{Rachel Maddow} Rachel Re: Tea-Baggin'

The Fed is a private bank with a government-sanctioned charter that permits it to print money in order to control the money supply.

sooo, no real assets, just print paper money? Don't they have gold bricks and stuff at the Reserves and Fort Knox? Whose is that, is what I wanna know.

As far as anybody knows, most of that gold is gone. And there's too much currency around to be backed by gold alone. A fiat (paper-only) currency in and of itself is not the problem. Having lots of bills keeps the flow of capital up. The problem is that a private bank, run by private shareholders, is masquerading as a public bank for their own benefit.