Ron Paul’s Wacky but Influential Fed Policy (Salon)

Since 1977, the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate has been in place, designed to curb both inflation and unemployment. Now, a quickly spreading Republican philosophy aims to change this to a single mandate, removing the curb on unemployment. This isn’t likely to happen as long as Democrats remain in control of the Senate. But it shows the extent to which Ron Paul’s fixation with the Fed has spread throughout the Republican Party. Anti-Fed rhetoric, once the province of ultra-right groups like the John Birch Society, has gone mainstream with the rise of Paul, who has been surging in the polls and now ranks third behind Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.