Given that the Federal Reserve has obviously abandoned its 2 percent target for the rise in prices brought on by its own paper-money inflationary policy, it's important that we keep in mind how our nation's paper money-system and the Fed's inflationary policy plunder and loot the American people.

There is the plunder and looting that takes place through the simple inflationary expansion of the money supply. By inflating the amount of money in circulation, the Fed reduces the value of money sitting in people's savings accounts or that they receive in income. Their savings and income buy less than before simply because the federal government, through its inflationary policy, has debased the value of money.

This is what has been occurring ever since the U.S. government converted to a paper-money standard during the President Franklin Roosevelt administration during the 1930s. Prior to that time — in fact, for more than 125 years prior to that time — the official money of the American people had been gold coins and silver coins. That's because the Constitution mandated gold coins and silver coins as the official money of our nation.

But gold coins and silver coins cannot be printed, like paper money can. So, FDR used the excuse of an economic "emergency" to declare a permanent end to our constitutional monetary system. Indeed, he did it without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment. And the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his extraordinary "emergency" power to effectively amend the Constitution through executive order and congressional law, even though the Constitution does not delegate "emergency" powers to either the president or the Congress.

Ever since then — year after year, decade after decade — the value of the paper dollar has gone down. That's because the federal government found it more convenient to pay for its out-of-control welfare-warfare-regulatory programs through newly printed money than by simply raising income taxes on people.

After all, people get upset when public officials raise their income taxes. With rising prices that come with inflation, most people have no idea that it is federal officials who are causing the prices to rise through inflationary debasement of the value of people's money. So, they get angry at people in the private sector who are raising their prices to reflect the lower value of the money rather than get angry at people in the government sector who are causing the rising prices through inflationary expansion of the money supply.

Even at an inflationary rate of 2 percent per year, the citizenry are still getting plundered and looted to the tune of at least 2 percent per year. When one compounds that amount year after year, the amount of plunder and looting increases substantially.