end the fed

It’s a big day for U.S. Rep. Ron Paul. His bill to audit the Federal Reserve gets its first hearing this morning before the House Financial Services Committee. Then tonight, he and committee colleague Michele Bachmann host a “student town hall” at the University of Minnesota. But will Paul and Bachmann willingly enter Northrop Auditorium, [...]

An “End the Fed” group that will rally today outside the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank hasn’t felt a backlash since Wednesday’s arrest of James von Brunn in the fatal shooting of a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Von Brunn, who mixed anti-Semitism with antipathy for the Federal Reserve, served six years in prison for his 1981 attempt to take Federal Reserve board members captive.

Chanting “End the Fed” and “Audit the Fed,” at least 100 protesters marched around the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Minneapolis Saturday to kick off a three-hour rally. It was the third protest at the Minneapolis Fed since U.S. government bailouts of the financial industry began last September.

In the last couple weeks, I’ve tried to extract extra political meaning out of all sorts of stuff — Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s growing back his mullet (for a presidential run in 2012?), Al Franken’s traveling to D.C. (to cast a provisional ballot against U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman’s committee chairmanship?), and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak’s playing with [...]