re: Facts Most Americans Are Too Fearful to Face

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It's widely known or at least I think it is that the federal reserve is not even a federal entity. It's just a group of banks owned by private entities. There's nothing federal about them and there not governed by the U.S..

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This isn't entirely true.

7 members of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors are appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. The remaining 5 are the presidents of the regional Federal Reserve Banks. These 12 also make up the Federal Open Market Committee which happens to (essentially) set interest rates in the country.

So, Federal appointees actually do have a controlling vote on the monetary supply in this country... so, while the Federal Reserve Banks are technically private, they are run by Federal appointees (7 members gives the government a controlling majority on the Board of Governors and the Open Market Committee).

The real reality is that our Founders never imagined a fiat currency system. However, a fiat currency system is a necessity in the modern world... like it or not. Going back to a commodity standard (the gold standard) would require the agreement of over 200 nations because one country, on its own, can't just revert to a commodity based currency when the rest of the world operates on a fiat basis - it would completely frick exchange rates in ways that I can't even begin to understand.

I'll add that a return to the gold standard isn't the panacea that a lot of people imagine it to be... Gold backed currency was the cause of a lot of war and colonialism. It was also the foundation of mercantilism (export more than you import and minimize domestic demand for consumer goods in order to amass national wealth)... None of these things would actually be good for Americans in the 21st century despite what Ron Paul (who I like on a lot of issues) says.