Somewhere, John Mitchell and Maurice Stans are laughing
Bircher and gold bug Ron Paul- the darling of the CPAC presidential poll- unleashed his inner lunatic in a hearing with Fed Chair Ben Bernancke:
Paul, a libertarian Republican who opposes the Fed, said that the Fed issued a $5.5 billion loan to Saddam Hussein's regime to buy U.S. weapons during the Iran-Iraq War.
"It has been reported in the past that in the 1980s, the Fed facilitated a $5.5 billion to Saddam Hussein and he then bought weapons from our military industrial complex," he said.
He also said that cash used in the Watergate scandal "came through" the Fed.
Paul made his remarks in support of his effort to audit the Fed's monetary activity.
"Well, congressman, these specific allegations you've made, I think are absolutely bizarre and I have absolutely no knowledge of anything like what you've just described," Bernanke replied.
OK I am not a Paulite, but unfortunately (in the sense of stopped clocks) there is apparently some merit to both questions.
ReplyDeleteThe NY Times reported initially on the Hussein-Fed question
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/14/opinion/follow-the-money.html?pagewanted=1http://articles.latimes.com/1992-02-25/news/mn-2628_1_foreign-policyhttp://books.google.com/books?id=x7nMs-JwAikCpg=PA480lpg=PA480dq=watergate
The LA Times then pursued the story
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-02-25/news/mn-2628_1_foreign-policy
George Mason University reports that the origin of the Watergate cash question goes back to Senator Proxmire in the official hearings
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/123737.html
So while Bernanke would be technically correct in describing Ron Paul personally as bizarre, it requires only some minor fisking to discover that Paul isn't just making this stuff up in this particular case