Bethany McLean on the anti-Fed movement

The thought process behind the anger at the Fed isn't uniform. If Dante had nine circles of hell, then the Fed has three circles of doubters. The first circle is critical of the Fed's current policies. The second circle thinks that the Fed has been a menace for a long time. The third circle wants to seriously curtail or even get rid of the Fed.

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Murray Rothbard, the controversial libertarian economist who many consider the intellectual father of the anti-Fed movement, wrote in 1994 ("The Case Against the Fed") that if the Fed were to be abolished, then "the banks would, at last, be on their own, each bank responsible for its own actions. There would be no lender of last resort, no taxpayer bailout [italics mine]."

~ Bethany McLean, "Fed-Bashing Three Ways," Slate.com, November 9, 2010