WASHINGTON - December 15, 2010 - As the incoming chairman of the House monetary policy subcommittee, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) will hold the bully pulpit when it comes to the nation's money woes.

He's not wasting any time getting right to the heart of the matter.

The libertarian-leaning conservative has long been a critic of the U.S. Federal Reserve and central banking as a whole, but this may be a new one: speaking with CNBC recently, Paul said he views the Fed as a monopoly that could benefit from the introduction of competition.

"We should start ending the Fed by allowing competition," he said. "I don't like the fact that they have monopoly control. It's a cartel: they print the money. The Constitution really doesn't give them that authority. The Constitution said that only gold and silver can be legal tender. I want to legalize competition and allow individual Amerikans to use gold and silver in competition, as money. Today if you do that, you can go to jail.

"I don't like the idea that the power gravitates to the Federal Reserve. They literally can have a yearly budget bigger than the whole Congress, then what they do is kept secret. We don't know where they spend the money. We're just starting to crack that nut in order to get some of this information and we should continue to do it," said Paul.