Is The Fed Really What We Need To End?

The Federal Reserve has clearly devastated the United States currency, with a cumulative inflation of a staggering 2,253.1% since its introduction in 1913. One USD in 1913 would be worth $23.53 in 2014, meaning that in effect, the dollar has since 1913 lost nearly 96% of its value.

On Facebook, a fellow Libertarian made the following claim- a common sentiment shared among anti-Fed conservatives:

"We've been in constant inflation since 1913, with exponential inflation since 1971. The Fed can't stop printing. It will collapse."

I agree with the second claim, but not with the first. we experienced cycles of inflation and deflation in the first few decades following the introduction of the Fed, as the Fed was still following its intended duty of matching the gold standard. As a result, we experienced cycles of deflation from 1920 all the way until 1955:

1920-1921: -10.5%
1921-22: -6.1%
1926-28: -3.4%
1929: 0%
1930: -2.3%
1931: -9%
1932: -9.9%
1933: -5.1%
1938-39: -3.5%
1949: -1.2%
1955: -0.4%
2009: -0.4%

(source: http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/consumer-price-index-and-annual-percent-changes-from-1913-to-2008 )

Our currency stopped deflating entirely after 1955, and as he said, didn't start inflating exponentially until after 1971. This goes to show that the Fed in-and-of itself doesn't devalue currency, the policies of it do. The problem is that the United States economy is being increasingly driven by stocks, which thrive on market growth and increasing consumer prices- and on the rich elite, who thrive on risky investments that they can only afford to make by relying on low-interest debt. It's our economic paradigms, and market dynamics that drive the Fed, not the other way around as anti-Fed activists suggest.

Ending the Fed won't change anything, it will merely create a vacuum of power that will be filled by the most economically-advantaged contender(s). In fact, that's exactly why the Fed was created in the first place. When economic policies failed in the 1800s, and again in the 1900s, large bankers and corporations, especially JP Morgan, took advantage of the depression to gain great wealth and power, and fronted huge loans to the U.S. government, in exchange for high interest rates and political concessions that threatened to compromise the government's power over economic direction.

Incidentally, that's exactly what went wrong with the Fed. The Fed itself has been compromised by bankers and investment firms, despite its intended aim to prevent that. The Fed isn't a bad thing in and of itself any more than democracy is. What's bad is that it has been co-opted for the wealthy elite, at the expense of everyone else.