Here's the difference between you and me. You see Ron Paul as a near messianic figure, with the power to fix all of the country's probems. I see him as another overhyped politician who romances frustrated people like yourself with overly simplistic answers to complicated problems.

Right away you are wrong. I very much disagree with Ron Paul's approach to Intellectual Property (he is for strong IP), and I disagree with him on healthcare, and I really am not that hyped about pushing everything to the states. Pushing regulation to the states is possibly a good thing due to competition between states, and making the federal government a third party to deal with abuse and conflict. But like I said, not sure about that.

So if you want to limit the power of bankers, then how fucking stupid would it be to deregulate the banking industry and remove all transparency and public oversight from the management of our country's economic system?

Did you just argue for abolishing the Federal Reserve? I think you are getting there.

Letting banks fail is an awful idea. If the banks were not bailed out, billions of dollars would have been lost and it would have destroyed the world economy. There is no need to resort to 19th century economics, we need to regulate.

The billions you worry that would have been lost were lost anyway. That is a fact. We have the rotting empty houses in many parts of the country to show for it. Mortgages that will never be paid. But the losses were diluted, not eliminated. That is what quantitative easing does. The Federal Reserve inflates the money supply, making it available to banks coupled with bail outs from the government. The losses don't disappear you know. They get averaged out into the economy.

We lost all those billions. There was no magic spell that made them disappear without damage to the economy at large. Look around. You can't see this recession that keeps dragging on? What about Europe?

Now if the banks and wall street had been allowed to take the punch, the people that own 80 percent of wall street and the banks would have taken the hit. That is the one percent. The rest of us were far less exposed. Now we would have had a tough year, but after the dust settled, all the same opportunities would have existed, largely under new management with new ideas and fresh energy. Just like so many other business cycles in the past. Like after WWII, like after the depression of 1921. But when the Fed and the government gets involved to "prevent" the recession, it drags on and on, and about all they are really successful at doing is saving the rich and the crony capitalistic system.

The whole idea of the fed is to preserve the value of our money. And to limit business cycles. How can anyone claim the Fed has done either?