One Tea Partier Wants More Discussion of the Fed
As tea-party members staged rallies across the country yesterday, one supporter hit the streets of Manhattan in hopes of adding the Federal Reserve to the party's growing list of targets. Carmine Priolo, a bartender in Staten Island, NY, went to a tea-party rally at New York's Farley Post Office in a black "End the Fed" T-shirt and holding a foam board sign emblazoned with a hand-drawn picture of the Fed's stately marble headquarters behind a circle with a line through it.
"The tea party seems very conservative but they don't get into the Federal Reserve that much," said Mr. Priolo, 30, later that evening. He's out to change that.
After the rally Mr. Priolo and some friends headed to the Blind Tiger, a Greenwich Village bar that specializes in craft beers. Real Time Economics caught up with Mr. Priolo as he sipped a mug of cask ale (a British style of beer that is warmer and less carbonated than your standard American brew) and discussed Sarah Palin, Texas congressman Ron Paul and his fascination with Austrian economics.
The Tea Partiers who rallied across the country yesterday share a universal anger with government, but beyond that are a disparate political movement of often competing ideas. Mr. Priolo fits that mold: He is no fan of Ms. Palin and hasn't liked a lot of what he's seen of the Tea Partiers on TV. He was at the rally to add some anti- Fed rhetoric to a protest that focused on taxes and the recently signed health care legislation.
"A lot of the tea party doesn't know about what the Federal Reserve did to create this crisis and bail it out," says Mr. Priolo, who has a brown beard and was wearing a baseball cap with an American flag patch.
Mr. Priolo's problems with the Fed come straight from the book by Rep. Paul named on his T-shirt. The Fed has debased the U.S. dollar, he says. The central bank uses excess reserves to fund foreign wars, he believes. Beyond Mr. Paul, Mr. Priolo cites economist Friedrich August von Hayek, part of the Austrian school of economists that advocates minimal government regulation, as an influence.
These are frequent topics of conversation at Adobe Blues, the music venue and southwestern themed bar where Mr. Priolo works in Staten Island. He often works the day shift, and has a group of regulars that span the political spectrum, from liberal to libertarian. While they often talk about bar topics like life and baseball "it always gets into a political conversation," Mr. Priolo says. Which is usually when he adds his own thoughts about Ron Paul and Austrian economics.
"I'm not a nerd but definitely a weirdo," says Mr. Priolo. "Everyone is a Keynesian these days."