Republican Congressman Ron Paul, the new head of the subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve, said on Sunday he will seek greater transparency but will not be sending subpoenas to the central bank chairman from Day One.

Paul, a longtime critic of the Fed, will be the new chairman of the domestic monetary policy subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee when the new Congress is seated in January.

Now that doesn't mean that the first week in January I send over a subpoena for (Fed Chairman Ben) Bernanke and demand that he come over with a pile of papers, I don't think that would be logical, Paul said in an interview on C-SPAN.

He will be sending requests for information to others at the Federal Reserve such as the accountants, and say this is what I want, and to see what happens, Paul said.

And then they can still hide behind the law if I want to demand every transaction with foreign banks, he said, adding that it would benefit Americans to know who was getting bailed out.

Paul has written a book called End the Fed and believes the dollar should be backed by gold or silver. The United States stopped linking the dollar to gold in 1971.

Republicans will control the House of Representatives in January after winning a majority of seats in the November elections on a wave of anti-government and anti-incumbent sentiment.

(Reporting by Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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