Ben Bernanke Gives Ron Paul the “Idiot Treatment” (Watergate Payoffs)

After Ron Paul raised questions about possible past Federal Reserve misdeeds including allegations of involvement in Watergate payoffs, Ben Bernanke answered smugly: “These specific allegations you’ve made, I think are absolutely bizarre.”

The crowd reflexively laughed at Dr. No’s perceived looniness and pundits have already depicted his concerns as “wild” and “odd.”

Well, it seems that Paul may have been onto something . . . or at the very least raised legitimate questions that deserve investigation. A few minutes on Google News produced this 1982 story from the Milwaukee Sentinel by Richard Bradee of the paper’s Washington bureau:

Police who searched the room the Watergate burglars used found $4,200 in $100 dollar bills, all numbered in sequence. Proxmire asked the Federal Reserve Board where the money came from. As he explained in a letter to the late Rep. Wright Patman (D-Tex.), chairman of the House Banking Committee: “I got the biggest run-around in years. They ducked, misled, lied, and gave me the idiot treatment.”

David Beito is a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute and editor of the Independent book, The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society (with Peter Gordon and Alexander Tabarrok).
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