Channel: CNBC
Date: 11/20/2009

Transcript

Host: Congress is trying to gain more control over the Fed. A proposal by Texas Republican Ron Paul making it through the House Financial Services Committee late yesterday. Senior economic reporter Steve Lisman getting that information on that right now. Steve, what do you have?

Steve Liesman: Lisa, thank you very much. I just talked to a senior congressional staffer about this surprise passage of the Ron Paul amendment last night to the Regulatory Reform Bill that would allow audits of the Fed’s monetary policy.

Fed officials fear could be a major blow to its independence and possibly threaten higher inflation. The congressional staffer I talked to suggested that Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee will continue to look for opportunities to alter the Paul amendment. What he said was, “The desire for Chairman Frank is to make sure monetary policy is truly independent. He will continue to work with his colleagues to make sure that there is no ambiguity there.” That’s the statement that we just received from the congressional staffer.

What’s all this coming from? A 1987 congressional exclusion barred the GAO, the Government Accounting Office, from auditing the Fed’s monetary policy. They could audit every part of the Fed and indeed there are nineteen other audits in the GAO going on right now, but not about monetary policy. The Paul amendment, which passed like 43 to 26, essentially repeals that exemption. Ron Paul, when interviewed last week on Squat Box, defended his bill.

Ron Paul: “Seventy-five percent of the American people say, yeah, we should know what’s going on with the Fed. So that’s 75 percent of the electorate saying that we should do our job and look at the Fed. It is the reason why there are well over two-thirds of the members of Congress supporting this bill.”

Steve Liesman: So that’s Ron Paul with 300 co-sponsors on one hand. CNBC [found] opposition to the amendment included both former chairmen of the Fed, Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker, in a rare letter signed by both of them. They said, “We can assure you that this protection of internal deliberations and reaching decisions is indispensable in the Federal conduct of monetary policy.”

The Fed’s real concern: it’s all ready going to be under a sort of a political pressure when it comes time to raise rates. Unemployment will be unusually high, most likely when the Fed raises rates. Their fear is that this bill could increase that political pressure.

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Channel: RT
Date: 11/05/2009

Transcript:

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

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

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

Shelly Roche: Thanks for having me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Channel: Russia Today
Date: 7/17/2009

Reporter: Everyone loves money. But the U.S. Federal Reserve may be loving it a little too much and keeping it all to itself. Perhaps that’s why one of the hottest stories of the summer involves the Fed coming under fire. At the center of the heated debate is Congressman Ron Paul. He and about 263 members of Congress support a bill to audit one of the most powerful monetary institutions in the world.

Ron Paul: What I want to find out is what they’re doing. They can create money and create it out of thin air and make promises and guarantees to private entities, international bankers, other governments and other central banks. We deserve to know exactly what they’re doing.

Reporter: The Federal Reserve System is an organization with unprecedented financial power, heavily influencing the course of the U.S. economy and global financial system, and one that is supposed to operate independently of the U.S. government, or so we think.

And the eagle atop this massive marble structure in downtown Washington DC also oversees the regulation of interest rates and the printing of U.S. dollars.

Ron Paul: Now, because of what the Fed does, they’re embarking on a policy of destroying the value of the dollar. This could give capitalism a bad name. Obviously, this is not capitalism, this is cronyism and inflationism and secret central banking.

Reporter: Well, secret secrets are no fun unless we tell everyone. Lawmakers and economists agree that the Federal Reserve with its immense financial power, has exercised more control over the economy than any other government body. And if Congressman Ron Paul and others like him demand an investigation into this organization, the Fed itself says that the audit would only hurt, not help the economy.

Perhaps that’s why they have enlisted the help of over 180 economists and businessmen who have written a letter urging the U.S. government to “reaffirm their support for and defend the independence of the Federal Reserve System as a foundation of U.S. economy stability”. The Fed’s defenders say that the independence of U.S. monetary policy may be at risk.

Ron Paul: The Federal Reserve is hysterical over it. I mean, they’re sort of ganging up, getting all the economists to prove that transparency is terrible and they love the secrecy. They threaten that they’d raise interest rates and do all these terrible things.

Reporter: But the U.S. President seems to be on the side of this massive money machine.

A key component of Barack Obama’s financial overhaul is actually to give the Fed more power. What do you make of that?

Ron Paul: I said, “Look, if you do give them move authority that’s an even stronger argument for transparency, you just can’t keep giving them more and more power.” My argument is that if you’re against big government and you’re against centralized government and warmongering and welfarism, you can’t be for the Fed.

Reporter: Wars abroad and perhaps an even bigger battle brewing at home, one whose outcome could very well shake the financial system and get rid of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that the Fed has become all too accustomed to… until now.

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The feisty congressman from Texas, whose insurgent “Ron Paul Revolution” presidential campaign rankled Republican leaders last year, now has the GOP House leadership on his side — backing a measure that generated paltry support when he first introduced it 26 years ago.

Paul, as of Tuesday, has won 245 co-sponsors to a bill that would require a full-fledged audit of the Federal Reserve by the end of 2010. More…

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by Doug Weed, a presidential historian and New York Times bestselling author

Once again, Ron Paul deserved to be in the headlines and once again the national media totally ignored him. Wednesday, the nationwide “Tea Party” protests of big taxes and big spending was the number two story in the nation on most television networks and number one on some. And how could they avoid it? Thousands showed up from coast to coast to express their dismay. What is Obama doing? How can we keep printing paper money? Doesn’t he know that a wave of inflation will hit the shore?

The fact is that the first, notable, Tea Party since Boston was launched at a Ron Paul campaign rally in Austin, Texas in December of 2007. The second was the famous “money bomb” fundraiser for Ron Paul on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party in the middle of the 2008 presidential run. And most of the crowd and organizers of yesterday’s event were Ron Paul supporters. But congressman Ron Paul, the Nostradamus from Texas, who predicted the crisis we now face, was not mentioned once by the national media.

Credit (or blame) for the event was given to former Texas congressman, Dick Armey, a nice guy but not THE guy or to Newt Gingrich, or to Washington conservative think tanks that mine for Ron Paul money but never give him any respect or credit, or FOX television who actually blocked him from an early debate in 2008, or from sinister “corporate interests.” Huh? Gee… I wonder what corporation could possibly be interested in lower taxes and less government spending? General Motors? AIG?

Continue reading…

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Fed Up!

The popular uprising against central banking

By Thomas E. Woods Jr.

The way Ron Paul tells it, his more than 30 years of speaking and writing about money, inflation, and the Federal Reserve System attracted only limited interest outside libertarian and constitutionalist circles. The subject, and Paul as its spokesman, were scarcely to be found in the media, even—or perhaps especially—on the business networks.

But Paul’s 2008 presidential bid changed that. Suddenly the Fed was on the table for discussion for the first time since Congress established it in 1913. With Paul making the evils of central banking and fiat money a theme of his campaign, the issue took on a vigor that few expected. Even calling for the Fed’s outright abolition was [no] longer unheard of on the television news networks.

When Paul first raised the issue in his campaign, he had no idea what he was tapping into. “I didn’t realize people your age knew so much about money and inflation,” he told a rally at the University of Pittsburgh last year. “But it gets the largest applause at college campuses. I figured the first time it happened [at the University of Southern California] it was an accident. … But then at the University of Michigan, they started to burn Federal Reserve Notes.”

To Paul’s surprise, some of his loudest applause lines involved salvos against the Fed. Chants of “End the Fed!” greeted his denunciations of the economic damage the central bank was unleashing. An underappreciated reason for Paul’s fundraising prowess was his outspoken opposition to the Fed, a subject that had long been off limits in American politics. Eventually, a national organization called End the Fed, with local chapters around the country, gave institutional expression to the issue, sponsoring a series of demonstrations against the central bank in 39 cities last November.

This is a new phenomenon on the Right. The libertarian and conservative think tanks that liberally invoke the names of Austrian School economists like F.A. Hayek have tended to ignore these men’s opposition to central banking, a position too politically incorrect even for those who pride themselves on their willingness to defend unpopular positions. The Ludwig von Mises Institute and the Foundation for Economic Education have been among the handful of exceptions to this rule, providing the scholarly infrastructure to convert what was sometimes an inchoate unease about the Fed among Paul supporters into well-honed arguments.

Unlike in the past, moreover, commentators with high media profiles now defend this view of money and central banking. Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, may be the best known of these. Schiff foretold the crisis before it happened, including the bankruptcy of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. His books Crash Proof and The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets, both of which have sold well, take an Austrian approach to current conditions. A grassroots movement is even trying to draft Schiff, a resident of Connecticut, to run for U.S. Senate against Chris Dodd in 2010.

Schiff isn’t alone. Famed investor Jim Rogers calls for the abolition of the Fed when he’s a guest on business networks. Indeed, he predicts the Fed’s demise sometime in the next ten years. Another Austrian analyst all over television and the print media is James Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer. Similarly high-profile is Mish Shedlock, whose Global Economic Trend Analysis blog takes a reliably anti-Fed position.

Read the rest of the article at The American Conservative’s website.

(Links were not in the original article and have been added for our readers’ convenience)

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The mischaracterization begins right in the first sentence:

By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 27, 2008; Page A03

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) has built a national following largely by preaching an isolationist foreign policy.

Isolationism is a “loaded word” and the article fails to clarify the difference between isolationism and non-interventionism:

Non-interventionism is a foreign policy which holds that political rulers should avoid alliances with other nations and avoid all wars not related to direct territorial self-defense.

Isolationism is non-interventionism combined with economic nationalism (protectionism). Some non-interventionists are not isolationists. America’s founding fathers, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, favored non-interventionism combined with free trade and free cultural exchange.

What is the origin of this common misunderstanding? Quite possibly John McCain, who famously claimed in a Presidential debate that the type of isolationism allegedly advocated by Ron Paul is what brought Hitler (!) to power:

Ron Paul cannot possibly be an isolationist because he strongly favors free trade and diplomacy. He asserts that the United States should trade and talk with everyone, that free trade promotes democracy and that economic embargoes actually create dictators and allow them to stay in power by giving them the opportunity to blame an external scapegoat (America) for all their problems.

During the Spanish-language Univision debate in Miami, after his opponents did their best to pander to Hispanic voters, Ron Paul courageously expressed this very stance, and it wasn’t too well received by audience members who still have an axe to grind with their countries of origin:

In summary, Ron Paul is a non-interventionist, not an isolationist.

The Washington Post continues:

Stick with your own kind, says the maverick presidential candidate.

That’s the end of the first paragraph, and we’ve already been told that Ron Paul is an “isolationist” who wants us to “stick with our own kind”. That almost sounds like racism! But here’s a quote straight from Ron Paul:

“Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called “diversity” actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist.

The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity.

More importantly, in a free society every citizen gains a sense of himself as an individual, rather than developing a group or victim mentality. This leads to a sense of individual responsibility and personal pride, making skin color irrelevant. Rather than looking to government to correct our sins, we should understand that racism will endure until we stop thinking in terms of groups and begin thinking in terms of individual liberty.“

It is baffling how anyone but a trained propagandist with ulterior motives could describe this philosophy as “Stick with your own kind, says the maverick presidential candidate.”

After this brief “introduction” to Ron Paul, the article further descends into insinuation and innuendo and describes how Ron Paul convinced members of his family to work on his Presidential campaign – a perfectly legal practice, as long as family members are qualified for the job and are paid the going rate for their work:

There are no laws prohibiting candidates from hiring relatives, though the Federal Election Commission does require family members to be qualified for the job and be paid the going rate for their work. Melanie Sloan of the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said her organization has twice issued reports critical of the practice among members of Congress.

“This was never intended to be a family business,” Sloan said. “The reason this is troubling is that it’s not clear to donors whether their campaign donations are really going to support the candidacy or to support the family.”

Sloan said this was not the first time Paul has hired relatives to perform campaign work on his behalf. The group found payments to daughter Lori Pyeatt during his three previous congressional races, and payments to grandson Matthew Pyeatt and daughter Joy LeBlanc during Paul’s 2004 congressional campaign.

The author then crows how Ron Paul paid his “extended brood” (direct quote) the following amounts of money over the course of his campaign:

• Wayne Paul (accountants): $38,894.10
• Lori Paul Pyeatt: $27,864.44
• Nora LeBlanc: $25,655.66
• Valori Pyeatt (manages fundraising receptions): $17,156.71
• Matthew Pyeatt (manages MySpace profile): $3,250.88
• Laura Paul (handles orders for merchandise): $2,723.61
• Peggy Paul (campaign logistics): $2,224.14
• Robert Paul (campaign travel, appearing at political events): $375.00
• Randall Paul (campaign travel, appearing at political events): $345.55

Included on the list of Ron Paul’s “extended brood” is Jesse Benton, Ron Paul’s Communications Manager:

“You always think about those kinds of things,” said Jesse Benton, Paul’s spokesman and, it just so happens, the fiance of one of the candidate’s granddaughters (he has been paid $54,573).

However, Jesse Benton and Ron Paul’s granddaughter actually met while working on the campaign, a fact conveniently ignored by the author.

The article continues in the same spirit and while there are no specific accusations made, you can’t help but take away the impression that Ron Paul did “something” wrong. What exactly that’s supposed to be isn’t made clear.

But what is the reality?

Ron Paul followed both the letter and the spirit of the law. If anything, he paid his relatives way too little to compensate them for disrupting their lives and helping him out. There’s no doubt they could have made a lot more money by working elsewhere.

Additionally, the Washington Post’s article completely fails to mention Ron Paul’s decades-long record of financial frugality. Ron Paul…

• Always refused to participate in the lucrative congressional pension system, labeling it “immoral”.
• Returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.
• Sent three of his children to medical school with no student loans.
• Runs a debt-free and fiscally conservative campaign.
• Refused Federal Matching Funds for his campaign with the quote “I don’t take stolen money“.

Please help us set the record straight about Ron Paul and his continuing work for freedom on behalf of all of us.

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