and public doubt and opposition to war when most of Capitol Hill echoed Bush’s propaganda. He was considered a fringe nut then for opposing the war in Iraq. He is attacked as one now for exposing the Fed.
Anthony Gregory | Feb 26, 2010 | Reply
Well, the Fed is notorious for causing the production and issuance of $100 bills so Proxmire asked the wrong question. The right question would be how can one come to possess sequentially numbered FRN? Is the Fed the sole source? Many a cop show would suggest not ... “marked bills” and all that.
Another question is why would the Watergate burglars WANT sequentially numbered FRN? One of the main attractions of FRN are there anonymity.
But the bigger point would be who cares? Paul should stick with questioning the Fed’s economic purpose rather than questioning what particular Fed officials may or may not have done in the past. Petty corruption like that can be forgiven, reduced with modest reforms, etc. but the macro-corruption of modern monetary policy necessitates the root and branch change that Paul and his followers desire.
A. Hamilton | Mar 2, 2010 | Reply
Dr. Ron Paul is supported because he is honest. I would like to see if Ben Bernanke could survive a lie-detector test! Of course, I would like to see the same thing with Obama.
Doug S. | Mar 2, 2010 | Reply
New $100 (and all other) bills ALWAYS come in numerical order when they are new. Any bank would provide the bills that way. I didn’t think the Federal Reserve had anything to do with printing currency, anyway (despite the fact that they’re Federal Reserve notes). I thought the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in the Treasury Department handled printing and distributing new currency.
Why and how the Federal Reserve (or anyone else) would know where the bills came from, I have no idea. The Treasury would know which bank they issued the bills to (by serial number), but who would trace them after that, if anybody, I don’t know.
If the Federal Reserve was “involved in” the payoffs, I suppose they were involved in MAKING them, rather than RECEIVING them. “Involved in” is pretty ambiguous.
N. Joseph Potts | Mar 2, 2010 | Reply
I would ask what kind of strap did the bills have. When delivered to a bank, the bills are recounted. Then a new strap is used to bind the bundle, bank stamped, and initialed by the bank personnel. It is possible that the Fed was a passive participant in that it passed the money to either an appointed or an elected official who gave the money to the burglars.
R. Rossetti | Mar 3, 2010 | Reply
Ron Paul is a complete idiot and his supporters never have a clue of what they’re talking about.
Audit the Fed is already written into law according to the Federal
Reserve Act of 1913.
It’s requested by the GAO, THE GAO IS HEADED BY THE COMPTROLLER OF THE U.S.
http://www.gao.gov/
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1207
http://www.opencongress....org/bill/111-s604/news_blogs
http://www.federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/faq/faqfrs.htm
Why is Mr. Golden Loopholes trying to write in a law that already exists?
His foreign policies are whacked out.
Ron Paul IS an idiot | Apr 2, 2010 | Reply
Putting up a better security next time will do the trick, lets just hope they are smarter and more responsible.
Sec Guy | Aug 17, 2010 | Reply
Central banking is designed to transfer wealth from an individual to the government. If the Fed was never created, you and I would have the purchasing power of roughly $500,000.00 a year , each. If you disagree with this notion, then you have much, much reading to do. Ron Paul is not an idiot. I can only assure you. Truth indeed is stranger than fiction. You have been programmed to think the way you do. Karl Marx himself stated that if a currency supply is manipulated, not 1 in 1 million will know what is going on. Hate to tell ya bud, you’re one of the 999,999.
Patriot | Jul 14, 2011 | Reply
One thing that really opened my eyes to how much of a loon Paul is was his recent line of questioning to Bernanke. He asked the chairman, in all seriousness, if Bernanke believed that gold was money.
I don’t argue that gold has no *value*, indeed it does, but any high school graduate can tell you the *tokens* of exchange do not have to have an intrinsic value. The North American Indians conducted trade across this continent using wampum beads. So I wonder if Mr. Paul would claim that sea shells are money?
The fact is, Paul thinks he’s got answers, when he really is an intellectual lightweight. The “do-nothing” philosophy of libertarianism always falls apart when confronted with reality, because it fails to account for the fact that feedback loops can exist in economics, like in every other natural system.
In fact, the current economic situation is highlighting the shortcomings of laissez-faire philosophy, and we are actively discovering every day that this recession drags further down what would have happened if FDR hadn’t resumed intervention in 1937.
There’s a whole strain of stupid historical revisionism that Paul and other libertarians and, to a lesser extent, a minority of Republicans tap into to spin their nonsensical gibberish. The amazing thing is they continue to do it surrounded by evidence.
ant | Oct 2, 2011 | Reply
I would guess that Ron Paul would agree with me that gold or anything else is made money by virtue of its function in the market, and that, unfortunately, gold was long ago demonetized. Saying the current crisis is a result of laissez-faire ignores the federal governments’ trillions of dollars of spending and countless regulations, the Federal Reserve and multiple other measures used to prop up the housing bubble. As for FDR, Robert Higgs’s Depression, War, and Cold War is a good antidote to your standard textbook account.
Anthony Gregory | Oct 4, 2011 | Reply