Ron Paul May Oversee Fed

Story updated with election information

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas), who wants to abolish the Federal Reserve, could end up overseeing it as part of the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives.

Paul is the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology on the House Financial Services Committee, which has oversight for the Fed, the U.S. Mint and U.S. interaction with the World Bank, Politico points out.

The Republican leadership will make the final call on whether Paul gets to oversee the Fed, which, of course, in addition to setting monetary policy, now has an even more important role in overseeing big financial institutions including not only traditional banking giants like Bank of America(BAC), Citigroup(C) and Wells Fargo(WFC), but a host of other systemically important institutions like Goldman Sachs(GS), AIG(AIG) and General Electric(GE)'s financial unit.

Paul got some traction recently with legislation proposing to audit the notoriously secretive Fed. He also wants to re-establish the gold standard.

Paul won re-election to the House of Representatives easily on Tuesday, getting just over 140,000 votes, good for 76% of those who turned out in Texas's 14th District. His son, Rand Paul, also won Tuesday as a Republican senator in Kentucky, largely on the strength of his Tea Party affiliation.

-- Written by Dan Freed in New York.

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