Show: Morning Meeting
Channel: MSNBC
Date: 11/05/2009

Transcript:

Dylan Ratigan: The bill no longer audits the Fed. In fact, the legislation gives Congress no control over the Fed’s authority to make monetary policy. That, perhaps, is a worthwhile debate, but it does not require any transparency either in the Fed’s secret agreements with foreign central banks, not to mention the monies that are pushed out to our own banks. Committee chair Barnie Frank told his constituents back in August that Congressman Paul’s plan would pass, likely in October. For the record it is now November and there is still no vote and if there were to be a vote it would be on a gutted version of the bill! Thirteen committee Democrats currently signed on to this shell of the Fed audit bill and now we’ll wait up and see if they’ll stand up for real change or just push through more false solutions in Washington DC.

Joining us now is Republican Committee member Ron Paul who originally proposed Audit the Fed. He will present and amendment before the full vote to get real reform back into the legislation. Chrystia Freeland is also here.

Representative Paul, in brief explain to all of us why you think it is so important that the American taxpayer be able to see what is going on inside of the Federal Reserve? Why does that matter, why should we care so much?

Ron Paul: It’s because everybody uses dollars as our currency and it’s an international currency. So it is very, very important, and yet it’s managed by a small group of people really run by the Federal Reserve board chairman and they decide each and every day how much money there should be printed that week and what the interest rates should be. So they are the central economic planners. And since they can create credit out of thin air and take care of their friends and buddies, which means that the burden is placed on the taxpayers… not directly with a tax but indirectly by devaluing their money. And that means that every time a price goes up, whether it’s medical care cost or education, you’re really paying a tax.

But the thing that gripes me most is it’s done secretly and they’re supposed to be like they’re sacred and never have their books opened. But one thing good has come out of this crisis; that the American people are demanding transparency and I think that’s why I’ve gotten so many co-sponsors on this bill. We do have a 130 Democrats on this, 308 total total supporters of this bill. So it will be a shame if we don’t get this through and it is true, it is going through the committee right now and today or tomorrow I might have my chance to offer my amendment and put it into the bill.

Chrystia Freeland: Congressman Paul, who is opposed to your push for transparency, who’s fighting it?

Ron Paul: The Fed. The Fed has actually, I think for the first time in their history, hired a lobbyist and the lobbyist used to work for ENRON. So they’re diligently pumping up the fear. You know, “Oh, if we know what was going on with the Fed it would causes tremendous inflation, it would cause interest rates to go up and all sorts of things. You know, if we knew what was going we might create a financial crisis.” It’s the Fed and the banks and the big corporations and some of the politicians are in the know and getting benefits. But the system depends on the control of money. But this is not new, this is historic.

The king in the old days always had control of the money, they did it in different ways. They clipped coins, diluted the metal, printed money. Today it’s really sophisticated; it’s done secretly with a computer and that’s why it has made it so much more dangerous than ever before.

Dylan Ratigan: Let’s just back away for a second because the Fed lobbyist some of the CEOs, some of the bank CEOs quite honestly might have a point. What if we were to look inside the Federal Reserve as you suspect, I certainly suspect it and I think Christian Freeman suspects it, anybody who understands how our financial system was built over the past 10 years suspects, that all those trillions of dollars that the Federal Reserve… that were collateralized… they’ve taken from the banks, is worth far less than it’s currently been represented as. So let’s say that that the 8 trillion of the Fed may be only worth 4 trillion. And everybody is basically trying to cover up the fact that there is this huge hole, this huge fraud has been perpetrated by the banks and the fraud would reveal itself truthfully if they were to audit the Federal Reserve and that would cause panic. Let’s assume they’re right, let’s assume that you’re right, let’s assume that this is worthless crap at the Fed, how do you deal with that fallout if, in fact, we get what we want and they open the closet. And what do you think is in there is in there, which is nothing?

Ron Paul: But pretending it’s worth 8 trillion is worth 2 trillion or even less doesn’t solve our problems. It just delays the agony. For me it would be like in medicine someone had cancer and we treated him with aspirin and we said, “Oh you don’t want to know the truth, and we don’t give you a real treatment”. You have to know the truth and you have to have a real treatment and today they won’t look at the real truth and the cause of the business cycle and the cause all the financial bubble and then the bursting of that bubble. What they’re doing is they’re saying, “Oh, all we need are more regulations, and what we need to do is prop up all the bad debt. We don’t want liquidation of debt, we don’t want the prices down, let’s stimulate housing” and on and on. So they’re doing everything that caused the bubble before to try to re-inflation the bubble, and believe me, they’re not going to be able to do it this time.

Chrystia Freeland: Congressman Paul, I agree with you that there is a little bit of an irony in the fact that in curing a crisis which was cause by too much money pumped out, one of the cures turns out to have been spending more government money. But don’t you have to agree that that cure has turned out to be pretty effective? We haven’t had a second great depression, the financial crisis has more or less been resolved. Isn’t that better than having a total freezing of the financial system, which it looked as if we might face last fall?

Ron Paul: Not long term. What if it turns out that we’re in 1930 and we have another 15 years of problems ahead of us. So, no. I think we’re still kidding ourselves. They say the GDP is up, but they printed money and they spent the money and when government spends money the GDP goes up.

Chrystia Freeland: Isn’t that better than the alternative of the entire economy just screeching to a halt?

Ron Paul: No, it really isn’t. You have to bite the bullet, you have to admit the truth, you have to make the right corrections. We used to do this. We’ve never had a perfect system; there was always abuse of the gold standard, but when they got out of whack they allowed the correction to occur rather quickly. The best example is the depression of 1920 and 1921. It lasted about a year and people did go bankrupt and it was really tough, but it’s not even an historical event. It was the introduction by Hoover and Roosevelt that the politicians can’t have hands off; you have to, “now that you have this sophisticated Federal Reserve, we’ll never allow recessions to occur.” They took the recessions of the early 1930 and turned it into a depression. So though you can do it is better. It is kind of like getting somebody off drugs. What you’re talking about is you don’t want the withdrawal symptoms, and I admit there will be withdrawal symptoms. But, keeping them on the drug which is easy money, easy spending and huge deficits and all that, that will kill the patient. And the patient remains the dollar and we’re going to be on the verge of killing the patient and when you see gold up at $1100 an ounce, that is a little bit of a warning sign. That might only be the beginning of what we’re going to see.

Dylan Ratigan: But what if you just decided is that you didn’t care about the children? If you don’t care about children, isn’t it better just to ignore it? To heck with the kids, it’s easier for me to just print the money and go out to dinner, don’t you think?

Ron Paul: Well, yea. That is live high on the hog, and maybe the bankers won’t come and get us. But the bankers always come, and in this case it’s the market that is coming. When an individual lives beyond his or means, they must be forced to live below their means. When a country does it, they will be forced to live below their means. And I believe that the lowering of our standard of living actually has been going on for about ten years, because the good jobs have been disappearing. The standard of living isn’t really going up. So we’re holding back the correction and it doesn’t look so bad. So yeah, we didn’t crash into a depression but what we’re doing is preventing the good policies to come back which means free markets, sound money and limited government, balanced budgets. All these things are totally rejected here because this place in Washington DC is run by Keynesians. Keynesians leaning towards socialism now because we’re buying up the companies. No, it cannot solve our problems.

Dylan Ratigan: It’s also easier to print money. You will appreciate this story, Congressman Paul, and then I’m going to let you go. I was talking to a couple of bankers the other day as to why it is that they’re still trying to keep 80% of their swap market, which is the crooked insurance market, in private? And they said, “Well, because if we bring it into public then we’ll have to post collateral, and we don’t have any collateral”. And so it’s easier just to keep it in secret than to bring the entire credit default swap market into public and reveal that there is actually nothing there for the market that is 9 times the size of the global economy.

Ron Paul: But you haven’t learnt the language yet. They’re just illiquid, temporarily illiquid. But if you use ‘worthless’ instead of ‘illiquid’ then why should the taxpayer ever be stuck for something that is worthless, and that is what’s happening.

Dylan Ratigan: Well, listen, keep us posted. I think that the most interesting part in this context and the context of the conversation at MSNBC and the political context, because there is such self-evident aspect to this point is why are our politicians so hesitant to get their hands dirty and do the hard work, as troubling as it may be? And why do they continue to indulge the political expedience of money printing because it’s quite simply an easier road to take?

Ron Paul: I think you got it there.

Dylan Ratigan: Alright Congressman Paul, thank you. Keep us posted.

Related posts:

1. Ron Paul on MSNBC: Audit the Federal Reserve! Show: Morning Meeting Channel: MSNBC Date: 7/22/2009 Transcript Dylan...
2. Watered Down “Audit” Bill Threatens Ron Paul’s Efforts to Audit the Federal Reserve Show: Freedom Watch Host: Judge Andrew Napolitano Date: 10/21/2009...
3. Ron Paul: We Need More Regulation of the Federal Reserve Date: 6/18/2009 News Anchor: I want to actually bring...

Show: White House Brief
Host: Paul Westcott
Date: 11/4/2009 or 11/5/2009

Transcript

Paul Westcott: Congressman Ron Paul, you spoke recently before the House Financial Services Committee during the mark up of what’s being called the Investor Protection Act of 2009. Really, you know, you were explaining the difference between regulation and bureaucracy. Can you explain that for our audience?

Ron Paul: Well, my complaint is that if you argue for the free market, that you don’t care about regulations and that everything is chaotic and that’s not true. There are two ways you regulate the market. If you do it by the free market, you’re regulated by the consumers, their choices and if they choose to bankrupt the company, the company has to go bankrupt, so you have bankruptcies. You have laws against fraud. You have laws against theft and there’s a regulation, but instead we sort of protect some of those things and we bail out the people who make bad decisions. At the same time, since the people who like government regulations don’t understand that the problems come from the Federal Reserve and the manipulation of the money supply that creates the business cycle, so they figure they can compensate. “We’ll just have more regulations.” All these mistakes being made as a consequence of bad monetary policies, “if we just have more bureaucrats checking up on everybody, we’re going to protect everybody.”

And my analogy is that it’s similar to people who would like to prevent any slander or any bad comments in newspapers. They have prior restraint. We don’t go to the government and say, “Well, check everything we say in the media.” Now, that would be preposterous, but you know, there still are restraints on the media and what people say and do, but as soon as it comes to economics’ prior restraint, we have to check everything, check it out and have the bureaucrats look over your shoulder. It causes chaos. It causes the prices to go up and contributes to the mistakes that the Federal Reserve makes.

Paul Westcott: Well, there you go mentioning the Fed. You know, you got a book out now, ‘End the Fed’ and there has been really a lot of discussion recently to grow the size of this organization. What’s latest ramp up looking like and is it just becoming more? Is it getting to a tipping point at this point?

Ron Paul: Yes, it’s getting pretty close. This bill we’re working on now these few more weeks. I don’t think it will be finished before we have our break for Thanksgiving. But it looks like the Fed will end up with more power. They always do. Of course, I’m working hard to go and try and at least get the books out so we’ll know what they’re doing. We don’t even know what all they’re up to. Barney Frank, the chairman, is not interested in the Federal Reserve taking over all this consumer protection bureaucracy. He’ll see that a separate group doing that.

Paul Westcott: Sure.

Ron Paul: But I believe that when we finally finish it all that the Fed would end up with more power, not less.

Paul Westcott: Well, and you know, turning to the health care bill, very hot topic obviously in Washington. As a Congressman and medical doctor, you’ve seen both sides of government-run health care through Medicare and Medicaid, of course. Would you say what we’re seeing right now going to the House and the Senate, are these bills going to benefit Americans in the end? I mean, I’m sort of lumping them all together, so feel free to break one off if you want. But do any of them really help Americans in the end?

Ron Paul: Well, like a lot of government programs, on the short run, some people seem to benefit. On the long run, it’s detrimental even to the people that it’s supposed to help. It is sort of like housing, when we had housing programs and the Fed pumping in the credit, it seemed like a lot of people were benefiting. You know, the prices of houses were going up and poor people had houses and it looked like a Golden Age. But then eventually, they’re the very people who suffered.

That’s the way it is in medicine. You pump in a new program like this, they’ll probably come up and say, “See, we can find these people that didn’t have any insurance and all this,” but ultimately it raises costs and diminishes service and there are shortages. So no, it’s very detrimental on the long run. And I think the real fallacy is they’re basing the need for all this that people are dying in the streets, you know, without medical care.

Paul Westcott: Right.

Ron Paul: But nobody is denied medical care in this country. I practiced medicine before we had government management and that coming in into the seventies and late sixties and nobody was turned away before nor since then. Emergency rooms take care of everybody and it’s just a bunch of scare tactics in order to get the bureaucracy growing and the special interest benefiting because there are too many middlemen in medicine.

Paul Westcott: Right.

Ron Paul: They do all the lobbying up here. The people when they come, the individuals, number-wise, more individuals are opposed to this, but the big companies. You know, whether they’re insurance or drug companies or management companies, they’re the ones. Even the AMA, they’re the ones who are pushing for some of this stuff.

Paul Westcott: Now, we’ve heard a lot of people in the sort of liberal intelligentsia as a word discuss the public option on how potentially you could move that public option to becoming a single-payer type system, government run, total government takeover of health care. From what you’ve seen, is that the direction some of your colleagues on the other side of aisle are leaning towards?

Ron Paul: Yes, that’s their goal and they say, “Oh, no. This would only be an option and a few people can join if they don’t have anything else,” but it would sort of like the public option on prescription drug program that the Republicans pushed through. It was a benefit to the corporations who were having trouble paying these benefits for the retirees, so they were very willing to dump it on the government. And even today, the public option of Medicare is not much of an option if you’re 65 and retired. I mean, you don’t just go out and buy Blue Cross insurance anymore. They don’t even offer it to you and the medical savings account, which was introduced by Republicans, which I think is a good idea, they’re prohibited if you’re over 65. So it’s always pushing you toward the government programs.

Paul Westcott: Sure, and just lastly here, I want to discuss the races in Virginia, New Jersey and in the New York 23rd. We saw a Conservative candidate getting 45 percent of the vote; Republicans take two very big seats. Should these results be taken as… I mean, everyone is talking about, of course, referendum on the President, but really, should this be taken as a warning to a degree to some of those Republicans who may have, shall we say, not been in touch with their conservative side so much over the last few years?

Ron Paul: Oh, I hope so and I hope it’s a sign that there is a trend away from more big government. It looks like that we could interpret that. But you know, it’s still a little bit early to tell and I think the biggest problem why there is this third party or tea party movement is that Republicans have lost so much credibility when they actually had a chance to cut back and they really didn’t do it. But it’s good that the people are unhappy with the status quo, which means that the group that’s running the show now are big government people and they’re very, very aggressive with it. So maybe this election will point out that they’re going too fast.

Paul Westcott: There you go. Congressman Ron Paul, thank you so much for your time.

Related posts:

1. Ron Paul on CNN: Medicare is Broke, Socialized Healthcare will Fail Show: Larry King Show Host: Larry King Date: August...
2. Ron Paul: Government involvement causes price inflation in healthcare and education In an interview with Yahoo! Finance’s Tech Ticker, Ron Paul...
3. Ron Paul: How To Solve The Healthcare Crisis Having practiced medicine for over 30 years, Ron Paul gives...

Channel: RT
Date: 11/05/2009

Transcript:

Bill Dod: If Obama doesn’t deliver change, the U.S. still has other potential candidates eager to lead the country. And one of them is Republican Ron Paul, who is poised to run for the presidency in 2012. Let’s now cross to Priya Sridhar, she’s in our Washington studio. Interestingly enough, Pria, Ron Paul hasn’t actually yet announced he is running for this, so why have supporters already started his campaign at such an early stage?

Priya Sridhar: That’s right Bill, nothing is official just yet. But if you go to Ron Paul’s website there is a question there that says, “Do you think Ron Paul should run for President in 2012?” and you can even buy “Ron Paul for President” merchandise. So people are getting pretty psyched for the 2012 election, even though it’s kind of far away.

And joining me to help talk about Ron Paul’s popularity is Shelly Roche from the Ladies for Liberty Alliance. Shelly, thanks so much for joining me.

Shelly Roche: Thanks for having me.

Priya Sridhar: So, first of all, why do you think Ron Paul is becoming so popular right now?

Shelly Roche: Well, I think it’s a number of factors. But really when you look at the direction we are going as a country and all of these big frightening things that are happening like the bailouts and the economy and health care, you know, he’s kind of the one voice of reason that’s standing up and saying, “We don’t need all of this. We do have other options”. And he is always making sense, and I think that really resonates with people.

Priya Sridhar: And what do you think? You think he is going to run for office in 2012? I have a feeling you’re hoping he will, but do you think he actually will?

Shelly Roche: I definitely hope he will and I think he recognizes that it would be a smart move to at least position himself to do that, because that’s really what launched him back in 2008 into the media and got him a lot of momentum. And so I think this is another big opportunity for him to kind of capitalize on that and just go for it and set himself up to do it, and we’ll see what happens.

Priya Sridhar: So he is becoming more popular. But realistically do you think he has a chance and what are some of the challenges he might face?

Shelly Roche: Well, I think he has a better chance than he had last year. One of the biggest challenges he is going to face is resistance from within the Republican Party, because he’s kind of at cross purposes with them in some of their platform items. And in trying to reform the Republican Party he’s going to meet with a lot of resistance. So I think his message resonates with Republicans and Democrats and it’s really he’s going to have to overcome that kind of obstacle.

Priya Sridhar: And what idea, specifically, do you think resonates the most with the American people that Ron Paul sort of stands for and advocates?

Shelly Roche: Well, I think it is the economic freedom, the fiscal responsibility and just ending corruption and the entrenched “politics as usual” kind of system. He doesn’t play that game and he kind of brings a new perspective to politics and what it can be. So I think that really gets people excited.

Priya Sridhar: And do you think his popularity right now is a direct correlation of President Obama’s kind of sliding approval ratings, or do you think that people are just looking for something that’s a little different?

Shelly Roche: I think it’s a combination. I think the degree to which we’ve started expanding government and really the debt and the economy has really contributed to people starting to think about that maybe this isn’t the right direction. And so that certainly helps. But also it’s just kind of… he has a totally different perspective, he has a consistent voting record. He’s been in politics forever, so he kind of offers that assurance that he is not going to succumb to special interests and that sort of thing. He’s representing the people and always doing what he thinks is best for the country whether you agree with it all the time or not. At least you have that.

Priya Sridhar: And how do you think the country would be different right now if Ron Paul was President and not Barack Obama?

Shelly Roche: Wow, I think there are so many ways. We wouldn’t be talking about health care the way we are. We’d be talking about different kinds of reforms. So maybe smaller steps that are more practical and limiting the size of government, getting rid of wasteful programs, real reform, not just the kind of reform that expands government and costs trillions of dollars.

Priya Sridhar: And the last think I want to ask you really quickly is, you know, a year ago today Barack Obama found out that he was elected as the President of the United States. How do you think things have changed from a year ago till today?

Shelly Roche: Well, you can look at the approval ratings and that sort of thing, but something I saw online last night and today, they were asking people to submit one word to describe how they felt about the first year of the presidency. And the Republicans, you can guess what they can say: “outraged, betrayed, scared”. But on the Democrats’ side they were saying things like “hopeful” and the things you would expect. But they were also saying “disappointed, anxious” and I think that really is a barometer of the way people are kind of starting to feel a little bit nervous that he has not really delivered on his promises so far and some of that support is waning I think.

Priya Sridhar: Well, I think there are a lot of people out there like Shelly who will anxiously be waiting to see what happens with Ron Paul next. But for now, Bill, it’s back to you.

Bill Dod: Thanks very much indeed. That was our correspondent Prea Shria talking to you with Shelly Rose from the libertarian organization, the Ladies of Liberty Alliance, live in our Washington studio. Thanks very much indeed, Prea.

Related posts:

1. Ron Paul 2012 Should Ron Paul run for President in 2012? Click here...
2. Ron Paul 2012 (Results) Our latest poll is now closed. It ran from February...
3. Ron Paul 2012: When should Ron Paul announce his decision? RonPaul.com ran two polls earlier this year regarding Ron Paul’s...

Date: 11/4/2009
Venue: Financial Services Committee Hearing

Transcript:

Ron Paul: I thank you, Mr. Chairman. Earlier this year, Secretary Geithner had an interview and he said that the main source of our problem with this economic crisis was that we kept interest rates too low too long. And I certainly agree with him on that. And I also agree with the authors of this bill that we don’t have enough regulations. But that doesn’t mean that I endorse the notion that we need more bureaucrats and more written regulations of that sort.

A lot of people think that if you don’t support the bureaucratic approach, that you don’t endorse regulations. But the free market provides a lot of regulations and those who the regulations that we have ignored, as a matter of fact we have actually allowed them to go forward. A major regulation we should have is “always enforce contracts.” The government has a responsibility to ensure contracts are enforced.

But also the issue of fraud. Just because we are unregulated in the sense of not having bureaucrats do it, it does not mean that fraud should be tolerated. And yet now it’s coming out that companies like Goldman Sachs may well have been involved in something that could be construed as fraud. They were selling AAA securities – the credit default swaps – and at the same time they were shorting the market. They knew there was a housing bubble, but they were telling their investors that they had these wonderful bonds to buy. Now that, to me, is fraud. And that should be handled by people like this going to prison. But there are free market alternatives to pretending that every single transaction and almost preemptively prevent things. To me it’s sort of like trying to protect against slander from anybody saying or writing anything that harms somebody. We don’t believe in that. If somebody commits it then we, of course, penalize them for it. But in the marketplace we assume that we can preempt it, we can have prior restraint, and that’s where the chaos comes from. So, in that sense, I don’t believe in prior restraint. The people in the media have their limits; they cannot lie and they cannot get away with defaming people.

But this “too low and too long” on the interest rates, I think, is the key to it. The free market explains the business cycle better than anybody else. Because they understand that the cycles come from artificially low interest rates. So Geithner admits they were too low too long. The reason why this is so damaging is that the interest rate level is key; it’s key to the investor. It’s key to the developer and the builder. If the interest rates are low, the signal that they’re hearing is that there is a lot of savings, and therefore there is capital available to them. But we went through a period of them when there was zero savings and interest rates were low. So it was very confusing. The savers don’t save anymore because there are so called too much savings. At the same time the developers and builders think, “Hey, there is a lot of capital out there”. But it really wasn’t capital; it was artificial. It was credit created out of thin air and it was a fraudulent approach to the issue of providing capital. And someday we’ll get to that. We’re not going to get to that whole idea in this bill because that deals with monetary policy and understanding of how that system works.

But systemic risk is very, very serious and it is the nature of money that creates the systemic risk that we’re trying to deal with. The Federal Reserve came into existence in 1913 and they were given a dollar that was worth 1/20th of an ounce of gold. Today it’s worth 1/1100th of an ounce of gold. Which means that our measuring stick is unstable; it continually loses value. And you can’t build a healthy economy domestically, or especially internationally, if that dollar or that currency becomes the reserve standard of the world. And we’re doing this constantly. Right now it’s not only the Fed’s fault; we’ve run up the deficits. There is a limit to what we can tax, there is a limit to what we can borrow. And at the same time we turn it over to the Fed and the Fed prints the money and artificially lowers interest rates, and that is where the systemic risk comes from.

So someday we’ll have to address that subject of exactly where this comes from. I will offer my amendment, which is the HR1 207, dealing with the Federal Reserve, but that deals only with transparency and we have broad bi-partisan support for this bill and I hope there will be a consensus on supporting that bill.

Thank you very much.

Related posts:

1. Private Fraud vs. Public Fraud In his latest column Ron Paul points out that governments...
2. Ron Paul Questions Ben Bernanke on Free Markets vs. Crony Capitalism Event: House Financial Services Committee Hearing Channel: C-SPAN Date:...
3. Ron Paul on Fox Business Channel: Fox Business Date: 3/24/2009 News Anchor: Today during...

You can select up to 5 answers below. (The available options are displayed in random order.)

Related posts:

1. Ron Paul 2012: Who should be Ron Paul’s running mate? Ron Paul hasn’t announced a decision yet whether he is...
2. Ron Paul 2012 Should Ron Paul run for President in 2012? Click here...
3. Ron Paul 2012: When should Ron Paul announce his decision? RonPaul.com ran two polls earlier this year regarding Ron Paul’s...

Channel: Fox Business
Host: Davis Asman
Date: 11/04/2009

Transcript:

David Asman: Are politicians inside the Beltway aware of the extent to which Americans object to all the recent government spending and government intrusions in our lives? One man who clearly is aware of the discontent is Ron Paul; he’s been fighting against government intrusion for some time now, and he joins us. Good to see you, Congressman. Thanks for being here.

Ron Paul: Thank you, David. Nice to be with you.

David Asman: So do you feel somewhat vindicated by yesterday’s elections?

Ron Paul: Well, in some ways. I mean it’s not exactly that each candidate that won was espousing everything that I’ve said. But I think it makes the point that people are unhappy and they’re punishing the right people; the people who are in charge. Republicans got punished a couple of years ago and I think that’s appropriate. People are very upset, more so now than ever before, and they’re directing their attention to Washington. The party that’s in charge should be penalized and who knows, this will probably spill over to next year. So I think it’s very good, it’s a good trend and hopefully the Republicans have learnt a lesson. So if we do get another chance we do a heck of a lot better job than we did when we got in control before.

David Asman: But frankly, it is business as usually for some politicians. Beyond what Nancy Pelosi said, I understand the senate just passed a bill to extend unemployment insurance, but tucked very secretly inside that bill was an extension of the $8,000 credit for first home buyers, which had some real questionable results couple of months ago. Some people are saying it didn’t do anything except spend more taxpayer money.

Ron Paul: Yeah, I don’t think anything has really changed here. If they had a concern about our problems and think it was related to government spending, why would they offer up all these new programs, you know, this trillion dollar medical package? But I think the absurdity even on the medical package is that the Pelosi crowd tells the people, “We’re going to be able to insure everybody and it’s not going to cost you anything. We’re going to save enough money by cutting waste and fraud.”

When the American people see that, whether they’re conservatives or liberals, I don’t think they buy into that. I think they lose credibility on this. But no, it’s business as usual whether it is spending or borrowing or printing the money. And I’m on the Financial Service Committee and it seems like just on a daily basis the solution is “if we just had more bureaucrats to protect us against all these bad investment.” But never asking the question why are people encouraged to make bad decisions, does it have anything to do with monetary policy? No, that’s not really ever discussed.G

David Asman: Incentives: you know, you put your finger on exactly the point. They don’t understand that if you increase tax rates, people may decide to make less money or hide their money and maybe they won’t get the $400 billion they hope to get from new taxes to fund health care.

Ron Paul: Yeah, there is always an unintended consequence that they haven’t anticipated. They don’t see much past their nose. And whether it’s domestic policy or foreign policy, I think the unintended consequences of government policies are unbelievable. Mises, the great Austrian economist, said, “Every time the government has an intervention in the marketplace for a so-called good reasons, it creates two new problems”. And, of course, I think he would be vindicated now when you look back over the last hundred years, especially since the Depression, at all the interventions that we’ve had in the marketplace. And they have been able to keep themselves in business. They create more problems, more bureaucrats, saying, “Hell yeah, those are good jobs, of course, they’re really productive”.

David Asman: Congressman, I thought that short of a 2 x 4 wacked across their head, an election loss like we saw yesterday in New Jersey, Virginia, does have a tendency to shake politicians up because after all one thing they care about more than anything else is getting re-elected.

Ron Paul: Yeah, that is the case and they’re not seeing the light and instead of maybe backing off a little bit and thinking about the medical package, they’ve speeded it up. So we’ll be here Saturday night; we’re supposed to vote on that bill on Saturday evening. And it’s just more of the same. It will not improve the quality of medical care, it’s going to cost a lot more, there will be unintended consequences. The insurance companies will probably be coming out okay and drug companies will do okay. There will be all kinds of things. Next year the people will be yelling and screaming. But, fortunately, there are a significant number of American people right now who are seeing the handwriting on the wall and they are complaining about the process up here. But so far they haven’t gotten the attention of the leadership.

David Asman: Well, maybe not the leadership, but I was talking to some Blue Dog Democrats today and they said on air in public that they have serious problems with the Pelosi Bill. They had problems with the Bachus bill as well. But the Pelosi Bill is even more costly and it raises taxes more. They suggested they’re not going to vote for it over the weekend. Is there enough of a revolt now among Blue Dog Democrats and, of course, all the Republicans so that Pelosi won’t have the bill passed?

Ron Paul: I guess it’s always possible. I mean, we’ve been led to believe today “Be prepared, be here, start early Saturday, hopefully we will get it done by Saturday evening”. But things do shift, I mean, maybe if in another 24 hours of thinking about the election, maybe they will change their tune. It has happened before. When the American people get really, really outraged, they usually get attention of this place. But unfortunately things get so bad for so long that it’s hard to turn this battleship or this aircraft carrier around. We can make efforts but it is a major problem to reverse the trend. Because, quite frankly, as much as I’m opposed to all the spending and inflating, to stop it in its tracks and turn it around, there are going to be some people who aren’t going to be very happy with this. But if we continue this process, then we’re going to have a bankruptcy which will be manifesting itself in a dollar crisis, and that’s what I’m concerned about: these policies that we’re following are going to lead to the destruction of our dollar, and I think right now today we’ve noticed that even gold is signaling maybe some significant inflation ahead.

David Asman: Oh, it sure is. There are a whole lot of signs of inflation ahead. But one other big spending bill, of course, is Cap and Trade. A little later on in this program we’re going to be talking about Al Gore and how much money he’s making from certain carbon credit deals that’s he’s involved with. But I’m told by some people that Cap and Trade is a dead deal for this year at least. Are you hearing the same thing?

Ron Paul: I haven’t heard that, I hear the conversation and let’s hope that it’s true. But that, of course, again will be a major victory for people who believe in sanity and markets. But there is still a lot of pressure. You know, the greatest hoax I think that has been around for many, many years if not hundreds of years has been this hoax on the environment and global warming. You notice they don’t call it global warming anymore. It’s weather control. [damage control?]

David Asman: No, no, no. Because it’s getting cooler, you can’t call it global warming anymore.

Ron Paul: But it is a monster and sometime they’re going to have to say, “Hey, why hasn’t the economy improved itself? We pumped in all the…” You know, the Krugmans of the world. “Well, you just didn’t do enough. You know, trillions of dollars from the Fed and 800 billion dollars from the Congress, sure it’s working, you just need more.” You know, someday people will come to their senses, but probably not this week yet.

David Asman: Well, I got to ask you one final question because you have had some success in getting transparency – people behind you are voting for transparency in the Federal Reserve. Are there other issues on which you have been sort of the lone voice in the wilderness where people are finally coming in and joining you?

Ron Paul: Well, I think on the fiscal policies of just voting against some of the spending I would hope so. I guess the sentiment is there. But they don’t quite grasp what I am doing on the House floor, because I vote for anything that has money in it; every nickel, unless you pay for it. Not by taxes but by cutting someplace else. So if there is a program that we want to do, we should cut it from someplace else. I get a lot of sympathy for this saying, “You’re right, we should do this”. But I don’t think the votes have changed significantly. I do think the Republicans are voting better and I kid the other Republicans and I said, “Are you guys voting with me now, or am I voting with you?” But we are voting together more so than we did when the Republicans were in charge of spending the money.

David Asman: And you do have some Blue Dog Democrats with you as well. Congressman, Dr. Ron Paul, it’s been great to see you. Thank you very much for being here.

Ron Paul: Thank you, David.

Related posts:

1. Ron Paul Warns Against Runaway Inflation Channel: Fox Business Date: 5/11/2009 Transcript David Asman: Congressman...
2. Ron Paul: Stress Test Propaganda Is Just More Of The Same Channel: Fox Business Date: 5/7/2009 Transcript Liz Claman: What’s...
3. Ron Paul on Freedom Watch: “Americans’ views aren’t being reflected here in Washington” This Wednesday afternoon, Ron Paul joined Peter Schiff, Dr. Yaron...

Show: Freedom Watch
Channel: FoxNews.com
Date: 11/03/2009

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Hello and welcome to Freedom Watch, your daily dose of raw liberty streaming online at FoxNews.com. I’m your host, Judge Andrew Napolitano here defending freedom, depending your natural rights and defending your right to have a government that stays within the confines of the Constitution.

You’ve all heard me state repeatedly that everything the government runs is broke. Social Security is broke. Medicare is broke. Medicaid is broke. Amtrak is broke. The post office is broke. Now, the same bureaucrats that have run the government into the ground want to run healthcare and they also want us to believe that they can fix the economy and repair the damage done to the dollar by recklessly borrowing and ruthlessly printing money and by spending into the trillions. They forget that the government consumes wealth and only the free market can produce wealth. In an upcoming article in Forbes Magazine, Congressman Ron Paul says “be prepared for the worst.” The large scale government intervention in the economy is going to end badly.

It’s now my pleasure to introduce one of America’s great defenders of freedom and liberty today, Congressman Ron Paul joins us from our nation’s capital. He is the author of the New York Times’ bestseller, one of his several bestsellers, “End the Fed”. Congressman Paul, welcome back to Freedom Watch.

Ron Paul: Thank you, Judge. It’s good to be with you.

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Why should we expect the worst and what do you warn in this article that we should all expect?

Ron Paul: Well, as you said in your opening statement what has the government done right, and if you were going to turn medical care over to the government, their test was how well they could distribute vaccine for H1N1 and the question of whether it was necessary or not, all that exists. But they did that so poorly and intervene so viciously in our rights and that sent a message. I think that is part of the problem going throughout the society and throughout the markets right now. It’s that the government is just totally inept and the pretense is that the stimulus is working. You hear the liberal writers saying, “Oh, the stimulus has worked. All we need is more of it and it would have really worked.” Well, the trouble is it didn’t work. They took billions and billions, if not trillions of dollars away from the people and gave it to the government and the government spent it, which means they misallocated credit and resources and they make things worse, and so we haven’t changed anything.

This idea that the GDP went up, well, you know, they measure GDP by government spending as well. That’s included in it, so what is this? We either borrow the money from the Chinese or we print the money, we spend the money. It goes in and you buy up clunkers or buy up houses and say that, “Oh, the GDP went up.” Well, it has to be temporary and that’s been my argument. That’s my argument in the article, it’s that if you see economic growth returning, you’re kidding yourself because all the bad policies are in place and unfortunately from the people I deal with here in Washington, there aren’t very many free market economists or believe in the free market. They’ve all been trained and indoctrinated by Keynesian economics and they really don’t believe in freedom and sound money in the sense that I do.

Judge Andrew Napolitano: You point out in your article, Congressman Paul, that we are seeing some little snippets of growth here and there today. You called them some green shoots of growth, just as we saw in 1930 when Hoover and later FDR, of course, were trying to micromanage the economy from Washington D.C. Why do we see these snippets of growth and why should we reject the government’s claims that they are a sign of better things to come?

Ron Paul: Well, I think it is part of human nature because nothing goes down until the very end stages with a currency. The end stage is a currency does fall off a cliff and it goes down, but if you look at the dollar, the dollar has been going down for many, many decades. So all markets go up and down and have blips, but you have to look at trends. So because the market just really was bad a year ago, the fact that the, you know, a lot of money is pumped in and people are trying to stimulate things, even when they are artificial, it will look like there is some growth in the economy, but I think that’s all a delusion. I think it’s a mistake and the worse thing we could do is assume that what we have done here in Washington in the last year has been helpful. That is very, very dangerous because it has all been very damaging.t

Judge Andrew Napolitano: You predict in your article a drop in growth worse than anything we have seen in the past two years. What are you talking about?

Ron Paul: I think the whole economy is going to be much weaker. We’ve had a financial collapse. The financial system was built on a house of cards, which was the fiat dollar standard and it was international because it was the reserve standard, But we haven’t had a dollar crisis. As a matter of fact, the dollar is benefiting to a degree right now because there is still a lot of dollars out there and people don’t even know where to park it, so they park it in Treasury bills, which helps the Fed and it drives down the interest. It helps the government, but that is all temporary.

When the dollar collapses, what happens is the people will recognize what you said earlier on, that everything the government touches is bankrupt and when that comes about… already we saw an early sign of this, the Social Security beneficiaries didn’t get any cost of living increase this year as a pretense that, “Oh, you know, there really wasn’t any inflation and we’re going to straighten up our house.” But eventually everything the government touches and passes out, the dollar will lose its value, so the more dollars they print, the more value it loses.

So far, they have been lucky enough, but they printed dollars and the people have taken it like Goldman Sachs and others keep making more and more. But eventually, this dollar is going to quit working and then everybody is going to know what poverty is all about.

Judge Andrew Napolitano: You and I have talked about this off air, but we keep hearing rumors and snippets in references in the blogs to it. Are you considering running for the nomination of a party for president in 2012?

Ron Paul: Not seriously, but you know, I listen to them and that’s a long way off. I think more about what the dollar is doing today and what we’re going to do with healthcare and a few other things, so my plans aren’t that far out. So no, I’m not giving it serious consideration.

Judge Andrew Napolitano: But you must know that there are millions out there that would ardently desire this. We did Freedom Watch last week before a live student audience at Drexel University in Philadelphia, in the same room where then Senator McCain and then Senator Obama debated in one of the debates a year ago. Everybody was asking me and these are students, “Is Ron Paul going to run for president?”

Ron Paul: Well, Judge, I think it might be your turn this time around. So you and I have to have another private conversation on this.

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Congressman Paul, it’s always a pleasure. Thanks for joining us on Freedom Watch.

Ron Paul: Thank you.

Related posts:

1. Ron Paul, Peter Schiff on Freedom Watch This afternoon, Ron Paul participated in Judge Andrew Napolitano’s online...
2. Watered Down “Audit” Bill Threatens Ron Paul’s Efforts to Audit the Federal Reserve Show: Freedom Watch Host: Judge Andrew Napolitano Date: 10/21/2009...
3. Ron Paul on Freedom Watch: “Americans’ views aren’t being reflected here in Washington” This Wednesday afternoon, Ron Paul joined Peter Schiff, Dr. Yaron...

Channel: Russia Today
Date: 11/01/2009

Transcript

Dina Gusovsky: A national emergency is declared in the United States, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the war in Afghanistan, the economic crisis, or nukes in Iran. Instead, it’s H1N1, the swine flu. But is all this media hysteria really justified, and is the threat as dire as some would have us believe?

Joining me to discuss this and other burning issues, both here in the U.S. and abroad, is Congressman Paul. Thank you so much for speaking with me.

So you have called this full vaccination program a failure. Why?

Ron Paul: Well, they have failed to get the vaccine to the people that need it. They’ve been working on it for months and months, they’ve spent a couple of billion of dollars and I have several physicians in my family and they don’t have any vaccine in their office, so even if they wanted to give it they don’t have it. This just demonstrates that when governments decide to do something, they’re pretty inept at doing it even though a lot of money was spent. And yet the American people are indicating that they want federal government to take over medical care, but if they can’t even deliver a vaccine, I don’t see how they can deliver medical care to everybody any more efficiently.

Dina Gusovsky: You have questioned before why Barack Obama doesn’t get his own children vaccinated, and just recently we found out that he, in fact, had Sasha and Melia get the shot. Do you think that this was a response at all to what you might have said?

Ron Paul: I don’t know the exact sequence. I know when I did it I obviously believed he hadn’t because he had announced in a press conference, “Oh no, they have not had a shot”. But I thought he probably figured it was in their best interest politically to do it. But isn’t that sort of sad that if he deep down in his heart didn’t want his kids to have it, that he was willing to do this. Of course, the analogy I made there was, you know, so many of our presidents, Republicans or Democrats, always pushed government education. At the same time our Presidents don’t send their kids to public school here in DC. So they talk big that they’re going to take care of everybody, but they want special treatment for their own children.

Dina Gusovsky: You talk about having the freedom of choice when it comes to this. You know, we’ve seen rallies in New York where doctors and nurses were saying, “We don’t want this to be mandatory”. Do you think that Americans will ever come to a point where they will have to get this vaccine, it won’t be an option anymore?

Ron Paul: Of course, while a lot of Americans are fearful of this – even I’m fearful – I don’t want to do away with the vaccines. I do think that we give too many vaccines and we can overdo it. But I want these choices to be made by patients and doctors, not by government. And the fact that New York is forcing government employees, it might be a sign of the times if it’s not reversed. If the American people go along with it, that’s what’s going to happen. And under these emergency powers that were declared they can actually, you know, quarantine people in large numbers and say, “You either do it or else we’ll put you here and we’ll inoculate everybody”. That is hardly the way I want to accomplish this and solve our problems.

Dina Gusovsky: You’re a doctor and critics of the vaccine itself are coming out and saying that in the long run it’s actually going to do more harm than good. Do you agree with this?

Ron Paul: I think it can do damage and some children can be affected. It is a live virus, it’s attenuated, it’s not supposed to be as virulent. But yes, there are rare cases of people dying from reaction to medication. And if this flu is not so serious, which it doesn’t sound to be… you know, they were yelling and screaming about a 1000 deaths. Well, regular flu kills many, many more than that every year and nobody gets up in arms about it. This whole idea about working so hard on this one vaccine actually makes shortages in the other vaccine as well. So it really doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Dina Gusovsky: There seems to me so much media uproar regarding this issue. Perhaps even taking precedence over other burning issues, particularly when it comes to foreign policy and the situation in Afghanistan. Because the real crisis seems to be occurring within the White House with that debate to send more troops or change the military strategy completely. What are your thoughts on this?

Ron Paul: My first thought is, “Aren’t they a little bit late?” I mean, this is the good war, we’ve only been there 8 years, and now we have the war and now we have the fighting, now we’re looking for the reason. Why are we in there, what are we doing, what is the result, what is the end point? I think they have it turned around. That’s why I argue for the case that when we go war it should be very, very precise and very, very deliberate under a precise vote of declaration and knowing what the Congress wants and what the people want and stand up for it. But when we got to war under U.N. resolutions or under NATO or because it feels good that we’re doing this to promote democracy, it’s vague, it’s political, there is no endpoint and there is no precise enemy. And, therefore, they keep fighting and we go into these countries and we become occupiers.

The people who live there resent it and they start fighting us. So we call them terrorists and say, “We’ll they’re terrorist there, they’re bad people. We have to send more troops in”. And the citizens die from these bombing raids. They’ve even dying in Pakistan. All that does is incite more people to resent what we’re doing. So it’s a cycle. And here we are at a point of a cycle where few people are questioning it: “Do we really need more”. And, of course, the military wants more, and Obama probably is honestly in a box because he supports the war, he supported it during the campaign, and the military wants more troops, but a lot of Americans don’t, especially the Democratic base. So he has a dilemma. So it would be much better to have a precise position, non-intervention, you know what you’re supposed to do. Just stay out of these places.

Dina Gusovsky: I’m glad you mentioned Pakistan; it’s becoming more and more crucial in this fight. We’ve seen violence increasing. What is the future going to hold?

Ron Paul: More chaos, more killing and more resentment towards Americans and, you know, there is a big fuss because we just voted for more foreign aid, and rightfully so the civilian population sees that as more control. And the Pakistanis have quite frequently [fought] internally over civilian control versus military control. The last thing that we need is us being involved there. But our policy in Afghanistan has spilled over because some of the people we were trying to kill in Afghanistan have gone into Pakistan, so there is much more violence there and I think the resentment will be towards us. It just doesn’t look like there is an easy end to this, unless they change overall policy. And, of course, that’s what I’ve advocated all along: changing overall policy.

Dina Gusovsky: Now, switching gears to Iran. Do you think that the United States in this case is justified to pressure Iran to give up its nuclear program?

Ron Paul: I think we’re completely wrong, because so far our own intelligence reports, NIE in 20 07, said that they haven’t been trying to do anything since 2003. And they’re allowed to have enrichment for peaceful purposes and the United Nations has never written a sanction against the Iranians for breaking the NPT treaty. They’ve never been accused of that. And the new place in Guam; they reported that and they said the IEA could come in and inspect it. And we’re about to put on more sanctions; we had that coming up in our committee today. And they want to prohibit anybody from delivering gasoline, so we’re going to punish the people of Iran. And the people aren’t going to get mad at their Ayatollahs and their radicals, they’re going to get mad at us and they’re going to solidify behind their radical leadership. So it backfires on us and it really helps China, because China will probably go in, sell them oil, develop their oil and they’ll have more influence there because they’re pretty good capitalists these days. And here we are, using aggression to try to control what’s happening in Iran. Our policy makes no sense.

Dina Gusovsky: Even so, some experts are hinting that a military strike might even be possible. That perhaps the United States and Israel are training or might be getting ready to strike Iran militarily. What do you think about this? Is this an option?

Ron Paul: Let’s hope not. I know some people go for the sanctions; they go for the sanctions believing that it is something better than going to war. But sanctions are an act of war. The point I made in the committee today was, “What would we think if somebody said we can’t import any oil”? We’d be furious and it would be an act of war. We wouldn’t put up with it one bit. So yea, it is an act of war. It encourages even more effort by the Chinese to come in there and help the Iranians, both to drill for oil and to refine their oil. And also it gives a real boom to the black market. And the people will suffer, the privileged will benefit, and American foreign policy will suffer another consequence.

Related posts:

1. Ron Paul on Russia Today President Barack Obama’s rhetoric is pretty good, but his economics...
2. Ron Paul: Sanctions on Iran are an Act of War Venue: Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing Date: 10/28/2009 Ron Paul:...
3. Ron Paul: Leave Iran Alone! In his latest video update, Ron Paul exposes the latest...

by Ron Paul

There has been a lot of talk in Washington recently about senior citizens, mostly about how various healthcare reform models would help or hurt them. But there is another critical issue that has quietly devastated seniors financially over the last few decades. It concerns how the cost of living is calculated. How does the administration justify not giving a cost of living increase to Social Security recipients this year?

According to the official Consumer Price Index calculation, life has gotten cheaper for the first time in decades. If the government can show statistically that the cost of living has gone down, not up, then they can make the case for not giving a cost of living increase to social security recipients. But does this match reality? Using older calculations of CPI, the cost of living has actually increased – by roughly 5 percent!

The CPI (Consumer Price Index) is a calculation based on the average price of a fixed basket of goods that was initially designed to help businesses adjust for inflation. The government eventually started using it to determine cost of living adjustments for entitlement programs. Couple that with politicians’ discovery that they could raid the social security trust fund to pay for new spending programs, and you have a perfect storm to deny seniors what they were promised, while hiding the true size of the deficit. For politicians, it is a win-win.

For seniors, it is a different story. Economist John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics has estimated that if the original methodology of CPI had not changed, Social Security checks would be nearly double what they are today. This represents a lot of money that politicians have been able to literally steal from seniors, to spend on their own wasteful programs. One example of how they do this is to substitute hamburger for steak, which lowers the average price of that basket of goods. But living on hamburger, or maybe dog food, instead of steak does not represent a constant standard of living. This renders the measurement virtually meaningless, even though politically it comes in very handy.

I have introduced legislation to keep politicians in Washington from ever raiding the Social Security trust fund again. HR 219 The Social Security Preservation Act would assure that all monies collected by the Social Security Trust Fund would only be used in payments to beneficiaries, or be placed in interest bearing certificates of deposit. This would at least stop the bleeding of the fund, and take away some incentive to tease and torture the numbers in order to give seniors the minimal amount. This would also cut off a source of funding for government growth, so it is not likely to get easy support from many politicians.

It is bad enough that Washington imposes high payroll taxes on American workers. The least Congress could do is use the tax dollars for their stated purpose. Instead, seniors will have a harder and harder time trying to survive on a fixed income in an economy based on variables and deception. For them, it is too late to start over. Today’s young people will be forced to pay into the system for years to come. The first step towards solving the impending crisis facing Social Security is to stop politicians from raiding the trust fund and to significantly cut federal government spending.

Related posts:

1. Stop Bleeding the Social Security Trust Fund! Earlier this week, Congressman Ron Paul sent a letter to...
2. Ron Paul Introduces Affordable Gas Price Act Statement of Congressman Ron Paul United States House of Representatives...
3. Private Fraud vs. Public Fraud In his latest column Ron Paul points out that governments...

Download the interview as an MP3 file here (27:01 minutes).

Show: King World News
Date: 10/30/2009

Transcript

Eric King: This is King World News, I’m Eric King, and you’re about to hear a tremendous interview with Congressman Ron Paul, author of the Audit The Fed bill and a champion of freedom in this country. Remember to go to our homepage at www.KingWorldNews.com for more interviews. This week we also have popular financial blogger, Mike Shedlock, known as Mish, as well as Rick Rule, one of the most street smart pros in the resource sector.

Joining us now is Congressman Ron Paul, a champion of freedom and the Constitution, and the originator of the Audit The Fed bill. Congressman Paul, I believe like you that the Fed is immoral and needs to be abolished, and we’ll get to that in just a minute. But first talk to listeners about the importance of the need to audit the Federal Reserve to know exactly what they are up to, please.

Ron Paul: I think that is the first step; the American people need to know exactly what the Fed does. And we’ve been denied this information from the very beginning. The Federal Reserve was started in 1913 and has never really been audited. One time they tried to change the law in 1978, but it did more harm than good because it excluded all the important issues that should not be audited. Once again, we’re in a crisis and the bill becomes more appropriate. We have 307 co-sponsors on it, and I believe this is the first step to find out who gets the benefits, who gets the loans, why and what kind of agreements they have around the world, and then go from there. Of course, I would end the Fed, but others would do other things. It seems like a large coalition of both liberals and conservatives agree that the Federal Reserve should be exposed and we should know what they’re doing.

Eric King: Regarding the HR 1207 bill, the Federal Reserve stated that it would make interest rates skyrocket and the dollar would de-value significantly if the audit took place. Did that not strike you as a strange way to react to an audit?

Ron Paul: Yeah, they’re trying to build up fear. What they’re implying is all of a sudden we’re going to have control of monetary policy, which the bill exclusively does not do. That is not the intent because I realized how controversial that would be, and besides, although Barnie Frank is working with me to some degree, he and I wouldn’t agree on monetary policy. But we do agree on transparency and that we should know about it. So the Fed chairman comes back and says, “Oh, with you guys looking over our shoulders we’re going to be pressured not to be lenient with the monetary spigots and you’ll put pressure on us.” But if anything, political pressure – they want lower interest rates, that means there is political pressure on the Fed already. I mean, they accommodate the President, they accommodate the elections, and of course they accommodate the banks, that’s political pressure, they accommodate Goldman Sachs, that’s political pressure. But for him to say that all of a sudden if this bill were to be passed it would raise interest rates, I think he’s striking out and trying to scare the people.

Eric King: A centralized money printing central bank benefits the elite few at the expense of everyone else. When do you think the Fed will be abolished, in what time frame? I know I’m asking you to speculate here, Congressman Paul, but what are your thoughts on that?

Ron Paul: I’m not optimistic that it’s going to be coming soon through legislation. We could pass the bill next week and repeal the Federal Reserve Act which was written in 1913. But that’s not likely to happen, it scares a lot of people and I even argue that if you want to get rid of the Fed under these conditions, you should phase it out. But it’s more likely to end because it quits working, and when they totally destroy the dollar if we have a runaway inflation, and the dollar goes to near zero or something, the Fed will just be out of business because nobody will trust them anymore and something will have to be done; they’ll have to be revived. And I have no guess when that is going to happen.

If we continue to do what we’re doing, which is spending and printing money, eventually people will lose trust in the dollar. Not tomorrow or next week, but it could be next year or two or three or four years, for all we know. Because we’re not hesitant one bit in Washington to back off any spending and any borrowing which puts the pressure on the Fed to monetize the debt and to print this money. But even if we get our audit bill passed there is going to be a lot of resistance to it. If we pass it in the House the bill has got to go through the Senate, the President is still going to have to sign it. Then it’s going to go to the court, just like right now the courts ruled in favor of Bloomberg, looking at some of these records under the Freedom of Information Act. But the Federal Reserve is really, really fighting that hard. And unfortunately the courts, over our history, have always ruled in favor of the government and central banking, and always against sound money.

Eric King: You made this statement in a recent interview: “Fraud is a significant problem, but the government is committing the fraud”, and that was in relation to a different topic that I am about to bring up. But here’s one of the problems I have right now, Congressman Paul: banks’ balance sheets are phony, the books are cooked and the government is encouraging this activity. It’s encouraging and aiding and abating this fraud. And it would otherwise be criminal fraud with regards to the banks accounting in an attempt to hide from the rest of the world the fact that that our banking system is issolvent. Why is our government encouraging this criminal fraud in the name of national security, probably, within the banking system to manufacture a stock market rally. And why has our government become so corrupt do you think?

Ron Paul: Well, I guess they yield to the temptation. Some of them believe through their economic education that this is quite proper Keynesian economics that actually teaches that you should have a government that prints money – which is counterfeit – and you should have fractional reserve banking because it stimulates the economy. And Congress literally creates programs like Medicare and Social Security, and they’re not really funded and yet they pretend that they’re funding it. If a private person did that, they could go to prison. If you printed money you would be a counterfeiter and you could go to prison. But the government gets away with this. So, once the government embarks on this, their friends participate and when they get into trouble, what happens? I mean, the government comes to their rescue and bails out their friends, and the people who are not on the inside tend to lose; they might go bankrupt. But somebody like Goldman Sachs benefits, and some of the people who thought they were getting a great deal not putting any money down lose their houses. So it’s a corrupt system based on the notion that our government can do things that they’re not really able to do. At the same time, I put so much back to the corruption of money, and their inconsistency in their definition of not following what we were told to do, which is to make gold and silver legal tender.

Eric King: You brought up the bailouts there for a minute. What about the bailouts that took place in this country? I know you voted against them, but how immoral is it that those bailouts took place and that in some cases former treasury secretary Paulson, was acting as a wrecking machine saving some firms to the benefit of Goldman Sachs, such as AIG, but then allowing others to go under, such as Lehman Brothers, which Goldman Sachs was the primary beneficiary of Lehman Brothers’ failure. And he had to get an ethics waiver from the White House in order to do that. What are your thoughts on that, Congressman Paul?

Ron Paul: I think that there are two parts of it. First: when government takes the money I think it’s an immoral act, you know, either through taxation or deceitfully through the printing of money. So just that act is bad. But then, when they start passing out the favors, passing out either contracts or bailouts, it becomes even more corrupt. And of course, when the people realize what is going on, they get rather angry about this and I think that’s what is happening. But they’re directing their attention in the right direction, that is up towards Washington, and fortunately they’re looking at what the Fed does and what the treasury has done. The two are contagious, once we start on this people figure out, “Oh well, that’s the way the system works, we better do our very best to get what we can while the going is good.”

Eric King: What about the mountains of debt that the United States has accumulated? Before the Depression started I think the debt to GDP ratio was roughly 260% and I think this time Soros is saying on the cycle it will be 550%. But, Rob [...] is unquestionably one of the great minds in the financial world today, and also a libertarian, calculated our nation’s debt to GDP, including corporate, household, Social Security and Medicare, etc, and came up with a staggering debt to GDP of 850%. And that doesn’t include the off balance sheet stuff or second quarter bench, and stated also that he has never met anyone who owed over 8 times their annual income where the outcome was graceful or smooth.

Ron Paul: If anybody wanted to look at one key factor about where our problems come from, I would say it is debt that represents the growth of government. It’s too bad they didn’t put it in the Constitution, it was unconstitutional to borrow money. But they debated it and talked about it but then they allowed the government to borrow money. And this, to me, is the real problem because this debt won’t be paid for, so the debt eventually gets liquidated. People keep asking, “Oh well, who’s going to have to pay this debt?” Well, it gets liquidated, our grandchildren won’t end up paying for this. If it lasts for a while, like it has already, another generation may suffer. But the debt gets liquidated and when it is discovered that they can’t pay it, they can always send you money. You know, if you own treasury bills they can always send you money or they can always send you a check from Social Security. But what they can’t do is maintain the value. So if you have a 10% inflation rate on prices, you know, the debt is going down 10%. So if there is a 10 trillion dollar national debt, that comes down to 9 trillion dollars of real purchasing power. So the debt is being liquidated, but that’s evil. That’s evil because it’s punishing the people. And they talk about the advantages of having a weaker dollar. There are no advantage to anybody to say, “Oh well, I have money in the bank”. And the government has a policy of deliberately taking the purchasing power away. It’s a tax. Debt represents the need to destroy the money because that’s how they will liquidated the debt.

Eric King: You have consistently voted to lower or abolish federal taxes, spending and regulations and used your House seat to actively promote the return of government to its proper constitutional levels. Talk to listeners about excessive taxation and income tax because you made a comment in a recent interview, which I thought was fascinating, that eventually as the dollar fades the people will just stop sending in their taxes. I suppose that is what you were saying, and that is what happened in Russia, correct?

Ron Paul: Yeah, it happens at times of war or emergencies. Sending the taxes in doesn’t matter because the government doesn’t send anything back, and what they send back to you has no value. I think it is going to be sort of a de facto nullification, you know, a nullification of federal laws by the states. It was something which was debated in our early years, but then it sort of lost the argument. But I think that’s what’s going to happen: the states might not secede from the union literally, but just quit participating because the federal government will lose credibility. And that can’t be all that bad.

Also I think what is closely related to this is that when governments fail, whether it’s the legislative branch or the judicial branch or the executive branch, and the people just keep getting stuck with all these rules and regulations that are an abuse of our liberty. If the system is still functioning, where the court systems are functioning, one of the things that could save us is jury nullification. And I think maybe that will catch on, too. That means that juries have a right and an obligation, under the early understanding of the judiciary system in our history, that the juries have the right to judge the law. Today they are explicitly told that they cannot, and if you bring that up you’re in big trouble. But a jury is supposed to be secret, and if in secrecy they are saying, “You know, some of these tax laws and some of these drug laws and some of these economic laws are not worthwhile. Why should we put somebody in prison because they obeyed a state law, but the federal government comes in and overrules it on a drug charge?” If they had a jury that understood this, they could just never convict these people. So maybe that will happen too, but more likely what is going to happen is the people will just ignore the system, they’ll go into the underground economy, they’ll trade services. It won’t be a very good time because that’s sort of going backwards. People will have to literally go into bartering. But I think that’s also an important reason why people ought to, for security reasons, have gold and silver coins in case of an emergency.

Eric King: There have been rumblings of a secondary police force reportable directly to the President reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s brown shirts, or what eventually became the SS. And now longer school hours are being discussed so the state can more effectively take control of raising the nation’s children, as opposed to parents – a reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s Hitler youth training. How can the people of the United States stop this police state from engulfing them?

Ron Paul: They first have to wake up. A lot of people are, but a lot of people like to be taken care of. You can look at the example of how this inoculation program for H1N1 is going. One group of people are screaming and howling, “Don’t round me up and don’t force me to take this shot. I don’t want one, you don’t have a right to force me.” In another breath they’re lying and begging and pleading, “Give me the shot, give me the shot”. They ‘re scared to death and they’ll wait in long lines for a shot that I think is questionable. So it’s sort of a contest between the ones that want to be taken care of and will be obedient to everything the government tells them versus the people who would like to make their own decisions. But it will be easier for the side that wants to make their own decision to win this when the government becomes so ineffective that people don’t have any trust in the government anymore.

Eric King: Let me ask you about the comment that Charlie Monger made, Buffett’s partner at Berkshire Hathaway. He talked about the need to basically remove the banking and Wall Street crowd from running our government and said these people need surgery performed to remove them, but they do not want surgery. But it would be better for the wider civilization if they were removed. Will they be removed from our government, Congressman Paul?

Ron Paul: You mean the banking cartel that might control our government?

Eric King: Yes.

Ron Paul: Well, you’ll have to remove the system, that’s why the system of government is so important and that’s why we have to decide what the role of government ought to be. As long as you have a Federal Reserve system and big government collecting a lot of tax and collecting revenues, you’re always going to have people vying for control and some of them will be out for self defense and they’ll say, “Oh yea, they take all our money. I’m going to Washington, I’m going to try to get some back to build highways in my state too. Because if they’re taking it why just sit back and let somebody else have it”. That will continue but I think the basic question is that we probably need a whole generation to ask the question, “What should the role of government be?”

Eric King: When you look at the dollar debasement and the massive debt the country has, and they keep expanding the balance sheet from the Federal Reserve, do you look at the dollar and say, “There is no real will in Congress to stop this”, so you just see a collapse. Is that what you’re really saying when I see your interview?

Ron Paul: There is no moral restraint. There is no resistance by conservatives or liberals, because they want the spending for different reasons. So if we get only constitutionalist here, even with their shortcomings, if they only did what Article 1 Section A permitted them to do, we wouldn’t have these problems. So it’s a matter of having a different group of people in Washington. But if the people think that they can keep voting themselves largess and all these benefits, that’s who will come to Washington. And hopefully that will shift, but right now Washington is filled with people who obediently try to participate in this game. It’s just very difficult to say that we’re going to end this real quick.

Eric King: You are so much more in touch with this than our listeners because you’re there in Washington, but do you see already some bills that are passed that that have the started the beginnings of what could be capital controls? Because if you have a currency implode or over time greatly devalued, you end up many times with capital controls. Do you see that happening, or signs of that starting to happen?

Ron Paul: It always does, because governments when they get into so much trouble, and right now I think there are signs that less dollars are coming into this country for investments. Our money is flowing in the other direction, so if we start sending our capital out, you know, there will be controls; they inevitably do it. And I imagine that with all the emergency legislation that’s been passed over the years they could use almost anything they want, whether it’s national security or even these financial emergency powers that they have been given. And even if they didn’t have it, they are going to do it. They just have to scare the people and then they worry about whether they’re doing it correctly or not later on. But I definitely think that at the rate we’re going, we will see financial controls, which will only compound our problems.

Eric King: Do you have any idea about a time frame on that, or is it just too early to tell?

Ron Paul: No, I wouldn’t be able to say; I don’t think it’s obviously going to happen this year. But things can shift rather quickly, you know, right now the circulation of money is rather slow and if that would change and people started getting rid of their dollars and having to buy stuff instead of just parting dollars, it could shift rather quickly and in a year or two it’s possible.

Eric King: You are such a student of history, Congressman Paul. Does the U.S. remind you of the latter stages or near the end of an empire where it is been looted? Is the country being looted?

Ron Paul: Well, the people certainly have been looted. And the transition in a time when the money is systematically debased, but you don’t have runaway inflation, actually the middle class gets poorer and the wealthy class gets wealthier. We’re starting to see that. And I think we shifted gears in the year 2000. Most people say the crash and the crisis came in 2008, but I think it really started with the NASDAQ bubble. It’s being going on for a while because our standard of living has been going down. There have been no real new jobs, and the shift has been away from the average middle class because Wall Street, even during that time and even on the bailout, the special privileged were able to get bailed out. So generally this is what happens; the people on the inside get the benefits and the middle class and the poor suffer.

Eric King: You mentioned the poverty right now. The United States is being purposefully de-industrialized. I think its part of the move towards global governance. We already have 10 cities across American, they’re growing in size and poverty is spreading in this country as the elites consolidate their power and wealth and plan to merge America into a global government and remove its sovereignty. Someone like you, Congressman Paul, you never vote for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution. You give the people hope that the elites’ plan to destroy America and its freedoms can be stopped. What chance do we have at this late hour, Congressman Paul?

Ron Paul: That’s a tough one. I guess if I thought there were a zero chance, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t be doing this and working trying to change things. But I don’t work with the assumption that tomorrow or the next day we will have the votes necessary, or that my speeches will convert very many. I work on the assumption that this is a long term process. The only way this can be turned around is to talk to the next generation. That’s where I am the most encouraged, because the college kids are responding most favorably with this message. And, therefore, I have a tint of optimism about this but I think the heartache is yet to come and I think our traditions will serve us well because we have been the freest and the richest and we knew something about sound money and property rights and contracts, and that’s why we did prosper. So it won’t be quite as bad as, say, the Soviet system when they collapsed because they didn’t have the traditions of freedom and personal responsibility that we have. But still, we live in very precarious times. If it goes the other way we’re going to lose lot more of our freedoms.

Eric King: Lord Monckton gave a speech recently about loss sovereignty and the upcoming climate treaty which will give up, I guess, U.S. sovereignty in his words anyway. How disturbing, though, is it? Because I know you didn’t have a chance to see that speech, but how disturbing is it to you when you see this slow evaporation of U.S. sovereignty over time? Because you mentioned to me that it really is piece by piece that you see this happening with various U.N. treaties or whatever it is we have been doing.

Ron Paul: Yeah, it is consistently eroding our sovereignty. I think the most sovereignty should remain with the individual and the family; it should be very, very local. That’s what was intended; the federal government was meant to be very small, and that has obviously changed dramatically. But now, in the last 40 or 50 years it’s been gravitating to international government. Even with this financial crisis going on they’re talking about internationalizing all these regulations as well. If you look at the WTO, the WTO started off regulating all the drugs and nutritional products, and the drug companies were all for this, saying, “This is globalism and this is all good”. So this means it’s giving up responsibility of the individual for dealing with these problems as well as our state and as well as our federal government. But that probably is one of the most serious problems that we have, because right now they know the dollar is ending its supremacy so what are they going to replace it with? And they’re talking with the United Nations and IMF is coming up with some type of a currency, some special drawing right or a basket of currency and replace our Federal Reserve System. As bad as the Federal Reserve System is, at least we have the responsibility to deal with that. But if it goes to an international system, that won’t be good for us.

Eric King: Congress suspended the law, I think it was prohibiting the use of U.S. troops on U.S. soil against U.S. citizens. And they are currently training a rather large force in Texas right now for potential use against U.S. citizens if there is social disorder. Is that something that worries you, Congressman Paul?

Ron Paul: I think they are quite capable of doing that. As a matter of fact that subject came up with this national emergency dealing with the flu because those national powers do give the federal government power to round people up and force inoculations and all. So the potential is there and governments have notoriously done it in the past. Right now, I can’t say that I know of any schedule that they have for really invoking those kinds of controls on the people.

Eric King: When you look at today versus the 1950s, I think we could use less than a dollar of money printing, maybe 66 cents or so and get a dollar of GDP growth in the economy. That was obviously when we were very healthy, very industrialized and there was a very strong economy. But what is it taking today? Because I talk to some of the top people in the financial world each week, as you know Congressman Paul, and I’ve heard some numbers that are very disturbing. Do you have any quantification about how many dollars it takes to create a dollar of GDP?

Ron Paul: No, but it’s a lot more than a dollar. I’ve seen it [...] 5 or 6 dollars, but I don’t know that figure for sure. Maybe it’s difficult to actually calculate. Even the GDP figures I’ve never been too excited about those because government spending is part of GDP. So if you build more airplanes and more tanks and more bullets you’re actually contributing to the GDP, which is a farce, too because it actually should be subtracted because they’re taking money away from people’s livelihood and maybe have them getting good medical care or better education or buying a house. I don’t think that’s a good measurement.

Eric King: In closing let me just ask you, Congressman Paul, the way that we’re headed, obviously it’s a train wreck, it’s a potential collapse of the dollar. And, as you said, we could have the nation fracture, I guess, potentially. You said you didn’t know whether states would secede or not. But what in your mind is going to be the eventual outcome of this? Because as Lord Monckton said, these communists are taking over everything and they’re trying to force one-world communistic government. I mean, it’s almost a fight to enslave the people globally, is it not?

Ron Paul: Yeah. There are at least some that will do it. But I still believe that even like in Europe, as successful as they have been with the European Union, I still think that as times get tougher and the economies gets weaker, there will be a revival of nationalism. I don’t think that the French and the Germans and the British and all will just go along and be one unified government. So I think there will be a natural resistance. Even in this country there are both liberals and conservatives for different reasons who object to some of these international trade agreements. Some are just against trade but others are against the abuse of our sovereignty. So I don’t know, I think there is a good chance that we will wake up and improve things. But I don’t believe it’s going to happen without seeing a lot more poverty and a lot more violence in our cities. The only question is is what will be the prevailing philosophy of our country, should the government be there to protect our liberties or should the government be there to run our lives and run the economy and police the world. If we continue with that, we’re in big, big trouble. But I’m just working on the assumption that we can convert enough people that when we do the rebuilding we’ll make it a much better place.

Eric King: Then are you optimistic in the end, Congressman Paul?

Ron Paul: Yes, I am more optimistic in the long run. In the short term I’m rather pessimistic.

Eric King: And also, I just to make a quick mention of the Campaign for Liberty, and the job that Jesse Bent and others are doing over there. If people wanted to go and make a donation, what is the website for Campaign for Liberty?

Ron Paul: That is CampaignForLiberty.com and we welcome any help.

Eric King: Also, Congressman Paul, your last book “The Revolution” was a number 1 New York Times bestseller. Now you’ve just released “End the Fed”, a highly acclaimed book and we will have a direct link on your interview page to that book “End the Fed” as well.

Ron Paul: Of course, we would welcome any help if anybody gets interested in buying the book, “End the Fed”.

Eric King: What I’ll do is I’ll have a direct link on your interview page for the book and for Campaign for Liberty.

Ron Paul: Wonderful.

Eric King: Alright, well thank you so much for joining us, Congressman Paul.

Ron Paul: Thank you, good to talk with you.

Related posts:

1. Ron Paul questions Ben Bernanke about World Currency Ron Paul questions Ben Bernanke about his secret meetings with...
2. Ron Paul Interviewed By Texas Republic News On February 9, Ron Paul was interviewed by Texas Republic...
3. Ron Paul: Don’t Fire Bernanke – Fire the Fed! Channel: Bloomberg TV Date: 7/21/2009 Transcript Reporter: And Congressman...