Ron Paul Talks Economy With Glenn Beck

Bailouts are bad; the dollar will collapse if we don’t change our ways; eventually we’ll have to go back to a sound currency. Glenn Beck points out that Ron Paul has been talking about these issues for decades, but is anyone listening?

Show: Glenn Beck Program
Channel: Fox News
Date: 1/21/2009

Transcript:

Glenn Beck: Republican Congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul is joining us now. Hello Congressman, how are you?

Ron Paul: I’m good, nice to be with you.

Glenn Beck: You know, the more I read of the founding fathers, and the more I read your words – they are almost interchangeable. Let me start with the words of Thomas Jefferson, here it is:

“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

Wanted to get you on because I don’t know if ‘futurity’ is a real word. Any idea? No.

Ron Paul: No, I am not positive.

Glenn Beck: Anyway, Thomas Jefferson is basically saying, the banks stealing from our children and funding us is a really bad thing, and the banks are a really bad thing when we get into bed with them, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

You’ve been crying out in the wilderness for a really long time, and people haven’t really been listening to you. And you know what, Congressman? I don’t know if they are listening to you yet! What’s it going to take?

Ron Paul: I think it’s going to take a collapse of the dollar, because there is no intent here in Washington to change its ways. We’re spending more, borrowing more, and printing more, and that’s why we’re in the trouble that we’re in.

So, since we’re not going to do that, all the burden is placed on the the value of the dollar, you can’t create trillions and trillions of dollars and think that we can bail out all the bad investments, and yet that’s all we seem to be doing here.

And it’s sort of contagious, you know? We have appropriated money to bail out so many big companies and big banks already. It is the excuse for coming back, and nobody can deny now, and they will even say “Well, so and so needs money”, and they are logical. They say “Well, if you bail out the big banks, and AIG, and all these companies, why not bail out the little guy?”

So the bailout is a disease, it’s contagious, it’s ongoing, and the result of this will be the destruction of the dollar, which to me means runaway inflation, and political chaos. It’s very, very dangerous.

Glenn Beck: OK, hang on, because you are saying “runaway inflation”. You’re meaning Weimar Republic, wheelbarrow full of money type of stuff to buy a loaf of bread. Is that the kind of inflation you are talking about?

Ron Paul: I think it will end before it gets that far along, they will come to their senses, but it’s going to be bad. But everyone is lulled into sleep in saying, “Oh, there is no inflation”. But if you measure inflation by the increase of supply of money, I mean we are doing it, so the inflation is already here. The effects are yet to be known.

Glenn Beck: Well, I talked to Steve Morris at the Wallstreet Journal, and he talked to the Treasury. It looks like we have increased the money supply by 70% since October. They have been running the presses 24 hours a day. The effects of this, you’re saying, will destroy the currency. So, then what happens? What do we replace it with? I mean, that sounds crazy, Congressman.

Ron Paul: But you have to start over again with a new system, and the history shows that you have to go back to a sound currency, that the people will believe in, and have trust in. Right now, the trust in the system, which was the Bretton Woods financial system, that trust is gone, that’s why it has seized up and it doesn’t work. The dollar is still accepted, and they are relying on the trust of the dollar. But I believe that will come to an end.

Glenn Beck: You know, Congressman, there is one group of stories that I don’t see covered in the media at all, and we are looking into it, and that is, all these countries, our allies, we have France, we have England, we have Germany. They just met two weeks ago, over in France, where they talked about a new sort of capitalism, where the government has a role at the table.

Also, they are talking about some sort of a new currency, that there needs to be a new “gold standard”, which, unfortunately for us, the dollar is the world’s gold standard. I don’t see any coverage of this anywhere, and it seems to me that that would be kind of an important story for the American people to know about. Can you give me any update on this? Are you following this story?

Ron Paul: Well, no, they denied that information to us. As a matter of fact, the other day when Bernanke was supposed to be before the banking committee, I complained about him that he didn’t show up. But he was in Basel, Switzerland, meeting with all the central bankers, talking about exactly what you are talking about, but under the law they are not required to tell us anything. That’s why I am working so hard to try to get transparency of the Federal Reserve. The responsibility falls on the Congress.

Glenn Beck: OK, real quick, just do two quick questions: Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of Treasury? Any comment of that? I mean… Secretary of State?

Ron Paul: I think policy is going to remain the same. I think foreign policy is dictated by individuals who control both the Republican and the Democrat party, so don’t expect any significant change in foreign policy.

Glenn Beck: And the Secretary of Treasury, Geithner, should he be the guy or not?

Ron Paul: Well, no, I don’t think so. We just gave him $350 billion dollars, and he doesn’t know what he did with it, exactly. It was mismanagement. So we are going to give him another $350 [billion]? I suspect that he will be approved.

Glenn Beck: Alright, thank you very much, Congressman, we will talk to you again.

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