Congress grows a pair

Edmund L. Andrews reports on how Ron Paul's "Audit the Fed" amendment got tucked into the new House bill on financial market regulation, maybe as a result of a growing number of elected officials having read Paul's new book End the Fed.

At the House Financial Services Committee, which was working on a sweeping bill to overhaul financial regulation, Mr. Frank had argued that Mr. Paul’s amendment went too far and would damage the Fed’s credibility.

Fed officials have argued that global investors would immediately become more skeptical about the central bank’s willingness to fight inflation by raising interest rates, which in turn would force the Fed to raise interest rates higher to accomplish it owns goals to keep prices stable. The result, they have warned, could be both higher inflation and slower growth.

But Mr. Paul and his supporters argued that the measure would do nothing to undermine the central bank’s independence. Its only purpose was to force the Fed to be more transparent and accountable to the public.

In a surprising display of political rebellion, about half the Democrats present and all the Republicans voted for Mr. Paul’s bill instead of a compromise measure drafted by Representative Mel Watt, Democrat of North Carolina.

Of course, prior to penning "End the Fed", Paul wrote The Revolution - A Manifesto, so maybe he's attracted something of a cult following in the House.

Or, perhaps Congressman have been reading The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin, in particular, the second chapter that probably describes what has happened in the U.S. banking system better than anything else - The Name of the Game is Bailout.