Ron Paul

You are currently browsing articles tagged Ron Paul.

Federal Reserve and the Constitution

January 15, 2010 in Money by Greg | 1 comment

Part 2 of 1 in the series Paper Money

Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) wrote about the role of the Federal Reserve in relationship to the Constitution. After providing a brief U.S. history lesson of the debate over paper money, its attendant danger of inflation, and the role of a central bank in society, he wrote:

The lack of respect for the Constitution even in the nineteenth century set the stage for the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Fear, misinformation, and ignorance allowed government to ram bad policies down the throat of the American people. This is not unlike giving the president authority to go to war and to bail out those least deserving help in an economic crisis. The rationalization that the state’s interest supersedes the interests and the rights of the people is embedded in the arguments as to why the American people had to go along with those who hate commodity money and love central banking.

The Fed was established as a result of the public and banking clamor for an elastic currency, and an elastic currency is nothing more than one that can be arbitrarily increased in volume at the discretion of the monetary managers. Sometimes they argue over who exactly will have the authority to do so, the central bank or Congress or private banks themselves. Increasing the supply of money and credit is the proper definition of inflation, meaning that when the demands were heard for an elastic currency, all they were looking for was a legal right to inflate the currency for the benefit of whatever special interests they were concerned for at the moment.

Noble intentions are always used to justify the inflation, but the real reasons are far more sinister. Those who get the control over the money are the beneficiaries, not the people as a whole.

Economist John Maynard Keynes, before he became the champion of inflation, wrote quite correctly of the grave danger of inflation. Like Greenspan, he changed his tune as the years moved on. Keynes stated in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace:

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.¹

Federal Reserve and the Constitution »»

John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1920), pp. 235-236.↩

Great Depression and Current Recession Compared

October 9, 2009 in Economics by Greg | 1 comment

Earlier this week, Robert Higgs, Senior Fellow in Political Economy at The Independent Institute, spoke about the similarities and differences between the Great Depression and the current recession at the Economic Liberty lecture series. Although he finds considerable differences between the two events, he feels there are only a few similarities between the Great Depression and the current recession.

Below are my notes of his presentation.

There are some similarities as well as differences.

The media and journalists have rushed to see these similarities.

I was shocked.

The Great Depression was so much more horrible, devastating, than the current recession.

They were using this talk to sell some type of policy to the people who look to the government for answers.

I don’t feel the two events are fully comparable.

People would be much happier living through today’s recession than during the Great Depression.

Read the rest of this entry »

End the Fed

September 16, 2009 in Money by Greg | 10 comments

The New American, the self-proclaimed “essential news source for freedom-loving Americans”, recently reviewed Congressman Ron Paul’s book End the Fed. According to the report,

The . . . eleven-term congressman from Texas has spent a long political career promoting liberty and limited constitutional government as the American Founders understood them and exposing the mischief at the Federal Reserve. With the unexpected success of his presidential campaign and his recent best-selling manifesto on liberty, Dr. Paul’s uncompromising, consistent, and thoroughly principled stances on limited, constitutionally legitimate government are well known around the world. Now, thanks to End the Fed, his views on paper money, fractional-reserve banking, and the Federal Reserve and its manipulation of the money supply are summarized for a mass readership.¹

In the book, Congressman Paul states:

Everyone should have an intense interest in what money is and how it’s manipulated by the few at the expense of the many. Money is crucial for survival. It is necessary for maintaining a free society. A healthy economy depends on it. Limiting political power is impossible without it. Sound money is essential for preventing unnecessary wars. Prosperity and peace in the long run are impossible without it. To understand money, one absolutely must understand what a central bank is all about.

Read the rest of this entry »

Scaliger, Charles. “A Review of ‘End the Fed’ by Ron Paul”. 14 Sep 2009. New American. 14 Sep 2009.↩

HR 1207 – Audit the Fed

May 20, 2009 in Money by Greg | 6 comments

Yesterday Congressman Ron Paul blogged about HR 1207 “which calls for a complete audit of the Federal Reserve.”¹ He wrote:

This bill now has nearly 170 cosponsors, with support from both Republicans and Democrats. Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a companion bill in the Senate S 604, which will hopefully begin to gain momentum as well. I am very encouraged to see so many of my colleagues in Congress stand with me for greater transparency in government.

Some have begun to push back against this bill, and I am very happy to address their concerns.

The main argument seems to be that Congressional oversight over the Fed is government interference in the free market. This argument shows a misunderstanding of what a free market really is. Fundamentally, you cannot defend the Federal Reserve and the free market at the same time. The Fed negates the very foundation of a free market by artificially manipulating the price and supply of money – the lifeblood of the economy. In a free market, interest rates, like the price of any other consumer good, are decentralized and set by the market. The only legitimate, Constitutional role of government in monetary policy is to protect the integrity of the monetary unit and defend against counterfeiters.

Instead, Congress has abdicated this responsibility to a cabal of elite, quasi-governmental banks who, instead of stabilizing the economy, have destabilized it. It took less than two decades for the Federal Reserve to bring on the Great Depression of the 1930’s. It has also inflated away the value of our currency by over 96 percent since its inception. It has invisibly stolen from the poor and given to the rich through this controlled inflation, and now openly stolen through recent bank bailouts. It has predictably exacerbated the very problems it was meant to solve.

HR 1207: Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009 would be a huge step towards providing much needed transparency to our financial system. The United States’ monetary and economic freedom may be at stake. For an overview of the history of the Federal Reserve System, watch the Fiat Empire Videos. These videos may surprise you.

Below is the Young Americans for Liberty video on HR 1207.

Sources:

Paul, Ron. “Audit the Fed, Then End It!” 18 May 2009. United States House of Representatives, 111th Congress, 1st Session. 19 May 2009.↩

Ron Paul on the G-20 Summit

November 17, 2008 in Money by Greg | No comments

Ron Paul discusses the G-20 Summit and the global push for a “new reserve currency” to replace the dollar standard that has been in place since 1971 and the creation of an “international central bank.”

It is truly amazing that the dollar standard has lasted as long as it has since gold and silver coin as tender payment was officially banned when the Nixon administration abolished the Bretton Woods system. And the idea of creating an international central bank will likely cause the same problems that the U.S. experienced when the Federal Reserve was created. On this last point, see for example Fiat Empire videos or The Corrupt Origins of Central Banking at Mises.org.