GOP candidate and Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s proposal to abolish the Fed is “not… very realistic,” Fed Chair Ben Bernanke said at a town hall meeting at Fort Bliss, outside of El Paso, Texas.
The comment was a response to a question from a soldier, who asked the Fed chair to describe what the world would look like without a U.S. Federal Reserve. The central bank has been criticized by Paul and other Republican presidential hopefuls.
“At this point if you just look around the world you see no alternative,” Bernanke said.
The only possible alternative course would be reverting to the gold standard, which Paul has called for. But the gold standard gave a disappointing performance when it was used widely in the past, Bernanke said. “I doubt very much the gold standard would be even feasible today for lots of technical reasons,” he said.
The town hall was part of an effort to increase the Fed’s transparency as well as Americans’ financial literacy.
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