Bankers, those who are stockholders in the Fed, have the absolute power to print any amount of money they wish.. Which restrictions are you referring to? Well perhaps "print" is a misnomer, a ledger entry is more accurate.
One part of the story is that in a war, there are losers and winners. The losers are those that fought the war. (both sides, no matter who the "winner" is) The winners are those that financed both sides, and then collect the interest on the dept for the rest of time..
Right now, the dollar does have a real value, not tied to gold, but to oil, as countries such as Saudi Arabia conduct trade for oil in that currency. That can change, in which case the whole house of cards falls.
One recent report that should not be forgotten is that the CIA was caught printing vast amounts of counterfeit US money and falsley blaming the counterfeit currency as North Korea's work. I suspect the CIA is buying and selling anything/any people they want with limitless instant amounts of fake american paper money.
Ron Paul supported the corporate right wing GOP-led repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 a few years ago, resulting in the more powerful super-cartel banks (merging Wall Street investment and savings/lending) we have now such as JP Morgan Chase.
This parallels the concurrent merging of the oil companies in the U.S. in the 1990s resuklting in "ExxonMobil" etc. Here is some of an interesting article on Ron Paul from a young progressives website:
In Ron Paul’s free market, you can forget about a minimum wage. Our current minimum wage
illustrates an economic term know as a “price floor”, a government imposed level that dictates the
lowest someone can be paid for their work. Ron Paul would say that the government has no right to set
a price floor for wages, and he would advocate for worker supply and business demand to find a wage
equilibrium at which supply and demand were equal - a point which would be far lower than our current
minimum wage. When other politicians are proposing an increase of the minimum wage to a livable
level, Ron Paul’s free-market ideology suggests the exact opposite by repealing minimum wage laws
and in turn plunging low income wage earners into deeper economic hardship.
Other than eliminating a minimum wage, Paul’s economic reforms would repeal many base-level
government programs that allocate money to help individuals do everything from pursue a college
education to put food on their tables: TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families), federal Pell grants, food
stamps, aid to families with dependant children, low-income housing vouchers, tax breaks for the
working poor – the list goes on. To Ron Paul, these programs characterize inefficiencies in our current
structure that go against free market principles and therefore undermine our economic sovereignty. A
true free market is akin to social Darwinism: certain people prosper while the rest suffer, a winner takes
all approach to economics. Disregarding the fact that not everyone is afforded the same opportunities
for monetary success, a free market is a system without compassion for those in need. Take for
example the idea of giving tax breaks to the working poor. The working poor take menial jobs that pay
next to nothing – jobs that our economy depends on – and are in turn given a tax break, albeit a small
one, on the little that they do earn. Does this characterize our economy’s inefficiencies or does it
illustrate an economic and social reality that an individual can work tirelessly and still not make enough
money to survive? Without government assistance, millions more Americans will face the ultimate
challenge everyday: keeping themselves and their families alive.
A free market system will create further class stratification while concurrently loosening and
eliminating government regulation on industry. The idea of unfettered business without government
regulation shares historical symmetry with the decades prior to 1929, a time when little government
regulation allowed for massive industrial growth across the country. However, while industry grew at
unprecedented levels, industrial growth had two immediate consequences: a disenfranchisement of
workers and environmental ruin. The workers who allowed for industry to grow as it did were paid
almost nothing for their efforts while business owners experienced unprecedented wealth and were
dubbed ‘Robber Barons”. At the same time, the profit motive that drives free markets neglected the
environment; in a free market system environmental impact is of no importance unless it will enhance a
company’s profitability. While it is important to note the social inequalities imposed by a freer market,
the reality of unregulated business is undermined by historical precedent: the market crash of 1929 and
subsequent economic depression that ensued.
The stock market crash of 1929, while too complex to wholly understand, can be attributed mostly to a
lack of government regulation on banks, the stock market, and businesses. In order to re-establish the
American peoples trust in the economy, the government imposed new regulations on the entire
economy by passing the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933, which imposed government regulations
across the board, an idea to which Ron Paul is in complete opposition to. Although little government
regulation allowed for massive industrial expansion leading up to the Great Depression, the by-
products of limited regulation and the market crash of 1929 epitomize the flaws in a market devoid of
regulation. Adam Smith’s invisible hand works until it eventually crushes everything it had created and
then some, as shown clearly by the historical precedent of the Great Depression.
It makes sense that Ron Paul has become a grass-roots phenomenon in America. The public is
disillusioned by politicians who are big on promises and then do little for their constituents after they
are elected and the majority of Americans want our government to reign in its foreign policy that
equates to empire building and is creating more terrorists than it is slaughtering. But Ron Paul’s
converts must understand the whole package, especially Paul’s economic reform. If, by some miracle,
Ron Paul is elected, then our countries history of compassion will be erased right before our eyes. I am
not an advocate for what many conservatives deem a “welfare state”, however I do believe that every
individual deserves basic necessities that allow him or her to live, a feeling that I think resonates with
the majority of the American public. If I walk by a dying man on the streets, I have an innate will to help
that man live. In the free market that Ron Paul trumpets, I would merely walk by that same man and tell
myself that he didn’t work hard enough or earn enough money to survive and therefore deserves his
compromised position. If this is what Americans truly want, than we as a country have lost the morality
and compassion that had been a basic tenet of our existence.