U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) amplified a photo of a 1955 newspaper ad which advertised a two-bedroom, one bathroom home for sale in Miami’s Westwood Lake area for $7450. When the X account “Fight with Memes” asked, “What happened to our money?”, Lee replied, “The Fed happened.” He added, “End the Fed.”
Note: The Federal Reserve System was created in 1913. In 1955, the median annual income was $3,400 for men. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $40,000 today. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the median annual earnings in 2022 for all workers (people aged 15 and over with earnings) was $47,960. The “median annual earnings for those who worked full-time, year round, was $60,070.”
The Fed happened
End the Fed https://t.co/eWRYCfXk0G
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) July 20, 2025
While President Trump continues to threaten to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rick Scott (R-FL) have introduced a bill to request a full audit of the Federal Reserve. Criticizing the Fed’s leadership, Scott said: “If losing trillions was the goal, Jay Powell would be the gold standard.” Paul added, “It’s long past time Congress held the Fed accountable.”
Many on X are objecting to Lee’s suggestion to “end the Fed” with comments including “You should probably research the boom and bust economies that happened pre-Fed before you call to end it.” (Note: The ‘Panic of 1907‘ helped lend urgency to the Fed’s creation.)
Another commenter, asserting that the lion’s share of U.S. debt trouble doesn’t sit with Powell, replied: “The @federalreserve never voted to go to war in the Middle East and not pay for it with increased taxes on the wealthy. That was Congress. @GOP recklessly added tens of trillions to the debt, which forced the Fed who works for you (Congress) to print money in the form of Treasury notes. Ending The Fed as currently constructed has many potential benefits, but reigning in reckless Congressional spending that caused inflation isn’t one of them.”
Former Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester told an interviewer in July that separating monetary policy (the Fed’s domain) from fiscal policy (the President’s and Congress’s domain) is valuable “because you don’t want the person who’s setting interest rates to be concerned about trying to inflate away the debt, which maybe a politician has in mind, or setting interest rates low to gin up the economy before an election without consideration of what the long run implications for inflation are.”