A debate was held on the usefulness of the Federal Reserve in light of the recent economic downturn. Participating in the debate were Warren Coats and John Fund, who defended reforming the Federal Reserve, vs. Gene Epstein and Thomas Woods, who argued for abolishing it. Joe Bradley moderated the debate "Fed Up with the Fed: Should We Abolish?" Warren Coats, who served with the International Monetary Fund for 26 years before retiring in 2003, is currently a director of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority and an adviser to the Central Bank of Iraq. His most recent book is One Currency for Bosnia: Creating the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Jameson Books; August 30, 2007). John Fund, who was a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board from 1995 to 2001, writes the weekly "On the Trail" column for OpinionJournal.com. He is the author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books; Revised edition July 21, 2008). Gene Epstein has been the economics editor and a columnist for Barron's since 1993. He is the author of Econospinning: How to Read Between the Lines When the Media Manipulate the Numbers (Wiley; August 4, 2006). Thomas Woods is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of nine books, including Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse (Regnery Publishing; February 9, 2009). "Fed Up with the Fed: Should We Abolish?" was a 2:30 p.m. PT Friday general session of FreedomFest 2009, which was held July 9-11, 2009, at Bally's Events Center in Las Vegas.