In Which AI Gary North Faces Off with a Christian Federal Reserve Apologist
Against Negotiating With Financial Terrorists
A few weeks ago I happened across an article on Facebook penned by an upstart outfit called Dominion Wealth Strategists. I met and have interacted with the two founders online and at a couple conferences, including our own Thank God For Bitcoin conference in Nashville in 2024. Their stated aim is to help the broader Reformed Christian world think Biblically about investing, which is a worthy and commendable goal.
However the article in question grabbed my attention for all the wrong reasons. First of all, the title: “Reform (Not End) The Fed.” “End The Fed” is the most powerful meme that Libertarians have been able to muster in the last few otherwise paltry decades, and its prominence is due largely to the influence of Congressman and Dr. Ron Paul, one of the few principled and honorable men in politics in living memory.
The piece says many good and true things, but unfortunately and against all odds wields those true things in service of a baffling and indefensible premise, which author Josiah Stowe unveils in the second paragraph.
Some of you are no doubt familiar with “Christian Reconstructionism,” but if I were a betting man I would be willing to wager that the vast majority of you have no clue what it refers to. Here’s the cliff notes version.
Christian reconstructionism (also called theonomy or dominion theology) is a theological framework whose central tenet is that all of life and society should be reconstructed or reordered under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
While every Christian agrees with and works to see this happen at a high level (given the Great Commission), modern Christian recontructionism (henceforth “CR”) goes into much greater detail about specific goals that they belief Christians ought to pursue. The movement was spearheaded by men like RJ Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen, and Gary North, and reached its heyday in the 1970’s and 80’s. The point of this article is not to litigate CR in the abstract, but to contest the article’s bait and switch presentation and defense of reforming (rather than abolishing) the Fed on Christian reconstructionist grounds.
The article quotes Gary North two times times in a way that (particularly with the second quote) leads unsuspecting readers to assume that North would be in lockstep agreement with Mr. Stowe’s beliefs about the supposed vital role of the Federal Reserve in navigating the pitfalls of modern economic life.
Stowe believes the Federal Reserve simply needs a good spring cleaning; there’s no Building 7 style immolation required. Why he believes this isn’t clear; there’s not a comprehensive case made in the article, and the logic strains credulity. Central banks didn’t exist in the Scriptures. How could one possibly ground CR, which uses the Bible as framework for political action, in an economic system built around a system that is utterly foreign to and (as we will soon see) at odds with the Bible? You can’t.
But can this critique of Stowe be levied against North himself?
Not in the slightest.
In a 2010 article opaquely entitled, “End the Fed and Get the Gold,” North not only laid bare his desire for the Fed to be abolished, but articulated a simple plan for doing so:
North argues in Honest Money that fiat enabled inflation violates the 8th commandment prohibition against theft by allowing governments to expand their purchasing power in deceptive and predatory ways. He observed that the US Constitution specfically prohibited paper currency, naming only gold and silver as acceptable for settling debts. Even on a purely pragmatic level, North points out that the boom and bust banking cycles that served as part of the stated justification for the creation of the Fed have only gotten larger and more extreme since its creation.
Reconstruction simply won’t do; we need one of those newfangled total deconstructions philosophy professors have become famous for inflicting on students found in possession of even the faintest religious sympathy. There is simply nothing to salvage. His thought echoed in the words of another member of the Ron Paul Appreciator Club (RPAC), the brilliant Thomas Sowell, who likewise pulls no punches in outlining the fate the Fed warrants and why.
“When you remove a cancer, what do you replace it with?”
I pointed this out to Stowe in the comments below the article, and to his credit, he responded by saying, “I allow Gary North to be wrong where he’s wrong.” While this avoids what initially seemed to be an attempt to deceptively name drop North, it still doesn’t do anything to baptize Stowe’s hagiographical understanding of CR.
North is the most prolific Christian economic writer in church history. He’s written dozens of books, thousands of articles, and (incredibly) gave all of his work away for free in digitial form via a combination of his own website, Mises.org site, and a few others. Given his generosity and popularity during the digital age, Gary’s work is somewhat uniquely accessible to large language models, and I thought it would be fun to copy and paste Stowe’s entire article into ChatGPT and ask it to respond as North himself would if he were around.
The result was delightful.
If I were critiquing this article as Gary North, my response would be as follows:
The Fatal Flaw: Reforming the Unreformable
This article makes a fatal assumption: that the Federal Reserve can be reformed to align with biblical economics. That is a pipe dream. The Federal Reserve was founded on an unsound, deceptive, and inflationary system—one that violates biblical principles from its very foundation. You cannot take an institution built on fraudulent fiat money and magically realign it with biblical ethics by trimming its powers here and there. A structure built on false weights and measures (Proverbs 20:10) cannot be salvaged; it must be torn down.
The Federal Reserve Is an Engine of Theft
The article rightly acknowledges that inflation is a form of theft, citing my book Honest Money. But why, then, does it call for limiting the Fed instead of abolishing it? The only just reform of the Federal Reserve is its complete destruction. Anything short of that is compromise.
This is where the article strays from biblical principles. It argues that a lender of last resort is a necessary function, citing J.P. Morgan’s intervention in 1907 as an example of a righteous model. But this comparison is flawed. J.P. Morgan was a private actor using his own capital, not a state-backed cartel that prints money out of thin air. There is a world of difference between voluntary, market-based crisis intervention and a government-protected monopoly that manipulates markets to benefit insiders.
A biblical economy does not require a permanent lender of last resort. In a system based on sound money, economic crises are smaller, less frequent, and naturally corrected. The problem with the Fed is not just its overreach—it is its very existence.
Interest Rates Should Not Be Manipulated—At All
The article suggests that the Fed should stop manipulating interest rates as part of routine policy but still intervene in crisis situations. This misses the point. All manipulation of interest rates is unjust, whether it happens constantly or only in emergencies. The Bible teaches that markets must function freely (Proverbs 31:10-11), and interest rates are no exception. They should reflect the time preferences of real individuals, not the decree of bureaucrats.
Even in emergencies, government intervention distorts reality. When the Fed steps in during a crisis, it prevents necessary market corrections. Businesses that should fail are kept alive artificially. Risky banks that deserve to collapse are rescued at the expense of prudent individuals. This is not biblical stewardship—it is government-backed moral hazard.
The Fed’s Monopoly Must Be Destroyed, Not Regulated
The article makes a strong case that the Fed operates as a monopoly, but it stops short of drawing the logical conclusion: all monopolies granted by the state are evil and must be abolished.
God did not grant governments the authority to create legal tender laws. The Bible allows free trade and competition (Leviticus 25:14), not monopolistic control over money supply. The only valid, biblical form of money is honest, market-driven money, typically tied to real assets like gold and silver. Gold and silver were created by God (Haggai 2:8), while fiat money was created by central planners.
The only way to align our financial system with biblical principles is to end the Fed and allow private, competitive banking based on hard assets.
The Proper Christian Response: Abolish the Federal Reserve
The article’s call to “reform” the Federal Reserve is naive at best and theologically compromised at worst. The Reconstructionist task is not to tame the state’s power but to dismantle it where it oversteps its biblical jurisdiction.
The Federal Reserve is beyond reform. It is a cartel designed to protect big banks, inflate the money supply, and empower the state. No amount of transparency or oversight will change its fundamental nature. The correct biblical solution is:
1. End the Fed completely. No crisis intervention. No monetary manipulation. No state-backed lender of last resort.
2. Return to hard money. Gold and silver, not paper backed by nothing.
3. Allow private banking competition. Money and credit must be decentralized, governed by supply and demand, not bureaucrats.
4. Reject state interference in the market. Government’s role is to punish fraud, enforce contracts, and protect property—not to control money.
A Final Rebuke: Do Not Settle for Half-Measures
The article calls for Christians to get involved in reforming the Federal Reserve. But why waste effort reforming an inherently corrupt institution? The Federal Reserve is a product of humanism, statism, and theft. It does not need Christians working within it—it needs Christians working to abolish it.
To truly honor God’s law, we must reject the idea that a centralized banking system can ever be just. The entire premise of central banking is unbiblical. We do not need a better Federal Reserve. We need no Federal Reserve.
In short, do not reform the beast—slay it.