Go easy on sgt_doom, he's had a bit too much fluoridated water today and the government mind control lasers are keeping him from sleeping.

The funny (?) thing is, Cain is right and Paul's supporters are wrong about the Federal Reserve. If they actually did some more research on the matter, they'd soon find out that it has between 0 and 0.00000001% difference on an economy whether the Reserve institution is public or private.

The bigger issue is an economy with debt-backed currency, and no regular debt-relief or reallocation of the massive profits the top 1% amass.

Without those sorts of mechanisms built into the system, the size of debt quickly outstrips all available money --(due to the effect of positive-interest [you repay more than the $ you borrowed.. where does that extra $ come from if all money is borrowed into existence & backed only by debt? ; do you see how that works?] )--, the debt burden becomes insurmountable, and economic activity slows down... slowing down the economy as a whole, and leading to recession/depression. Credit cards staved off this cycle for awhile, but made it fundamentally worse.

It's not the Federal Reserve's fault, it's the mechanism built right into the money itself.

Doom's gone completely around the bend lately. He's into KittenKoder territory already. (But yes, he still has a ways to go before Will has anything to worry about.)

If his book is more than three pages long I won't read it!!!

"he claims that he can win a third of the black vote if he becomes the Republican candidate...."

He might be right. Don't forget that, unfortunately, 25% of LGBT voters pulled the lever for the Republican candidate in the last election. That was for a straight man. Who knows how high that percentage might have risen if they had the choice to vote for a gay Republican.

Anything written by Paul Constant is like catnip for stupid people in the comments section, Sgt. Doom excluded of course. I really don't know how you maintain the strength to combat all the dim-bulbs Sgt., but I salute you for it!

I should add that the Fed is completely out of ammunition. QE3 will be the end of the line, and it will soon be announced, or at least quietly enacted. Our government is driving on the fumes of Fed fiat.
QE3's will be tie the global economy together so firmly that when it pops in short order, the whole world will go down at once.

@4 What?! The process you've just described is pretty damn close to how the Fed operates. It's called loan sharking by another name and a massive scale. The interest to service all that insurmountable debt (expanded multiple times over through fractional reserve banking) goes right back the Fed's coffers, the "Fed" being a syndicate of private banks.

But hey, that's not to say that they don't give back for taxpayer backed privilege of printing our money. Like when they use their special status as private money creators to fund speculative derivative schemes that collapse the U.S. economy.

Oh, and vote Ron Paul.

Yeesh, Spindles, why don't you and sgt_doom get a room already? Preferably a padded room far away from us.

Hell. He would get more than 1/3 of the black vote. Remember, he's actually black. Not some Hawaiian half breed.

Paul's Fed angle is pretty pointless and stupid, but ... that's only one of his points so ... I still hope he wins at this point.

@13 -- I'm not sure you understood the point of my post. Yes, of course I described how it currently works. That is the problem. Positive-interest currency favors (a) the banks, (b) the wealthy, and (c) the banks.

Look into "negative-interest", and "mutual-credit" currency. The problem isn't the Fed per se, it's the type of money itself. Money is just a tool that humans created. We can create any type of tools we want (more or less). So lets create something that doesn't have positive-interest.

This is not a new concept.

@8 -- You've completely missed my point. I'll make a note of it.

@21 Marcy Kaptur is great! I actually know her nephew.