Channel: CNBC
Show: Squawk Box
Date: 11/13/2009

Joe Kernen: But Chris Dodd has a bill taking aim at the Fed. The overhaul bill that he proposes would reduce the role of the Federal Reserve. However, Congressman Ron Paul has been on that crusade for some time now, calling for more transparency at the central bank. He joins us this morning.

Congressman, great to see you. Hello.

Ron Paul: Thank you, nice to be with you this morning.

Joe Kernen: Let me start with… you remember Treasury Secretary Geithner and what he wanted to do. He wanted to vastly embolden the Fed in a lot of these areas and give them more power. What was your initial reaction to what he wanted to do?

Ron Paul: Well, it was terrible because I start with the idea that regulations won’t solve our problems. In Washington the only choice is whose going to be the big regulator. So it’s not much of a choice for me. I certainly don’t want to give the Federal Reserve more power, so I don’t like it when Geithner says, “Give the Fed more power”. So I’d much rather have somebody else do it even though I think that’s not going to solve the problem.

Joe Kernen: Really? So the Dodd Bill sets up a lot more different regulators, although there might be a single on, you don’t like that one much more?

Ron Paul: Oh no. See, the problem is that we have a flawed system. We have artificially low interest rates, we have the lender of last resort, we have this horrendous moral hazard in our system. Instead of correcting the problems and changing policy, what we do is we say “We can tinker with the symptoms with regulations” and that even further interferes with the market forces. We need the market to work and we have not allowed the market to work for many, many decades. Interest rates are always artificial, “too big to fail” was always there. There was always the lender of last resort. As long as you have that, regulations will not solve the problem. Take, for instance, after ENRON went down we immediately passed Sarbanes-Oxley saying “we didn’t have enough regulations.” It had nothing to do with it. Where did some of the companies go then? There were too many regulations so they had to leave this country.

So I would say that we’ve embarked on the wrong course and whether you put the regulations in the Fed or outside the Fed, it’s not a whole lot different. But we certainly don’t want to give the Fed more power. It’s much easier for the Congress to assume the responsibility of oversight if it’s outside the Fed. For some reason up until recently the Fed was sacred. You weren’t even allowed to ask questions, let alone get the answers. And now, of course, the momentum is in the direction of “even the Fed ought to be transparent” and I think that, of course, is very important.

Joe Kernen: What’s your bill? You got how many co-sponsors and do you still like your bill, because I saw somewhere that you said it’s already been gutted?

Ron Paul: Well, the intention is that one time they said they would put it into Barney Frank’s bill. It never actually got in there. So the plan now is to get an audit put in to the bill. But it will be a pseudo-audit, it won’t amount to much. We have 309 co-sponsors and we have all the Republicans on the bill as well as about a 130 Democrats. So it’s very, very bipartisan. There has been a national poll – which I’m surprised that there even would be polling on this subject, I would never have dreamt about it a couple of years ago. But 75% American people say, “Yeah, we should know what’s going on with the Fed”. So that 75% of the electorate saying that we should do our job and look at the Fed is the reason why there is well over 2/3rds of members of Congress supporting this bill. This bill would pass tomorrow if we brought it up under suspension, but the powers to be, the Fed, is working frantically, they’re editorializing, they’ve hired a lobbyist. They do not want us to know what they’re doing and they use all kinds of frivolous arguments why the Congress is not allowed to know what they’re up to.

News Anchor: What makes you so confident, Congressman, that the GAO is competent enough to audit the Fed reliably? And what do you make of those who say that Congress already has the right to ask a lot of questions to the Fed; they do it every time the chairman comes to the Hill?

Ron Paul: But they’re not allowed to ask the right questions. You’re not allowed to ask what kind of arrangements they make with a foreign bank or foreign central banks or foreign governments or international financial organizations or the details of the discount window, which companies got their benefits. So no, we’re not really allowed to. Now, the GAO may be far from perfect, but they probably have one of the best reputations in Washington if you’re going to look into something. It’s been bipartisan and somebody asked me once, “Who’s going to regulate the regulator,” you know, who’s going to regulate and check out the GAO. I think that’s a decent question, but under the circumstances there is not much else that we can do. They are the ones that we should look to to looking into the Fed.

News Anchor: Congressman, you said we’re on the wrong course. I wonder if you can tell for us what you feel is the right course. I mean, you’ve written a book called “End the Fed”. So you want to end the Fed, but my guess is when you talk about the market working you also want to end deposit insurance. Is that part of the problem also?

Ron Paul: Oh, sure. I think deposit insurance… immediately people say “Oh, my accounts won’t be insured”. No, they will be insured by private companies and each and every individual bank would be monitored instead of having massive bank failures and financial crises and each and every individual bank…

News Anchor: Can I just ask you this: You’ve seen the pictures of the 1930s when we had runs on banks. Is that something that’s acceptable to you that people should be afraid they would lose money in the event of a bank failure?

Ron Paul: Well, if you had private insurance there wouldn’t be. But the bank runs is a consequences of Fed policy. You know, the Fed has been around since 1913 but their first crisis came from the inflation through World War I and we had the depression of 1920-1921 and it lasted about a year. But back then they didn’t believe that you should bail out everybody and pump more credit in. They allowed the liquidation of the malinvestment, they allowed the debt to be eliminated and then go back to market interest rates and go back to work again.

But today, ever since the depression, Hoover and Roosevelt set the standard along with Keynes. Keynes is really the individual we follow and it’s not a market phenomenon. We don’t have market interest rates. We have guarantees that people are going to make mistakes; we have guarantees that we’re going to have too many houses. But what do we do now? We had a program where both Congress and the Fed encouraged the housing industry. Finally the bubble burst, which so many of us predicted would happen. So what are we trying to do in Congress right now? We’re trying to stimulate housing and to keep prices up. What we need to do is let the prices of houses drop and we don’t want to stimulate anything, we want the prices to adjust, we want these houses that were overly priced to get low enough so poor people can buy houses once again. And now we come up with cash for clunkers and all this silly stuff here. We have no confidence whatsoever in the market economy.

News Anchor: And just one more thing which is that when you talk about the right course, if I am not mistaken, you want to go back to the gold standard? Is that the right way to run monetary policy, in your opinion?

Ron Paul: No, but I’d like to go forward to a commodity standard. There were a lot of always in the old gold standard because there was bimetallism and fixed price between gold and silver. It’s still on the books that gold and silver is legal tender and we ignore it. If you use gold and silver as legal tender today, you go to jail. There is nothing in the law that says a Federal Reserve note equals a dollar. We can’t even define a dollar. No, we should have a definition of a dollar. How can you have a measuring rod which you can’t define? It’s totally foolish.

I really like the idea of allowing the market to determine what backs the currency, make sure there are no-fraud laws, and really look into the matter whether or not we should have fractional reserve banking. Yes, you have the Fed creating money out of this air, but then this is magnified by fractional reserve banking which is really fraudulent. And all it does is build financial bubbles guaranteeing the business cycle and the collapses, and as long as you patch it together, the longer you do that, the bigger the bubble. And now we’re in the midst of a big correction.

News Anchor: So just to be clear, no fractional reserve banking means a dollar loaned out equals a dollar on reserve, right? Or a dollar of capital? Is that what you would do?

Ron Paul: Yeah, if you put a hundred dollars in the bank today, the bank immediately has $190. No, if you put a $100 in today you have to say it has to stay there for 3 months and then you can loan it out for 3 months. But you don’t expand the money supply. The money supply, the Fed creates a trillion and in a few months it’s nine trillion. And that’s where the distortions come from and of course, everybody loves it when it’s going up because the prices of houses are going up and everything’s happening that seems to please a lot until the correction comes. Politicians love it. You can fight wars that you don’t have to pay for, you can run the welfare state that you don’t have to pay for. So if you believe in limited government, you have to look at monetary policy and decide that you just can’t create money out of thin air. That is the culprit and you can’t solve the problem by regulations.

News Anchor: Speaking of policy, Congressman Watt has this amendment that would audit the 13-3 powers of the Fed, the special stuff that allowed them to do so much of what happened over the past year. You’re saying that does not go far enough. Is that right?

Ron Paul: Oh, no, that’s just… the Fed has already agreed to that. The Fed’s position is, “Yeah, we’ll let you look at that. We’re going to wind those programs down anyway”, but the big stuff that is done behind the scenes, the Fed is part of the Plunge Protection Team and they can create the credit and they can make all the deals overseas. And that’s what we need to look at. But I would agree with that bill, because it is more than we’re getting now. This is what got the attention of a lot of people when members of Congress started asking about 13-3 and these extensions of loans and who’s getting the money. That’s very, very important. But that’s still only minor compared to what I’m talking about.

News Anchor: Ron, you’re a doctor too, right?

Ron Paul: Yes, that is correct.

News Anchor: So you got comments on health care, I bet. And how about the dollar, we’re orchestrating a pretty nice decline there, too, aren’t we? That’s interesting. But we’re out of time. Are you ever in this area?

Ron Paul: On occasion, and the dollar is the big issue.

News Anchor: Well, get in here.

Ron Paul: I’d like to come in and talk to you.

News Anchor: Come in here for two hours. We’ll let you just go off.

Ron Paul: I don’t know if I can stand you guys for 2 hours.

News Anchor: You can do the talking. We’ll just let you loose and we’re going to advertise it before we do. Thank you, Congressman. We appreciate it.

Ron Paul: Alright, thank you.

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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.

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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.

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Date: 10/30/2009

Transcript

Ron Paul: I’m Congressman Ron Paul and this is a weekly update for the Campaign for Liberty.

Update on the House Foreign Affairs Committee

We were quite busy this week in Washington, a lot of hearings and a lot of activity. First off, we had very significant hearings in the Foreign Affairs Committee. This was somewhat different because in the past with previous chairmen of this committee, they would frequently bring up resolutions which I considered very, very important and they’d bring them to the floor, under suspension, with no announcement, no hearings and no mark up in committee and sometimes, they’d bring it up under unanimous consent. Well, at least, Howard Berman, the chairman, brought this to the committee and we did have a bit of a debate and a vote. Unfortunately, there were only four of us that were actually opposed to the bill, and this is the bill that’s to put much stronger sanctions on the Iranians and it is to prevent petroleum-refined products getting into Iran. And the debate was the same old story. You know, “they’re a great danger to the world and if we don’t stop them, someday they might get a nuclear weapon.” So it was war propaganda. It reminded me, and I said so in the committee, it reminded me of some of the talk that happened before we went into Iraq.

But nevertheless, I tried my best to make the point that it won’t be of any benefit to us or to them. It will aggravate and anger the people. The people will not be turning against the [Iranian] leadership, which are out on the fringes. They’ll turn their anger and hostility toward us. But it is a significant event because it represents the continued and perpetual determination to alienate the Iranians and it’s a big debate over nuclear activity and whether or not they might have a nuclear weapon someday. It’s a significant event, but quite frankly, I think our policies of intervention in that area of the country causes more trouble than the Iranian government itself. They are a Third World nation. They don’t have intercontinental ballistic missiles. They have no nuclear weapons. In 2003, our CIA said they quit any effort to make a nuclear weapon. But I’m sure they have an incentive to make a nuclear weapon, but most of the incentive is the fact that we have an interventionist foreign policy. The Pakistanis have nuclear weapons. The Chinese have nuclear weapons. The Indians have nuclear weapons. The Israelis have nuclear weapons. We’re surrounding their country. We have nuclear weapons. So it’s not the most outlandish thought in the world for a country like that wanting to have those weapons.

But I hope that we come to our senses, but right now, we have a President that seems to be determined to follow the foreign policy of neoconservatives. Fortunately, though, he is trying to have some negotiations and trying to talk to the Iranian government, but quite frankly, I think behind the scenes they’re really planning to continue this more aggressive foreign policy. Someday, when this country comes to its senses or we go broke, I’m sure this policy will change.

Update on the House Financial Services Committee

This week we also had significant hearings in the Financial Services Committee and this brought Secretary of the Treasury Geithner to our committee, and of course, I had my five minutes of questioning with him. The reason for the hearings is to start looking at this bill that the chairman of Financial Services, Barney Frank, is bringing forth, which is 280 pages of more and more regulations of the financial system. The point I made with Secretary Geithner was that regulations can hardly solve the problem if you’re only treating the symptoms of a flawed monetary policy.

I used a quote he made earlier this year where he said that, “The number one problem that led us to our troubles was the fact that we had too low interest rates too long,” and I tried to throw that back to him saying, “Well, that’s the kind of language that I use and I believe that is the case and you can’t solve that problem by just doing more of the same,” pointing out to him that it doesn’t make much sense to admit that the interest rates were too low too long and then turn around and endorse a program that we’ve endorsed for the past year and that is if one percent interest rates were too low, taking them to zero is hardly going to help, at the same time doubling the money supply. I mean, low interest rates and excessive monetization of debt either is a problem or it isn’t. Of course, he danced around that issue.

On a follow-up question that I had for him, which might have even been more significant, but unfortunately for him the time ran out, and that is that he did admit that they were making negotiations with the international organizations trying to internationalize all our regulations and of course, I made a statement I don’t even like the regulations coming out of Washington, DC, let alone having them internationalized and under the UN and IMF.

But I did mention the fact that that very day I read that the United Nations are talking about a new reserve standard. Because I think most people admit that the dollar reserve standard is dead, although the dollar is not dead and the dollar is still limping along, but the reserve standard that built the very friable, fragile financial system that has already collapsed is not going to be rebuilt with the dollar. So my question to him was, “in these conversations you have about regulations, how often do you talk about and what are your conversations at these meetings about a new reserve standard?” Well, his answer was, of course, the time had ran out, he didn’t have time to answer, but that he suggested we get together and have a conversation. I doubt if that would happen, but if he invites me to discuss this, I would just for educational benefits, not that I think he’s going to convert me or I’m going to convert him, but it is a significant question. What are they going to replace the dollar with? Will it be the international paper reserve standard? Or will we wake up and once again realize that the only truly reserve standard that would work for a sound economic system throughout the world would be something that would be backed by more than government promises, and he was indicating that this has to be a worldwide approach and my answer, of course, was that if we do the right thing for us, it will be the right thing for the world and others would follow us. So if it’s a bad idea to spend too much money and borrow too much money and print too much money and we just quit, not only would it benefit us, it would benefit the whole world. But we have a long way to go. I think that will come after we have a greater collision with the dollar.

Comments on the GDP

Along this line, we also h­ad a report this week that showed that the GDP grew a little faster than I expected. It was up over three percent and the market responded by jumping up. The Dow Jones was up 200 points, which quickly corrected itself the next day. But the response was wonderful. “The GDP is up!” but when you think about it, why is the GDP up? Government printed a lot of money and passed it out and people bought cars and bought houses, even though they were buying them for artificial reasons. You know, they were stimulated. We don’t need to stimulate people to prop up prices of houses and building more houses. We need more of a natural correction, but they pass out money that they printed and it goes into the GDP. How can you believe that the GDP has much meaning if the government participates in spending money and calling that economic growth.

That probably is what changed the markets the next day because it was realized this isn’t real growth, this is just artificial. This is just gimmickry to claim the economy is growing by merely the government pursuing these giveaway programs. Eventually, the markets are always smarter than the government. The government can get away with it for a long time. They can get away with pretending there’s true value in our money and that this system will work, but in time it will be known exactly what true value is and the people and the markets will demand correction. That’s what we’re in the process of doing. The need for the correction is there. The resistance is just overwhelming in Washington and Wall Street to “do anything,” but they’ll just don’t allow the correction to occur. They consider that sound economic policy. I consider it foolish economic policy in doing exactly opposite of what they should do and we should have a lot better understanding how free markets work, how sound money works and have a lot more confidence that we will be all a lot better off if we follow those policies.

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Show: Larry King Live
Channel: CNN
Date: 10/29/2009

Larry King:… Ron Paul, Republican of Texas. He ran for president this last election. He is here to react to what we’ve just heard. Concerning healthcare, Mr. Moore believes that universal healthcare is everyone’s right. He threatens that the Democrats will lose seats if they don’t support it. What is your stand on it, Congressman?

Ron Paul: I think it’s a fallacy to say that people have a right to somebody else’s services. Now, you have a right to your life and you have a right to your liberty and you have a right to earn a living. You ought to have a right to keep it, but you have a responsibility to take care of yourself because you don’t have a right to get something from government because government has nothing, so the government has to take it from somebody and give it to you, so it’s a failed policy. It is a form of socialism and socialism doesn’t work. It leaves to a big kind of…

Larry King: So if you have no money and you fall down on the street with a heart attack, you have no money and no one should take care of you? The government should not provide an ambulance or treat you?

Ron Paul: Well, no, but we don’t have a history in this country of that happening, even before government started managing healthcare. I practiced medicine in both circumstances in the early sixties. We didn’t have managed care and I worked in a Catholic hospital. I made $3 an hour and nobody was ever turned away and there were many, many church hospitals and you had Shriner’s Hospitals and a lot of free care was given. Today, even with managed care, they complain about, “Oh, somebody doesn’t have health insurance and somebody is going to die because they don’t have health insurance.”

But really, people don’t get turned away. I mean, accidents happen. Man is imperfect, but for the most part, anybody including anybody illegal can go to the emergency room and they always get taken care of. They just don’t get thrown out in the street.

Larry King: Are you saying you like the current system?

Ron Paul: No, I probably dislike it as much as Michael Moore does. But he’s complaining about it being part of capitalism. It has nothing to do with capitalism. This is corporatism, the corporations. I agree with him. Corporations run things; the drug companies’ lobbyists, the insurance companies’ lobbyists and the hospital managements’ lobbyists, the AMA lobbyists and that’s all managed care and we have a system where money and bigness influences the government, but that’s corporatism. That’s not capitalism. But we want our free markets…

Larry King: Okay, how do you change that?

Ron Paul: Allow free markets to work. There is an example of free markets and I might have even heard it on CNN today of the example of somebody that was going to charged $100,000 for surgery and they went to Singapore and got it for $25,000 and the main reason they gave why they could afford to do it was that they didn’t have horrendous malpractice payments to make and there was a market. There was a market necessity. Patients are leaving this country. They’re going to India, but that’s the market working. So we have put our charity hospitals out of business, at the same time, because of inflation and management and all the mischief of government, we have pushed these prices up. Pumping money into a system doesn’t improve quality. It increases prices. Look at our educational system. We pump it with money, prices go up. The quality of education goes up and the quality of medicine has not gone up by just pumping more money in.

Larry King: Lyndon Johnson once said, “The probable answer is that the government is going to have to be half-capitalistic and half-socialistic. You have to have some social security, i.e. socialism. You have to take care of those who don’t have. Pure capitalism can’t work.” Would you agree with that?

Ron Paul: No, not really. It’s sort of like I practice OB-GYN and I never could tell my patients they have a touch of pregnancy and you know, you’re either pregnant or you’re not. You either have government intervention messing up the markets or you don’t. You either believe in freedom and believe in voluntary choices. I mean, just look at this disaster with the swine flu vaccine. They take over the whole project. We pump in billions of dollars and they come up with shortages. Distribution is lousy and they’re talking about forcing people to take them in places like New York and no one has even proved that it’s necessary yet. We have still a lot of deaths from ordinary flu far surpassing swine flu, so managed central economic planning in anything fails and especially in medicine it fails.

Larry King: But Congressman, everyone in line getting it, who is getting it free is not standing there complaining about government involvement.

Ron Paul: Yeah, but I have a daughter that practices medicine and I was just talking to her about it and she says, “Oh, yeah, dad. I can give shots and it’s for free, but we don’t have anything.” So when something is free and you don’t have it, it’s irrelevant and some of the people who don’t want it are being forced to take it. We have lost our faith and confidence and understanding of how free markets work. We turned it upside down by saying anytime corporations get benefits, we call it capitalism and freedom and it is corporatism. It’s the military-industrial complex. It’s all the special interests and this is where Michael Moore gets it all wrong. He works, he believes diligently in free markets because he believes in the First Amendment, he believes in making films. He doesn’t believe in prior restraints, so why should he condemn capitalism?

Larry King: Right.

Ron Paul: Because he is condemning corporatism. I condemn it, too. Special privileges to corporation is a big problem.

Larry King: Maybe it’s semantics. More with Congressman Paul right after the break. Don’t go away.

Michael Moore: I think capitalism as it is defined now has completely failed. Yeah, it hasn’t really failed the rich. It has actually helped them, the wealthiest one percent now have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined, so it’s a really good system for a few people.

Larry King: Hi, Ron, do you disagree with that statistic that Michael Moore just pointed out?

Ron Paul: No, and I’m not complaining about as much as he does, but I think I understand it differently because when a country embarks on deficit financing and inflationism, you wipe out the middle class and wealth is transferred from the middle class and the poor to the rich and when we get into trouble, then the corporations come for their bailout and they get the benefits and the little people don’t.

So yes, there is some truth to that, but it’s the failure of the free market to exist, that is our problem. It isn’t the fact that we don’t have enough government, we have way too much government. The government created this monster. If he doesn’t like what we have, he has to look at what we’ve been doing for 30 or 40 years, it’s called interventionism. It’s called Keynesism. It’s called inflationism. It’s called Big Government. That’s the problem.

Larry King: Here’s what Michael Moore said about Afghanistan. I’ll ask Congressman Paul what he thinks about the war there. Watch.

Michael Moore: Al Qaeda has left there. They booked out of the neighborhood, Larry. They’re long gone, okay? They’re in Pakistan. They’re in parts of Africa. They’re elsewhere in the Middle East. You know, they’re here in the US. I mean there are real Internet operations now as Matthew Hull, the State Department individual who resigned last month over the Afghanistan policy. You should go online and read his letter of resignation. You’ll see he explains it very clearly that for one to deal with Al-Qaeda, the last place we need to be right now is in Afghanistan. That’s just a crazy, crazy making place. It’s unwinnable. It’s immoral. It’s illegal. It’s wrong and what is our CIA doing paying the brother of the president of Afghanistan who is involved in this opium trade that’s funding the Taliban. I mean, where… when does this stop?

Larry King: Congressman, you’re a strong critic of Iraq. Are you a critic of the Afghanistan policy as well?

Ron Paul: Yeah, I sure am. My position is we shouldn’t have gone in and we should just come home, but earlier on, Michael was saying that he was hopeful and sympathetic to what Obama was doing. I don’t think he’s quite willing to criticize Obama like Bush, but I am and yes, there have been a token effort of bringing some troops home from Iraq. Iraq is a mess, but at the same time, we’re sending in contractors to replace the troops and paying them a lot more money, subsidizing the military-industrial complex and Obama ought to be condemned for that. You can’t just pick out, so anytime you support Obama in any of those policies, they’re bombing Pakistan right now, killing civilians and we’re on the verge now of attacking or at least putting on more sanctions on Iran, which will lead to hostilities if we’re not careful because we’re talking about the Iranians just like we used to talk about the Iraqis, putting on tougher and tougher sanctions, making the people suffer, hoping the people are going to overthrow their leaders, and not realizing the tougher the sanctions you put on the people, the more you drive them into supporting their leaders.

Larry King: So you would get out of Afghanistan and Iraq posthaste?

Ron Paul: I would, and my saying during the campaign was “we just marched in, we can just march home.” Nothing good can come of it and it’s an undeclared war. It’s an immoral war. We don’t have any money. The longer we’re there, the worse it’s going to get and we just need to come home. We can’t nation-build and besides, I will win this argument because we are bankrupt and we can’t afford it, so it’s going to end badly if we don’t come to our senses and just say, “Let’s quit this militarism around the world.” I mean, we’re in 130 countries with 700 bases around the world and we cannot sustain these and it is, it’s pumped up by both the Left and the Right in the Congress, “Oh, we can’t do away with this weapon. It will be bad for jobs.” There is conservative Keynesism and Liberal Keynesism, always government management, which always fails and gives us the financial crisis that we’re in.

Larry King: Right. The always thoughtful Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. Thanks. Thanks, Ron.

Ron Paul: Thank you very much.

Larry King: Always good having you with us.

Ron Paul: Thank you.

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Show: Tavis Smiley Show
Channel: PBS
Date: 10/21/2009

Transcript:

Tavis Smiley: Congressman Ron Paul from Texas is serving his 11th term in Congress. In 2008 he mounted a bid for the White House that galvanized an eclectic mix of supporters, including legions of young voters. He’s also a bestselling author whose latest is called “End the Fed”. He joins us tonight from Capitol Hill. Congressman, nice to have you on the program.

Ron Paul: Thank you, nice to be with you.

Tavis Smiley: Before I jump into the text, let me ask you a couple of quick questions about Afghanistan since it’s all over the news. The White House has basically said that we don’t need to send more troops, Rahm Emanuel I’m quoting here now, the chief of staff, to Afghanistan until they have a legitimate and credible government. Two questions: 1) What does “legitimate and credible government” mean to you when you hear that? 2) Even if that were the case, do we need to be sending more troops to Afghanistan?

Ron Paul: No, we don’t need to be sending any more troops over there. We need to be bringing our troops home. And this whole idea of a legitimate government – there is no answer to that. It’s virtually impossible to arrange that and who is going to make the decision? And one thing for sure is that Karzai can’t be legitimate because he is seen as a puppet of ours. And I think this election is basically a fraud. A third of the votes that Karzai was supposed to have gotten were ruled illegal. So, the whole thing is preposterous. I mean, the whole notion of us being there is ridiculous, and the sooner we face up to this, the better off we are going to be. We don’t really have the troops to send. We don’t have the money to spend, and it’s just a part of a foreign policy that I have been talking about for many, many years. It’s deeply flawed. And this is an example of what happens to it. You’re in a place for eight years, and then you start deciding “What are we hear for? What’s the purpose? What’s the endpoint? Who’s the government?” I mean, it is so foolish, I can’t imagine why the people put up with this. And I just wish more people would send a message to their congressmen and said, “We ought to deal with our problems here at a home, maybe we ought to concentrate on getting better medical care than just fighting another war which will continue to expand.” I think the whole thing is foolish.

Tavis Smiley: Much has been said today, as you will know, about the fact that President Karzai has agreed to a runoff election. You’re not buying his plan on that?

Ron Paul: Oh yea, he probably will. That means there is a lot of pressure put on him, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s going to be eased out. You know, sometimes we turn on our puppets. Remember back in the Vietnam days, when DM was our puppet and we had our CIA overthrow him, and actually kill him. So who knows what is exactly going on, but Karzai seems to be hard to defend. I am sure we were rooting for him in the election, which means that we were involved in it. And there was so much fraud they got caught at it, so it’s getting pretty hard to defend him. So yes, there has to be an election, but I won’t be surprised if our government quits supporting him. He can’t exist without our support. But the big problem is they don’t have anybody to replace him.

Tavis Smiley: I’m about to ask you this… some people believe that he’s not perfect. I mean, I don’t think the White House would tell you he is perfect, but the argument might be that he is the best of the rest.

Ron Paul: Yeah. Well, I think it will be hard to find anybody that will suit the situation. And whether you put in 20,000 or 40,000 or 80,000 [troops], I think it’s not worth the investment.

Tavis Smiley: So what should the President do then with this tough decision on Afghanistan? What should he do?

Ron Paul: I think they should come home and say that we did our best, we took care of the Al-Qaida, they don’t exist there and the 300 that did exist there are all dead or gone. And we ought to allow the Afghans to decide what kind of government they want. They don’t want a centralized government. They want tribalism. And we just can’t change that. People have been trying to do that for centuries, and it’t just not going to happen.

Tavis Smiley: One last question before I get to your book. The argument though is, as you well know, is if the U.S. were to pull out of Afghanistan or pull out of Iraq, you pull out of that region, the argument is that the whole region collapses and the apocalypse happens if you take Ron Paul’s advice and just pull out.

Ron Paul: Well, I think staying there is going to cause more trouble. I think the fact that we’ve been there for 8 years and destabilized the area… Afghanistan isn’t stable, but now Pakistan is not stable. Now we’re sending our drones over there and innocent people are getting killed and pretty soon we’re going to think about what we have to do to stabilize and get control of the weapons of Pakistan. At the same time they’re planning on expanding the efforts to overthrow the government in Iran. They’re coming up with real strong sanctions against the Iranians, and that’s not going to help us.

It’s just an endless task to continue to try to nation build and police the world. We weren’t meant to do that and we can’t afford it any longer, and it all has ramifications and blowback phenomenons that will be hurtful to us. I think it’s a real threat to our national security to be overly involved in that area.

Tavis Smiley: It’s a great segway to this book that you’ve written now called “End the Fed” which is already on the New York Times bestseller list, I might add. One listens to your answers now in this conversation about Afghanistan, one prepares to go into a conversation now with you about this new book called “End the Fed”. One gets the impression that Ron Paul, although a member of Congress, doesn’t trust government. Is that a fair assessment?

Ron Paul: I wouldn’t say I don’t trust all government at all times. I would say that most Americans, including myself, don’t fully trust that the government’s taking very good care of us. They don’t have a good foreign policy and there is something very untrustworthy about our monetary system. It is very, very untrustworthy and very unfair that it takes care of Wall Street, and at the same time it hurts the people because they end up with the inflation, they end up with the unemployment, they end up with losing their houses.

And yet the Federal Reserve, behind the scenes, in secret, can create trillions of dollars and bail out companies like Goldman Sachs. They can deal with world banks and world central banks, and we’re not even allowed to know. The Congress is so derelict in their responsibility, and this is why I of course want an audit of the Fed, but indeed what will eventually have to happen is ending the Fed because they’re going to destroy our money. We’re in the process of doing that. They set the stage for destroying the financial system and that has collapsed. But now, they’re just embarking on endless inflation, doubling the money supply, running up the debt, and spending and not even worry about it. “We’ll print the money if we need it”. That is a devastation to the average person. In countries where it gets out of control, the middle class gets wiped out. And that’s what I am afraid is going to happen here.

Tavis Smiley: You know, there are those who are watching right now, no doubt, who will say that you got it all wrong. That not only should the Fed not be ended, but if we were to do something like that, the timing couldn’t be worse, because it is the Fed and it’s Congress who you’re saying were derelict in their duty to put the money, pumped the money back into Wall Street that turned this situation around. Now they’re celebrating on Wall Street and passing out bonuses. And of course, the line is that jobs are always the last thing that comes around; that’s the last indicator. But how do you respond to those who say that this will be a bad idea, the wrong time for this idea, and if it weren’t for us pumping money into Wall Street, the economy might not be making a turn right about now?

Ron Paul: Well, there is a half-truth there. The TARP funds did go there to a large degree and we did prop up a lot of those businesses. That’s why some politicians go to Wall Street to raise money for their political campaigns. But the Federal Reserve pumps in trillions, and we’re not even allowed to know. With the TARP funds the people caught on and they demanded from Congress “What’s going on here? Why don’t you find out if there are any strings attached?” So, as bad as the TARP funds are and as bad as what the Congress has done, the Federal Reserve is that much worse.

Now, the answer to other question,that it could it be chaotic to get rid of the Fed – if you read my book carefully, I’ve talked about a transition for many, many years. Even in the foreign policy everything I talk about … how do you get from one stage to the next stage. And what I suggest here is not abolishing the Federal Reserve tomorrow, but legalizing some competition against the Federal Reserve, legalize the Constitution, legalize sound money. Parallel currencies are operating all the time around the world.

Tavis Smiley: What would competition against the Federal Reserve look like? Can you describe that?

Ron Paul: Well, gold coins and gold savings accounts could be used. Today if you use gold and silver as legal tender you go to jail. And yet the law and the Constitution say only gold and silver can be legal tender. But the courts always rule that the only legal tender is what the IRS says, and that’s Federal Reserve notes. But there is no law that says Federal Reserve notes are dollars. So it’s total chaos and that’s why you have the financial system in chaos. But you can legalize competition. For instance, in Mexico the middle class and the poor have been wiped out several times because their peso went to zero, and all their money becomes worthless. But in Mexico now, if you want to save, you can put it in silver and the accounts will be backed by silver, which means that you’re not going to lose. The lower the peso goes, the higher your silver prices go up. You can do that in this country, you can have a transition and if you want to use Federal Reserve notes you could, but other people could get paid for and make payments… with the computer age this is big problem. I mean, if you go to Mexico you can translate dollars into pesos very, very easily. So it could be done, and rather than looking for chaos and closing down the system. But if you continue what we’re doing now, you are going to get chaos because you’re going to have runaway inflation, destruction of the dollar. Now that is real chaos, not what I’m suggesting.

Tavis Smiley: Go back for me real quick and unpack what you were trying to say a moment ago that there are examples around the world where when these issues go unabated and go unaddressed, the middle class gets wiped out. Make the connection between the Fed and the middle class being wiped out.

Ron Paul: Okay, if the Fed continues to inflate the currency, that is to print money, the dollar looses value, which it is doing all the time. Mexico has had runaway inflation, Central American countries have had runaway inflation. We know about the runaway inflation in Germany, the most recent one in Zimbabwe. The money goes to zero value and the people lose out. But the very rich don’t lose out. They get bailed out and they don’t care about the cost of living. Right now they claim the cost of living isn’t going up and the elderly aren’t being heard. But the elderly didn’t get a cost of living increase this year on Social Security. But the cost of living for them is going up. Sometimes it goes up much faster for somebody living on a fixed income than somebody living on Wall Street. But here, instead of helping those people, we help Wall Street. And they’re making billions of dollars, they have a 120 billion dollars in the bank now to hand out in bonuses this year. At the same time, we have a 20% unemployment rate. I mean there is something very unfair about this system.

Tavis Smiley: I couldn’t agree more on that point. Let me ask you a final question here. In the book you talk about the fact, as we’ve been discussing in this conversation, your notion on how this country can prosper by addressing the Fed as it is now structured. But you also make the point that this is also tied to our freedom. I hear the prosperity argument. What’s the freedom argument?

Ron Paul: Well, the freedom argument is this: if you have a secret central bank which has been given the license to counterfeit money, they’re very, very powerful. So when governments grow, I believe when governments grow they always have to do it at the expense of the individual; whether it’s economic liberty or personal liberty or fighting wars that we shouldn’t fight. And there is always a cost to this. So if government grows and undermines personal liberty and passes more laws like the PATRIOT Act and all kinds of things, and you don’t have to pay for it. If everybody had to pay for this through taxes, we wouldn’t have this type of government. So we tax and then we borrow and then we still don’t have enough money so we print the money which then, of course, you accept the economic argument. But at the same time, the bigger the government is, the less personal freedoms we have. And this is a pretty well known fact. The maximum amount of freedom is when the government is smaller and the purpose of government is to protect liberty, protect our civil liberties, to protect our economic liberties, and make sure that we don’t get involved in these wars around the world. Because anytime you’re at war, you’re supposed to sacrifice for the greater cause. And people are more willing to give up on their civil liberties if we’re at war. So it is freedom issue to me.

Tavis Smiley: Ron Paul, of Texas, ran for president, if you recall, the last time around. He had a huge following of young people and made an impact in that campaign. He now has a new book out called “End the Fed”. Congressman Paul, glad to have you on the program. All the best to you sir.

Ron Paul: Thank you very much.

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Date: 10/20/2009
Show: American Morning
Channel: CNN

Transcript:

Kiran Chetry: It’s a mix that is hard to figure out for many Americans with an unemployment rate of nearly 10% put in the Wall Street Journal, the nation’s top 23 banks and investment firms are poised to pay a record 140 billion dollars in bonuses to their top executives. And many of those banks got bail out money. Some of them were able to paid back, of course, leaving many to wonder if they’re on a road to repeat their past mistakes. Joining me now from Clute, Texas is representative Ron Paul of Texas and the author of “End The Fed”. Great to see you this morning.

Ron Paul: Thank you, nice to be with you.

Kiran Chetry: Congressman, it just seems like yesterday that we were talking about these firms on the brink of collapse, and we poured in a record amount of tax payer money into rescuing these firms in the form of that bailout. And now we’re talking record profits, and at the same time we’re not seeing that same wealth trickle out to Main Street. So what’s going on?

Ron Paul: Well, they take care of their own. There is a great deal of influence in Washington from Wall Street. And I think most people have known about it, but they’re really coming to the understanding how it really works. If things are going well when the bubble is being formed and the Fed makes easy credit, a lot of people make a lot of money. But that’s doomed to fail. The bubble bursts. And rightfully, the thing to do then is to put people in jail if they committed fraud. And the people who are bankrupt, let them go bankrupt.

Well, we didn’t do that. Very little fraud was prosecuted and the people who were supposed to go bankrupt got bailed out. Some went bankrupt if they didn’t have influence, like Lehman Brothers, they went bankrupt. But some like Goldman Sachs are in a much better position. So they’ve already got the bailout and they’re making tons of money. So it’s the system that is so bad.

Kiran Chetry: Well, you were against the bailout in the first place. You were somebody who said you wanted the chips to fall as they may and there were very convincing arguments on the opposite side that if we let this happen, this might be something from which we might not recover. Is this how you expected things to be a year later after the bailout; record profits for some of the top banks?

Ron Paul: Well, I wouldn’t be able to predict and say what he profits would be. But no, I’m not surprised there has been a recovery. I think markets work this way. The stock market has recovered 50%. A lot of times that has happened. That happened in the 1930s. So these same banks right now that are making tons of money and stacking it away are not out of the woods when the next downturn occurs.

So, I don’t think it’s over. But we have to wonder who is pulling the strings. It is said that the Congress didn’t have enough strings attached to the money they were giving away. But I think the strings go in the other direction. I think Wall Street has the strings on Washington and they pull and do what they want and that’s where the corruption is. They control the monetary system. That’s why it is so important that we find out how he Fed deals with banks secretly and how they deal with international finances and international central banks and other governments. That’s where a lot of shenanigans are going on. They’re hysterical if they think the Congress is going to find out exactly what they do behind the scenes, and why some of these companies and some of these banks, you know, do so well while the average guy on Main Street gets clobbered. This is characteristic of the monetary system we have, this is not a surprise.

Kiran Chetry: In the past you have been against regulation, you’ve been a libertarian free market person who thinks that really you got to let business go where it goes. In this situation, though, there were no strings attached, and as we understand, there was a big lobbying effort underway to water down any future regulations. Is this an example where, maybe, we do need some regulations? Because it doesn’t look like, in some of these instances, big business is going to police itself.

Ron Paul: Regulations have to be on the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem is easy credit, so the regulation has to be on the Federal Reserve. Then if things get out of whack, they are still regulations, not like there wouldn’t be any regulations. But the regulations come in a different manner; they come through bankruptcy. We didn’t permit the bankruptcies, we did the bailing out. We perpetuated the problem by inflating the currency and bailing out the people that were benefiting.

So fraud is a very significant problem the government should be involved in; you should deal with that. But the government is committing the fraud when they create this money and deal with their special interests; it’s a fraudulent monetary system. They run a counterfeiting operating. So yes, the regulations have to be there, but we can’t allow the central bank to create the bubble and say that it is unstable and we can prevent the problems by regulations. I think it’s all twisted. The regulations have to come first by preventing… pardon me?

Kiran Chetry: I was just going to say one of the regulations that has been tossed around out there is whether or not we need to have some sort of cap on executive compensation or taxes on executive compensation to limit it. You were against taxing it when the whole AIG bonus debacle was happening. What do you think now? Is it acceptable to you that there are billions and billions of dollars in bonuses being set aside for executives?

Ron Paul: Yeah, this is a terrible position for me to be in, because if it’s taxpayer’s money we have a responsibility that we should be restrict it. Huge benefits for General Motors would be criminal because it is the taxpayer’s money.

At the same time, now it is a mixed deal. They get our money, they return it, they claim they are private and now we’re talking about regulating them. That introduces a whole new problem of the power of government to come in and start having wage and price controls and bonus controls and media controls. Who knows what it is. So it’s very, very bad, that’s why once you embark on a program like this, you get into a lot more trouble. One problem causes two new problems.

That’s why you have to stop it cold, stop inflation and rely on free market principles. But right now there is no easy answer, but the easiest answer I can give is, if it’s government money and they so-called “owe” something, yes we have a responsibility of dealing with that and getting it back in the private sector as quickly as possible, and quit all this bailing out and quit all this inflation, quit all this big government stuff that created this monster, and we could get back on our feet again.

If we wouldn’t have done anything a year ago, yes, there would have been a lot of bankruptcies. But it would be all over now. We’d be going back to work again and people have started saving, and that is very good. But none of this is behind us. All we have done is prolong the agony and very soon people are going to realize that in spite of all these huge profits, Wall Street is still a shaky place to be.

Even though the big guys are going to rip us off and get away with billions of dollars, the system is not going to be revived. We’re not going to revive the dollar reserve standard around the financial markets that has existed for 35 years. We have to devise a new system, and right now we’re only playing games with what we have.

Kiran Chetry: Alright, Congressman Ron Paul, great perspective this morning, thanks for being with us.

Ron Paul: Thank you.

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Show: Alex Jones Show
Host: Alex Jones
Date: 9/24/2009

Transcript

Alex Jones: Congressman, it is great to have you, sir.

Ron Paul: Thank you, good to be with you again.

Alex Jones: In the final segment I want to talk about your book coming out, titled “End The Fed”. But first, I’ve got The Times of London, The London Telegraph, AFP – “dollar under scrutiny at G20 summit”, “HSBC bids farewell to the dollar supremacy.” They say the world is now going to move away from the dollar, they’re announcing global governments. President Klaus, your friend, you’ve been over there to speak as a guest of the government, is saying this is global government at the U.N. yesterday. So people are waking up, but now the establishment is making its move. Can you speak about what’s happening with the dollar?

Ron Paul: Well, the dollar of course today bounced up a little bit, but that’s just temporary because of some announcements. But the dollar is in bad trouble, they know it. And a lot of people ask me exactly what is going on in the G20 meetings, and of course, there are a lot of announcements. But I think the really big stuff that goes on in these meetings is behind the scene where there are no announcements. My guess would be that behind the scenes they are really, really making plans for what is going to replace the dollar reserve standard because they’re sick and tired of us getting a free ride. We get to print the money, get to spend it, and they’re supposed to hang on to it as though it were gold. But they’re planning on something else. They have a job in front of them because it’s not easy creating another fiat currency. Usually when a government ruins a currency they go back to something more sound and back their currency or make gold or silver or legal tender. They don’t want to do that; that’s why I suspect a move in the direction of a new world order and I’ve heard Obama recently use that term again, they got to have a new world order’, and they’ve been working on that for a long time, and I’m sure they’re not worried all that much about a crisis coming and they might look at it as an opportunity, you know, for promoting their cause. That’s what we should be concerned about.

Alex Jones: Well, that’s what Congressman Grayson said last hour that he believes the banks have engineered this to create a crisis to vertically integrate society and then they offer this solution as this new bank of the world that will fund itself off carbon taxes and other taxes. Al Gore has called for that, this week Gordon Brown as you know has called for a new world order under the Tobin tax, and that they’re just going to have regional cashless system with the big bank reserves already going to a cashless system, and then all the nation state currencies will still be there, but they’ll be globally standardized.

Ron Paul: Yeah, but what we have going for us is that their system can’t work; it’s just sort of like worrying about the Soviet Union. We worried about them for a long time and had to be because they were very powerful. But long time ago even Mises predicted it won’t last. The system doesn’t work. So what they’re proposing really doesn’t work. It’s sort of like what the IMF and our treasury did in the 1960s and early 1970s: “We’re going to print money and it’s going to be 35 dollars an ounce”. Well, the market overwhelms. So we should be concerned, we should fight it, we should expose them and we should do our very best. But ultimately, the markets will rule. The biggest threat is probably the political threat that how much are they going to crack down on us. How far are they’re going to go and can we ever regain the influence on the government where their job is to protect us and to protect our liberty rather than serving the special interests? That to me is really the bottom line.

Alex Jones: Congressman, the Federal Reserve, as you know, has hired the top ENRON lobbyist firm to come in in the last three months and demonize the “End the Fed” protests. It’s come out in the Baltimore Sun that the army is surveying the End the Fed protests, and that all protests are now being considered low level terrorism. They’re trying to demonize us that way. They’ve also told Congress, as you know, “Oh, you’re not allowed under the Constitution to get involved with what the Federal Reserve does,” even though it’s in the Constitution that the Congress controls the issuance of currency and credit and set the monetary policy. So isn’t that the ultimate big lie that this private banking consortium which didn’t come along till 1913, can tell Congress “You’re not allowed to be involved in what we do?”

Ron Paul: It’s amazing how long they’ve gotten away with it, but we’re getting the American people informed well enough that 75% of the people now when they’re polled agree with us. I can give you a little tidbit about tomorrow, maybe Alan told you the same thing. But we’re having hearings tomorrow on HR 1207 and Barney Frank has fulfilled his promise to me and he gave me one witness and they’re going to have two panels. Ordinarily the majority has two witnesses against one, you know, 2:1. But then they have a government panel which has to represent the body that we’re addressing, which is the Federal Reserve. They were supposed to have three people testifying; only one has agreed to come. On the second panel where there were going to be two in opposition to HR 1207, and my one pick. There’s two cancelled out too, so they’re down to one person that came to testify against the HR 1207, and I suspect it may well be that they don’t want to even be out there, you know, really chomping at the bit. They might work behind the scenes, but they’re not interested in taking us on in a public forum.

Alex Jones: They don’t want to give any attention to it. They think it may be covered by the news networks if Ben Bernanke or somebody like that is there, but it’s too late as you’ve said many times. The momentum is now beginning to shift. The people are asking, “Why can’t we audit the Fed?” They’re realizing that the real power structure, the real government is the private run-for-profit Federal Reserve. And I meant to get to this issue of the hearings. Can you talk about what’s going to happen tomorrow and then how do you see the process unfolding in the months and years to come in brining this corporate, private banking dictatorship to heel?

Ron Paul: Well, I think tomorrow’s hearings will be pretty bland. That would be my guess. Probably not much media. But we’ll get a recording of it and Tom Wood is the economist and historian from the Mises Institute who will be testifying for us. He will have a very good statement and he is a very bright person who knows how to handle a debate like this. Barney Frank will probably be not antagonistic nor derogatory towards the bill and he will try to publicly pacify the people who are concerned and worried about it. But I don’t think it will be big news tomorrow, but it is big news among our circles because we have gotten them to a point where many others who have tried over the many, many decades have never gotten this far. You now, Henry Royce, Wright Patman and Henry Gonzales all coming from a liberal populist view point have always – and they were chairmen of the banking committees – and they never got this far on auditing the Fed, so we are making progress. But this also might be a sign of how bad thing are to wake up the American people and finally say “Hey, what is this all about? What about this Fed?” So I think it’s the crisis that we’re in as well as the time has come around and I think our communications are much better with radio talk shows like this as well as the Internet. This has really spread a massage among people. Today I just walked out of my office, I was visiting with one of my constituents. And I had a young guy from college in Arizona came up to me, and his biggest issue was the Federal Reserve and I think my constituent looked at him and said “Wow!!”. He was so impressed that some college kid from Arizona State came up and he was fascinated with the Federal Reserve. So we are making progress.

Alex Jones: Is this the beginning of game over for the Federal Reserve, because once they’re identified as the true shadow government, the financial oligarchy, as long as they can operate in the shadows and pose as a federal agency, they were invincible. But once the curtain drops on the little man who we though was the big powerful Wizard of Oz, once the illusion is shattered, which is now happening, it begins the process of their fall.

Ron Paul: I think it might be beginning, but I don’t think we’re very far along because I don’t think they have yet begun to fight. I mean, they’re going to be tenacious. Look at what they’ve done with the lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act. They are resisting, they are fighting it. Those court cases are going to go on for years. They’re going to fight this. They’re going to resist and argue about turning over records. So it’s not going to be real easy.

I think what will happen is that you will have a dramatic change when the dollar quits working. I just think they’re going to fight us tooth and nail, and they’re going to make it very, very difficult. They will find the ways to further imprison people who demand that they use silver and gold. So I just think that there will be runaway inflation and high interest rates before the American people will say, “Yeah, I think we were told about this Federal Reserve”. And we need to do more and they will lose all credibility. And besides, printing the money won’t help that much. The more they print the worse it will be. Right now they printed a lot of money to try to patch this system together. In some ways they have patched it together, but they dumped all the bad assets on the taxpayer. You can’t have a wealthy country by doing that. That has to have bad results. But when the dollar collapses, there is nowhere else to go.

Alex Jones: Congressman, I don’t even pretend to know what’s best to suggest you do tomorrow in these hearings. But I know you’re a very polite, focused, intelligent, scholarly person. I would just encourage you to call them out and to be as aggressive as possible because that more firmly cements you as the leader – and I think you’re the man for the job – against these people.

And I would also hope that you would entertain and allow me to perhaps ask you what your opinion is about this, to bring up the conflict of interests issue; you have this revolving door between Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and Chase, and the governors of the private Fed like Geithner, Paulson, Bernanke, the campaign contributions to both parties. Of course, Barack Obama getting four times the Goldman Sachs money, almost five times that John McCain got. I really think if you just discredit them out of the gates, that’s the one thing that I’ve noticed in these hearings and I’ve watched scores of them. And you’ve been in scores of them and I watch them at night when I get home. I record it, hours of it. And that seems to be the cross or the holy water for the vampires, just to call these people out. They’re the ones that changed the regulations, they’re the ones that created the derivatives, they’re the ones that are a revolving door and they’re robbing the bank.

Ron Paul: Well, there will be a limit to how much of that I can do because I’ll have a 5 minutes opening statement and 5 minutes to quiz the individuals. But they’re not sending the people that you could really hit on those questions. They’re sending the general counsel. Now he’s going to be a legal guy. He’s going to explain the law and that sort of thing. They’re going to hide behind the technicalities of law. I think your suggestions are good; we should call on them. But I will have to decide tomorrow exactly how I am going to hit him and what the atmosphere is like.

Alex Jones: Sure, we don’t want to let the cat out of the bag and let them know our plan of attack to defend the Republic. Obviously you’re going to be asking them questions for a future hearing. Can you go back and ask him how the treasury department and the Federal Reserve gives itself waivers to allow them to give money to institutions they own stock in?

Ron Paul: Well, it should be shocking but unfortunately that’s about the way they run everything. They are always skirting the law. It’s only the people who have to… if they have any infractions on not obeying an illegal law or obeying the Constitution then the roof comes down on us. But for them that’s just routine activities. But they should be called on it and that’s exactly where the American people are waking up. They’re sick and tired of hearing it, and the more they hear it the better.

Alex Jones: Congressman, looking at thism just a pep talk to the people … not that they need much of one. Folks are seeing victory, they’re smelling blood, they know that the Federal Reserve and the private cartel isn’t invincible. But Congressman Grayson pointed out last hour that you in 1983 first introduced this Audit The Fed bill, and then now here we are 25/26 years later. And even though it may take a few more years to really have victory over these people, we are now, I believe, in the end game here. And can you speak about the power of perseverance and focus with you literally on the frontlines toiling to do this? And then what is it like for you to actually see Jerusalem, to actually be going into the promised land, to now be able to look over the mountain and after this 10,000 mile journey you’re now only a few hundred miles away.

Ron Paul: Well, I don’t like to address that in a personal way as much as in general. I think if an individual wants to change things they have to deal in principle, they have to have an ability to state it clearly and they have to preserve. Perseverence is very, very important, but you have to have truth on your side. And eventually you do win. Actually, I did not believe we would get this far, I did not believe that the campaign we ran last year would get very far. So it was a much more encouraging to me to realize that there were a lot of people. I believe when I came to Congress – as a matter of fact when I ran I never thought I would make it to Congress – my role and responsibility is to try to leave a record saying, “What would it be like if we had somebody who took the oath of office very seriously, how would that person vote?”, realizing what I was up against because I realize you would use the term “We can’t really run against Santa Claus,” that you’re not going to get re-elected. So I was surprised I got elected, and surprised I got re-elected. And pleasantly surprised to find out that this attitude of perseverance and standing for principle really can bring about good results. So I am pleased with it, but it’s the power of the ideas more than my personal abilities, quite frankly.

Alex Jones: Sir, I appreciate your humbleness. I’m not here trying to lavish praise on you for praise’s sake. I think as a model or an example of perseverance, you are the standard. You’re the blood of courage and I want you to know that I have three children, just like you have a lot of children and grandchildren, and I care about them and I know that we’re going to be a third-world hell if you’re not successful, if I’m not successful. And I just really do admire you and I know everybody, for everybody out there does too. And we want to thank you for all you’ve done.

Ron Paul: Well, thank you very much, I appreciate that. Evidently our numbers are much bigger than any of us knows. You know the story about the remnant, nobody can count the remnant, nobody knows where they are. But they’re out there and I think each and every one of us are looking to each other and it’s just great to find allies. I always tell people at my crowds, “You know, I don’t know what tomorrow will bring and I don’t have over-expectations, but in the meantime we ought to have an enjoyment of associating with like minded people and having these goals and ideals because at least we can say that we made the effort and we communicated.” Fortunately for us today we have seen some fruits of our labor. Can you imagine fighting this battle in 1939 or sometime back then when the New Deal was in and then the world empire was really starting the militarism of the world? I would have thought back in 1938-1939 in the Roosevelt era it must have been pretty humbling for those who were trying to hold these principles together.

Alex Jones: We’ve only got 7 minutes left with the congressman; I’m going to skip this break so we have time to talk to him. Before he leaves we’re going to talk about his new book “End The Fed”, really a manifesto, a constitution against this abomination, one arm of this larger private crime syndicate. But Congressman, what can we do, briefly, to fight and help you and others that are leading this charge to defeat the Fed quicker in this battle, in this war for truth? And then what do you think their counterstrikes are going to be? The Governors Association a month ago wrote a letter to the Pentagon and the White House asking, “What are you doing sending 379,000 troops they now want for Brigade Homeland through NORTCOM.” That’s also in the progressive AP. I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but suddenly we are getting YouTube videos from Arizona and Louisville, Kentucky of regular National Guard and army running checkpoints, searching people. We’ve gone and interviewed them now, and it appears that we’re seeing a slow takeover and former Congressman and former Republican leader was on the Dallas morning’s news, Dick Armey was giving a quick briefing. I’m sure you know about most of it, saying yes he believes Obama may use the flu scare to kind of smokescreen passing healthcare, gun control, open borders, financial reform, giving the banks more power. So can you speak to what we can do to fight these people, and to the whole police state that’s really expanding right now?

Ron Paul: Well, I’m afraid Posse Comitatus is about dead according to what Obama wants. You know, when they passed the HIPAA law, the HIPAA law was the one that said they were going to protect your medical privacy and in actuality it was exactly the opposite. Because in that HIPAA law it said that in case of a national emergency the government has a right to all your records. Now, you talk about a scare. They keep scaring and frightening people and they put the high executives taking these flu shots and how dangerous it is and on and on. So I think they’re almost just welcoming and waiting thinking, “Boy, with just a little bit more we can declare all this national emergency stuff.” But they have set the stage for doing it under medical control and control of diseases, always for these wonderful things. But unfortunately I’m afraid the American people are going to suffer the consequences, but all we can do is expose them for what they are and hopefully the American people will wake up.

Alex Jones: Well, this really hit home for me, and I’ve talked to the county that Pittsburgh is in. You grew up there, what’s the name of the county?

Ron Paul: Allegheny.

Alex Jones: Yeah, Allegheny. And I talked to the police officer and got his name. My guys were trying to interview the military and trying to ask them questions. There were some 2,500 of them there; including regular army and air force and National Guard. They said, “May we speak to your public relations officer?” And they said, “No, we’re not going to talk to you, get out of here.” And they followed them, got their license plate and then the police department called up posing as the rental car company, and then when they told them who they were, the police officers switched gears and said “Well, you’re now on terror databases and you’ll never get off of it,” and they laughed them. My employees are freaked out; these are just camera guys I’ve hired. And I called the police officer and I asked, “Did you really do that” and he said, “Yeah I did that.” He thought it was funny to ruin people’s lives.

Ron Paul: That is pretty bad. We don’t know many are doing that, but people enjoy doing that. They get this sense of superiority and they have this power. But it’s sort of pervasive throughout the system with anybody that has this power. IRS agents love it and they just like to lord it over other people.

Alex Jones: But people of true words like yourself are incredibly humble. I wish we can get these control freaks to realize how fulfilling it is to be good.

Ron Paul: Hopefully we can convert some people. I think the true satisfaction in life comes from being productive, producing something worthwhile and being able to take care of oneself. But most people, you know, we’re oriented towards saying that the only way that you can be moral and upright is to have a welfare state to make sure everybody is taken care of. Steal from one group and give to another. But I believe true satisfaction for individuals comes from work, hard effort and the satisfaction that you can take care of yourself and your family. Regardless of whether you’re very wealthy or you’re not wealthy, that you maximized your abilities. Today we do everything to de-emphasize the use of our abilities to assume responsibility for ourselves.

Alex Jones: Well, they want us to be dependent so they can control us; the classic sharecropper system.

Ron Paul: Right.

Alex Jones: Two final questions and then we’re going to let you go, Congressman. We admire you and we’re praying for you in the hearings tomorrow. In closing, tell us about “End the Fed”, the new book coming out. And please give us your take on when you believe the dollar will die.

Ron Paul: Well, on the dollar … I don’t know. Nobody knows exactly when. It could come anytime, but my guess is it’s going to be a couple of years yet.

Alex Jones: And it will be devastating?

Ron Paul: Oh, I really do. I think it’s going to be a very bad time, a lot worse than what we’ve seen so far. And that’s when it is more likely to be riots on the street because people are going to be very, very angry. They’re already angry, but they will get much angrier. I just hope they can divert their attention the right way.

“End the Fed” has been out for a week and it’s doing pretty well. The best vote for our movement is to buy the book because it’s the political vote on this. The more books you sell and the more you show up on the New York Times list, the better off it is and just as I set aside I do not take personal benefits from this book. This book was donated to the FREE Foundation. So I can push the sales of this book not for personal gain. But it is a vote. It is a vote and in many ways if we can get it up to No. 1 which “The Revolution” was for a short period of time, it will be noticed. It will be noticed. So buy 1, 2 or 3 books. They’re not all that expensive. It will be a vote that sends a message to a lot of people.

Alex Jones: And you’re not taking personal gain. I’ve read the book, it’s incredibly powerful. It is a manifesto against tyranny. Folks, get “End The Fed” even if you know all about it. Buy 20 copies, give it to friends, family, neighbors. You can go to Amazon, book stores, everywhere. What are some other places they can link to and get it? Where are some of the best place to get it, Congressman?

Ron Paul: Well, I imagine the best price is probably Amazon. But you can go to CampaignForLiberty.com too and get it through there. I’m sure it will be available through a lot of websites. But right now the quickest way to get it recorded is Amazon.

Alex Jones: End the Fed, by Congressman Ron Paul, climbing up the top charts. Sir, we have 30 seconds left. Final comment?

Ron Paul: All I know is that we’re making progress and I am very pleased. I just hope we can continue this way and if we do our job we can win this but we live in very dangerous times.

Alex Jones: God bless you, sir. Godspeed and say hi to Carol and the rest of the family and say hi to Wayne and everybody for us. And again we’ll see you next time.

Ron Paul: Very good, thank you.

Alex Jones: Thank you. There goes Congressman Ron Paul, ladies and gentlemen.

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Channel: Bloomberg TV
Date: 9/23/2009

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Download the column as an MP3 file here (3:19 minutes).

Trade Wars and Protectionism are not Free Trade

by Ron Paul

Two weeks ago, both the administration and the Fed announced with straight faces that the recession was over and the signs of economic recovery were clear. Then last week, the president made a stunning decision that signals the administration’s determination to repeat the mistakes of the Great Depression. Much like the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs that set off a global trade war and effectively doomed us to ten more years of economic misery, Obama’s decision to enact steep tariffs on Chinese imported tires could spark a trade war with the single most important trading partner we have. Not only does China manufacture a whole host of products that end up on American store shelves, they are also still buying our Treasury debt.

One has to wonder why this course of action is being undertaken if the administration really believes its own statements about economic recovery. Why are they still trying to fix something they have supposedly already fixed? The most troubling thing is the rhetoric about free trade given to justify this. The administration claims it is merely enforcing trade policies and that this is necessary for free trade. This sort of double speak demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of free trade, economics and world history. Yet these are the same people the country trusts to solve our problems. This sort of thing should remove all doubt about the credibility of the decision makers in Washington.

The truth is this will hurt American consumers by driving up prices of tires and cars. This will also complicate matters for our already crippled manufacturing and agricultural industries, if and when China retaliates against US made products. Whatever jobs might be saved in the tire and steel industries here as a result of this protectionist measure will likely be lost in other American industries. It is even doubtful that those jobs will be saved, as cheap tires can be obtained from other places like Mexico instead. It is difficult to see any real winners among all the losers where trade wars are concerned. If Unions think this is beneficial to them, they are being penny-wise and pound foolish.

Free trade with all and entangling alliances with none has always been the best policy in dealing with other countries on the world stage. This is the policy of friendship, freedom and non-interventionism and yet people wrongly attack this philosophy as isolationist. Nothing could be further from the truth. Isolationism is putting up protectionist trade barriers, starting trade wars imposing provocative sanctions and one day finding out we have no one left to buy our products. Isolationism is arming both sides of a conflict, only to discover that you’ve made two enemies instead of keeping two friends. Isolationism is trying to police the world but creating more resentment than gratitude. Isolationism is not understanding economics, or other cultures, but clumsily intervening anyway and creating major disasters out of minor problems.

The government should not be in the business of giving out favors to special interests or picking winners and losers in the market, yet this has been most of what has consumed politicians’ attention in Washington. It has reached a fevered pitch lately and it needs to end if we are ever to regain a functional and prosperous economy.

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