Central Economic Planning Doesn’t Work

Here is Ron Paul’s opening statement at the House Financial Services Committee hearing on January 13, 2009 dealing with the TARP funds.

Ron Paul: “This continued debate that has gone on about our rescue programs that we have been devising is confirmation, I believe, that there’s very little understanding as to how we got into this mess. As long as we continue to do the wrong things I don’t see any solution.

But if we got here by spending too much money, borrowing too much money, inflating too much money, the Federal Reserve too involved in central economic planning through manipulation of interest rates, and the Congress passing too many regulations, as long as we think that’s benign and has nothing to do with it, then I guess it seems very logical that we come up by spending more money, borrowing more money, printing more money, and writing more regulations, and think that we’re going to get different results, but we don’t.

It seems to be today that the big argument is who the central economic planner is. Is it the treasury, is it the Congress, is it the FDIC, is it the Federal Reserve? Believe me, central economic planning doesn’t work, that’s why we’re in this mess. And that’s why we have all the malinvestment, all the bad debt.

If we’re looking for a solution we have to have liquidation of debt, we don’t want to prop up the bad debt. The problem was created by bad policy, but long as you delay the liquidation of debt and the malinvestment, the longer the agony will be.

But to now devise a system where we’re going to buy up these bad assets, these worthless assets and dump them on the American taxpayer is absurd. It makes no sense whatsoever. What we need is a little bit of confidence that a market economy works and get away from this central economic planning and quit arguing over who’s going to be the central economic planner.

Believe me, it doesn’t work. It’s been tried. The 20th century was supposed to have proven that it doesn’t work.

But here we are, we’ve given up on it. More government, more spending and more debt.”

At the same hearing, Ron Paul questioned Donald L. Kohn, Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, about Ben Bernanke’s attendance of a secret meeting in Basel, Switzerland, and about the unaccountability of the Federal Reserve.

The next day, Ron Paul released the following video update:

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