In a recent interview broadcast on CNBC, Jim Rogers, CEO of Rogers Holdings, called for the Federal Reserve to be abolished, pointing out that the central bank's current policy has never worked in the past and will surely lead to even more problems that will eventually have to be fixed at great and escalating cost. Rogers was referring specifically to the Fed's policy of allowing the U.S. dollar to 'debase' as the means of boosting U.S. exports and curtailing foreign imports. More broadly, the attack by Mr. Rogers was on the extraordinarily loose monetary policy now being pursued by the Fed, a policy designed to rapidly infuse large sums of money into the United States economy to stave off a deep, impending recession. This Fed policy has been addressed and condemned in numerous articles here at The Dark Wraith Forums, most recently in "Prelude to Finale."

Although Rogers' prediction of the severely adverse consequences of current Federal Reserve policy is entirely accurate and consistent with predictions made in numerous articles and videos here, his prescription of eliminating the Fed is not going to happen, nor should it. The Federal Reserve system is deeply embedded in the overall banking structure of the nation and far too highly integrated into the broader financial matrix of the larger world; it cannot be removed, either by law or by circumstances. Moreover, far too many people (and Jim Rogers should not be one of them) who call for dispensing with the Federal Reserve seem to be utterly clueless that monetary policy is only one aspect of the Fed's overall mission and activities. No responsible person in his or her right mind would actually leave the United States without a central bank: for one thing, the previously regulated banks in this country would run amok; and if that is not bad enough, more importantly, the United States as an economic entity with sovereign currency would be eaten alive, especially right now with the dollar under such siege because of the Bush Administration's years of hopelessly—now, just about catastrophically—incompetent policies.

People think terrorists are bad when they knock down $31 billion worth of property on continental U.S. soil? Watch what would happen if every industrialized nation of the world saw the opportunity to turn into a fast-moving, viciously efficient, mercantilist predator feeding on the carcass of a nation that had no central coordination to control currency flows and no central bank to enforce and define its currency. Although the current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, is a lousy incompetent cut from the same mold of political fealty as everyone else President George W. Bush hires, Mr. Bernanke's choice to debase the American dollar is a whole lot different from a willful choice by the government, itself, that would turn the greenback into carrion abandoned in the field for every manner of predator and scavenger to carve up.

And speaking of terrorists, a worthwhile question, albeit one that will go unanswered, is thus: Where were both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush while the Chinese were sucking the American economy blood-dry by pegging the yuan at a mind-numbingly low rate to the U.S. dollar? The criminal madmen comprising the diffuse lore of convenience called "al-Qa'ida" are utter pikers compared to what the communists in Beijing have done to the economy of the United States under the guise of much-heralded "free market reforms," a feel-good term the Sino-gerontocrats have used and U.S. politicians have swallowed to the magnificently effective end of keeping the Americans from breaking the back of the Chinese currency manipulation strategy that for years pegged the yuan-dollar exchange rate at a ridiculous level of 8.28:1. (The Chinese are still pegging, but it is now looser, thereby giving the impression that some kind of float is happening.) For well more than a decade, the Chinese have been using the United States as their wet nurse, all while leading gullible American politicians and financial controllers to believe that, somehow, the "free markets" concept exists somewhere in the same universe with exchange rates fixed at levels radically divergent from purchasing power parity.

The naïve chain of logic that free markets lead to an expanding middle class that then demands greater civil freedom falls apart immediately when the entire predicate of free markets is nothing more than a ruse to bluff Westerners into a false mentality that currency manipulation on a grand, multi-year scale is other than a policy of mercantilism being pursued by entrenched authoritarians who shoot peaceful demonstrators by the thousands and brutally crush dissent in their occupied territories. The rulers in Beijing are not stupid enough to pursue any economic policy that might ultimately threaten their strangle-hold on absolute power; but the application of that basic axiom of authoritarianism seems to have been persistently, oddly, and perhaps tellingly absent from U.S. trade relations with China through several Administrations in Washington.

No, the United States will not abolish the Fed, nor should it, despite the central bank's history of surrendering its independence in conducting monetary policy. It will be the next regime at the Federal Reserve that will have to undertake the unenviable work, cruel as it will be to average Americans, of cleaning up the mess this Fed—first under the progressively addled leadership of Alan Greenspan, then under the obsequious hand of Ben Bernanke—has had a major hand in creating.

One good part about the draconian, contractionary monetary policy regime to come is that a Leftist writer like Naomi Klein can write a sequel to her breathless tome, Shock Doctrine, in which she may continue her curiously selective story of the evils of those who have to crush the money supply to finally fix the economic catastrophes created by neo-Keynesianism gone mad.

The great part about what is to come in terms of cure will be to see how John McCain, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama faces the awful news that actual leadership will fall on his or her shoulders, and real leadership requires meting out pain on a scale the American people have not come even close to feeling for a very long time.

A fun sideshow would be to watch a Hope-'n-Change sort of President trying to figure out why soaring rhetoric doesn't fix real economic problems.

Then again, the sales pitch in this election cycle seems to be all about believing in the future. Apparently, the past seven-plus years have not taught Americans much of anything about the difference between hope and reality.

This series will continue and conclude with a brief overview of Presidents, their fiscal and monetary policy regimes, and the consequences thereof.

Readers are encouraged to remain in good spirits as they follow this series (despite all reasonable evidence that such an attitude is sheer folly).