Date: 12/28/2009

Transcript

Ron Paul: Last week I mentioned in my little talk about the medical care legislation going on in the Senate, that it might be a distraction from foreign policy because I believe there were some very important events going on in the Middle East. And I brought up the subject of Yemen because at that time we had known that the Saudis had bombed Yemen and the Saudis are our close allies. We provide them with the weapons and the airplanes, and we did sanction and endorse the bombing of Yemen where there are some Al-Qaida; there is no doubt about it. Because they are scattered around the Middle East and they react to our occupation and if we’re in Afghanistan and we chase them around, they might go into Pakistan and now into Yemen. And I thought this was a very dangerous situation. Well, we’ve all heard now the story that happened on the weekend where this one individual that has come from Nigeria and then through Amsterdam and came in to Detroit and attempted to set off some type of explosive device. Most people who heard it thought it was a firecracker device, but it started a small fire which obviously is very, very dangerous.

But it seems ironic that there is so much excitement about this, and now there is talk about attacking Yemen because there is Al-Qaida there. I saw one headline that fascinated me that said, “Al-Qaida in Yemen threatens United States”. I got thinking, “United States in Yemen threatens United States”. Our presence there is the real problem. But there is now some serious talk about what we should be doing over there and dealing with the Al-Qaida, never addressing the real important subject of why is there Al-Qaida and why do these radicals get motivated in order to commit suicide and these various things. And they get motivated because we’re there in their country and then they organize and the longer we’re there the more they get radicalized against us. So what do we do? We send more troops over there. But this whole issue now about what to do about monitoring people getting on airplanes; it really scares me because we do so much already.

We spend 75 billion dollars on intelligence gathering in this country in order to protect us and make us safe. So with 75 billion dollars we weren’t able to detect this individual where there was a glaring warning sign; like his dad goes to the U.S. embassy and says, “Hey, this guy is losing it and he could commit a violent act”. So they put him on some list and totally ignore him, and he gets on an airplane and starts a fire. So you wonder just exactly what’s going on. It’s either awful stupidity or there must be an agenda. I guess we won’t know that for sure, but I am concerned about what they are going to do to the America people.

When the hijackers that bombed the twin towers were identified, it was looked into and it was found out that the FBI had reported on numerous occasions that they were being trained to fly airplanes but not to land. Nothing was done about it and that was not even a lead, so it was totally ignored. But nobody ever got punished. And now no one is going to get punished for this for not paying attention to this warning.

And so we look now to somebody else getting punished; it will be the American people. You know, they’ll add some more security on to us. First they make us take off our shoes and then our belts and then small bottles of water, and put our computers in the tray and on and on it goes. So something else is going to happen; they won’t let us get out of our seats or look at our bags from the bin above us and thinking that’s going to make us a lot safer.

I’m convinced, though, that one of the main problems we have is that we’ve turned over a very important function to the government. The government is incapable of doing what they’re supposed to do. A function like this should be controlled by the people who run the airlines. But they haven’t done that in many, many years. The airlines like all of the responsibility to fall to the government, so if anything goes wrong it’s the government’s fault. But I often thought about how efficient an armored car company is in protecting the money in those trucks, and nobody has to worry about it. But when it comes to cargo on an airplane, the government has to be responsible and the bigger the problem and the more fear that is built up, the more they take away our personal liberties. They turn us all into zombies and the American people go along with this saying, “Oh, as long as it makes us safer, I guess it’s okay to go along”.

But it’s time the American people woke up and started realizing that there is a bit of propaganda going on and quite possibly this incident will not only undermine our personal liberties, but will also accelerate our intervention and the violence occurring in the Middle East.

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Date of recording: 12/22/2009

Transcript

Ron Paul: This past week the Senate has been working overtime, even throughout the weekend. And they’re very much involved in discussing medical care. It is assumed that they may even be voting on Christmas Eve. This is a very, very important subject and involves all Americans. And yet I see that this debate sometimes is just on the margin. The government has already been involved in medical care for a long time. They probably participate in about 60% or 65% of everybody getting medical care already. So the argument there is what’s it going to increase to? We know we’re not going to get total socialized medicine, and yet there is going to be more government involvement and maybe an undermining of the medical savings account. So it is very, very important. But the debate is, how much more government are we going to have, and the real debate on whether the government should even be involved or not isn’t even brought up. But even though that got almost all the attention over the weekend and it’s going to continue to be in the news, I think there are some other very important things going on around the world involving our foreign policy.

Just recently we heard about the skirmish on the border between Iran and Iraq over an oil well. A total of 11 Iranians were said to have gone into the Iraqi area, even though this well is right on the border. It happens both ways; the Iraqis go in and they occupy the well for a while, and then the Iranians go in and they occupy it.

But I don’t think this is all an accident right now because since we went into Iraq the government of Iraq and Iran are much closer together. They’re all Shiites now. And I think it’s in the interest of the neocons to stir up trouble between the Iraqi government and the Iranian government and if they can find something like this, I think they will encourage it.

And it is clear the American government has already said they strongly endorse what the Iraqi government is doing in order to confront the Iranians. Of course, there is no such thing as the Iraqi government; we are the Iraqi government. So everything that happens there is our responsibility. Just as it is with what’s going on in Yemen. The more we stir up trouble there, the so called enemies of America (those who would like to get us off their land) move around. They move from Afghanistan over into Pakistan. Then we have to go and start bombing Pakistan. But they also have moved to Yemen. So our puppet government, the Saudis, started bombing them and it is understood that some of our cruise missiles were also used or our Predators were used to do some bombing too, killing civilians and just stirring up even more trouble.

So the principle of preventive war is alive and well. And the war is spreading; it’s going into Pakistan, now it’s going into Yemen. The border dispute between the Iranians and the Iraqis is designed, I believe, to make sure that the American people are conditioned that some day we are going to have to take on the Iranian government. We have to have regime change, is our policy.

Just last week we had this major vote on putting tough sanctions on the Iranians where they could not even import gasoline, not even from another country. The theory behind these sanctions is that even if a country like China does any dealings and exports refined fuel into Iran, then we have to punish the Chinese, which is foolhardy. It’s not going to work, it causes more trouble. So we have border disputes, we have the sanctions that we have put on. And it looks like we are determined to stir up trouble there. Not only do we accuse the Iranians that someday they might have a nuclear weapon, we ignore the fact that our CIA says that they have no concrete evidence that they have worked on a bomb since 2003.

Also, just this last week it was said that the Iranians are working on a trigger mechanism for a nuclear weapon. The odds of our national security being threatened by the government of Iran is just preposterous. It’s a third world country, it can’t even survive without importing their gasoline. They don’t have an army, air force, intercontinental ballistic missiles. And they don’t have a nuclear weapon and yet we nearly get hysterical about this. And besides, where are we going to get all this money to expand our presence in the Middle East? We just passed a military budget of 636 billion dollars. Well, that’s the budget for the military that we can see and touch. But there are many other 100s of billions of dollars involved in our national defense. And it is estimated that we spend well over a trillion dollars a year maintaining our empire.

So there are the economic consequences, and there is also the threat to our national security by spreading ourselves too thin. And it seems like there is no backing off. At the present time this concentration on medical care, although I grant you is very, very important, I think what’s going on over in the Middle East has much more serious consequences not only to our financial situation, but to us as a nation and for our national security.

So my intent is to continue to pursue a sound fiscal policy of living within our means, getting the government out of our lives and out of the economy and, of course, coming up with a sensible foreign policy where we don’t just go looking for trouble. And right now it seems like those who promote the war propaganda and try to condition the American people to be prepared for the bombing of Iran or some other incident are just begging and pleading for the incident that will rally the American people so that they can support going into Iran. Hopefully we will wake up before that happens.

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Date: 11/12/2009

Ron Paul: I’d like to talk about monetary policy a bit. The dollar has been in the news, gold has been in the news, and a significant event has just recently transpired. It happened on November 2nd and to me it was a very significant event. That was the day the Indian central bank announced that it had purchased 200 tons of gold from the IMF. And that was more or less the tipping point on this recent surge in the gold price.

The reason I think this is a significant date is in some ways it is almost the opposite of what happened back on August 15th, 1971, That was a very special day in monetary history and I talk about that a whole lot. That is when the world announced that gold was officially demonetized, no currency would be linked to gold, the dollar would still be the reserve standard and everything would be okay. Instead what we got was the biggest bubble in the history of mankind, which is now being deflated.

So, to me the fact that the central bank of India has now purchased this gold at the same time the IMF is getting rid of the gold and the west is getting rid of the gold, means that there is a major shift in economic power; and that is from the west to the east. And this is no surprise. Jobs have gone to the east, productivity has gone to the east, savings have gone to the east. The west has become more indebted and it’s not just the United States, it’s Europe as well.

And I think this signals the time when gold will be re-monetized. I don’t think it’s ever been demonetized in the sense. I think gold has always been money, but they pretended it wasn’t money. In the 1960s they wanted to demonetize gold and by 1971 they claimed they officially did it. And even throughout these several decades they pretend that gold is not money. At the same time, economic laws still prevail. But this announcement I think will prove to be a very significant announcement.

On this very date Geithner, Security of the Treasury, is over in Singapore meeting in an economic conference, and he’s talking about the dollar. He says, “It is the official policy of the United States government to have a strong dollar policy,” which always fascinates me. The Federal Reserve is what is in charge of the dollar, and they can double the money supply. But then we have the Secretary of the Treasury… and this is not just this time, this has been this way over the years. The Secretary of the Treasury goes before the public and says, “It is the official policy of the United States to have a strong dollar”. At the same time, they’re chiding the Chinese for having a currency that’s too strong. Which means, we want a weaker dollar against the Chinese Yuan. So on and on it goes.

And I frequently get a question, which I think is an old fashioned question, but we still get it. They ask: “Do you think the United States is going to devalue?” Well, they’re constantly devaluing. We devalue our money on a constant basis. There was a time when devaluations were official and pronounced in the sense that on August 15 there was a devaluation. They took the price of gold from $35/ounce up to $38/ounce. It was an 8% devaluation, it was a big deal. But we constantly do it. Shortly thereafter, two years later they devalued another 10% and then they tipped the price of gold up to $42/ounce. But since that time, since they claimed the dollar and gold are not connected, we’ve had constant devaluation. If you look at gold at $1,100/ounce, you’re looking at about a 97% or 98% devaluation. So it’s a constant devaluation.

So here we have a government’s official announced policy is we have a strong dollar, at the same time the real policy is constantly devaluating the dollar. And, of course, for an economy to grow you ought to have relatively stable currency. People shouldn’t have something wildly fluctuating, and certainly you shouldn’t have a currency that can be created out of thin air.

And that’s where we are today. But my concern for many, many years has been the eventual consequence of what this will have on the dollar. We’ve seen a financial crisis build, we’ve seen a lot of liquidation of debt, we’ve seen a lot of purchasing of bad debt by our government and by the Federal Reserve. At the same time, it’s all done by the creation of new money out of thin air. We can do that just so long. You can defy economic laws for a while. But just like you can keep gold at $35/ounce and you can manipulate markets, eventually the economic laws will rule.

And I think this is what will happen – is we will continue to do this. Congress has no concern; they’re willing to pass a medical care program which is going to cost trillions of dollars and pretend it won’t cost anything. They’ll always be a cost and the pressure is going to be put on the dollar. The financial obligation we have to maintain our empire and our welfare state is just overwhelming. And they’re illiquid. I mean, if we look at Medicare and Medicaid, these programs are literally bankrupt. So everything is dependent on the willingness of the world and the people to put trust in the dollar, at the same time, regardless of what our Secretary of the Treasury says, we are embarking and continue to just print the money in an unlimited fashion and that means devaluation regardless of what they tell us.

To me that is very, very dangerous. If we want to preserve our freedoms in this country we will have to address the important subject of liberty and understanding that, and what rights are all about. But we also have to understand the issue of monetary policy. We need to know more about the Federal Reserve and that is why the success we’ve had with the transparency act and auditing the Fed is so beneficial. But it looks like right now if push comes to shove, the major journals now are working very hard to downplay our efforts and to belittle what we’re doing. But the momentum is on our side and we need this information out because eventually to preserve our freedoms in this country we will also have to understand money and have monetary policy reform.

Question: Dr. Paul, what is the significance of the IMF selling?

Ron Paul: That’s a very important question because it has a great deal of significance. If the IMF is giving up the gold, this means that they are weakened. They will have less clout in saying what the next reserve currency will be. If they wanted to have an international reserve currency they would at least have to pay a little bit respect for gold. But it also means that great strength is going from west to east. Those countries that are buying gold, like China and India and these other countries, are more likely going to be in the driver’s seats for setting up the next reserve standard. In the west, western central banks and the IMF, the gold is leaving. And this means that the economic power is shifting to the east and if history is of any value to us it means that the military power may shift as well.

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The 13 Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee mentioned by Dr. Paul are:

Rep. John Adler, NJ (202) 225-4765, Web Contact: Link
Rep. Travis Childers, MS (202) 225-4306, Web Contact: Link
Rep. Steve Driehaus, OH (202) 225-2216, Web Contact: Link
Rep. Alan Grayson, FL (202) 225-2176, Web Contact: Link
Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, TX (202) 225-2531, Web Contact: Link
Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, FL (877) 956-7627, Web Contact: Link
Rep. Dan Maffei, NY (202) 225-3701, Web Contact: Link
Rep. Brad Miller, NC (202) 225-3032, Web Contact: Link
Rep. Walt Minnick, ID (202) 225-6611, Web Contact: Link
Rep. Ed Perlmutter, CO (202)-225-2645, Web Contact: Link
Rep. David Scott, GA (202) 225-2939, Web Contact: Link
Rep. Brad Sherman, CA (202) 225-5911, Web Contact: Link
Rep. Jackie Speier, CA (202) 225-3531, Web Contact: Link

Transcript

Ron Paul: I’d like to give you an update on HR 1207. For the last couple of weeks I have been talking with Mel Watt, the chairman of the monetary policy sub-committee in dealing with HR 1207. And it seemed like there were reasonable discussions but I never expected a whole lot to come from this. I never expected as much support from Mel Watt as I believe I can, and hopefully still get from Barney Frank. But the way the process works is a sub-committee does get first crack at it. What happens in the full committee is a different story and we don’t know exactly what will happen. But there is no doubt that Mel Watt is not interested in HR 1207. And I don’t think he’s all that bashful about speaking for the Federal Reserve because that was in the conversation quite frequently, that he was trying to satisfy all parties including the Fed. But that shouldn’t surprise any of us. They’re very, very powerful and very, very influential.

But when he took HR 1207 and marked it up and sent it back to me, obviously, it was something I could not support. Although there were two items in it that were rather minor that both he and I have agreed to, but it’s not as significant as it should be. The one part, though, was that having a timeframe on when we could look at certain procedures of the Federal Reserve, and that was accepted. But the fact that they took away the audit itself, those numbers don’t mean a whole lot, except in one area – and that’s dealing with the 13(3) lending facilities that the Federal Reserve has more or less conceded that they’re going to have to reveal what has happened there. But that is minor. As a matter of fact, HR 1207 doesn’t even mention 13(3), we’re mainly talking about an overall audit of overall monetary policy and arrangements oversees.

So that, ironically, actually helps the Fed – putting a time limit. I believe they more or less have conceded that we would get to know what’s happening with their lending facilities, but with the time lag on there of 6 months, it actually helps them. So what happens so often in legislation is you start out with one goal and you end up making things actually worse. And that’s what they’re trying to do. This will actually help the Fed under current circumstances. So my job and our job is to stick to what we want and that is a true audit.

Now, it is likely to come up soon and next week we’re supposed to start working on the overall reform package for all the financial institutions. And because Mel Watt is the sub-committee chairman he gets to ensure his provision in there on what we’re going to do with the Fed. Now, when he does that I will have the opportunity to replace it and amend what he’s done with HR 1207, and obviously I will be doing that.

Now, it looks like we have the upper hand, at least on the surface we do. From the banking committee we have all the Republican members who have co-sponsored the bill. We have 13 Democrats, so we have a good solid majority in the committee that should support us. That’s not always the way things work. Sometimes people support legislation for political reasons back home, and at the same time when they have to vote on it, they vote differently when their arms get twisted.

I believe it’s going to boil down to how strong a position Barney Frank takes on this. And I plan to talk to him. I’m still talking with him and with cordial relations and I’m sure he’s going to have to take a position one way or the other. So, I don’t think he’s as strongly opposed to what I am doing as Mel Watt is. So the amendment will come up so if people can influence their congressmen and say you can figure out which 13 are already co-sponsors, they have to be urged. I only urge courtesy and not threats or anything like that, that the end of the world is going to come if they don’t do it what you tell them to do. I still think we have to work through this the best we can diplomatically.

Like I said, I’m not surprised this has happened, but let’s say we are successful and we get it amended, we still ought to bring it to the House floor, and then they’ll have a chance to water it down again. It goes through rules committee, that’s another place. It has to go through the Senate; it’s going to have a harder time in the Senate. Then it has to go to a conference committee and that’s another problem. And then it has to go to the President. And even if it goes through all that, we still have the courts to deal with, and courts have never been friendly to those of us who want honest money. They were never friendly to the people who held gold clause contracts and believe the government shouldn’t renege on their promises.

But, nevertheless, this is crucial. This is really important. This whole thing might take a year or two to play out, but it might only take a year for the dollar to play out. So this is why it is so crucial. If the dollar doesn’t last very long and something has to come up to replace the dollar or have a new system, we have to be in that debate and that means we have to pursue this. So it is crucial that instead of becoming a little bit discouraged with this and think that this is very strange, this is really rather typical. The special interests comes in at the last minute and this time it’s the special interest banks, and the big corporations who love to have inflationary programs that finance the military-industrial complex. And they will have to come to a decision on what they’re going to do.

So I would say that the process is working more or less the way I expected. This is going to be a very important week. But the whole issue of sound money and limited government and liberty and the Constitution – actually, that concern is not going to go away no matter what happens, in the next couple of weeks or so. But we will gain a lot of momentum if we can at least restore the language of HR 1207 in the banking reform bill which will be in the House Committee next week.

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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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Date: 9/28/2009

Jake in Houston: There seems to be a lot of hype and attention this weekend concerning the Iranian nuclear program. Why is that?

Ron Paul: I don’t think it’s by accident. You know, all of a sudden it burst that up in Pittsburgh and all these charges were made. I think the number one reason why this all broke, because there’s really nothing new about what’s going on over in Iran. I think the reason is that the very, very powerful and the most militant neocons are very worried about Obama and other countries meeting with Iran and actually having negotiations with the government of Iran and they want to see it stopped.

I don’t think we have an anti-neocon administration, but I do think some of the people outside the administration, are very, very intent on stopping the negotiation and pursuing a very hard-line policy toward the Iranians.

The big charge was that all of a sudden there was this secret nuclear plant being built in Qom and that it had not been reported. Quite frankly, the way it got reported in the news was the Iranians reported it to IAEA, the United Nations investigation team and that’s how it became public and all of a sudden, they were jumped on for having done something secret.

Also, the truth is the United States knew about this since 2006. Obama was briefed on this in November right after he was elected. In 2007, there was an NIE, an intelligence estimate made in 2007, a year after we found out that they were doing something in Qom and it wasn’t even reported and the CIA report at that time said there was no evidence that the Iranians had been working on a nuclear weapon since 2003, so this is very much old news.

Now, the reason the argument is going on is, what does the law say? The Iranians, unlike three other countries in the Middle East, they don’t even pay any attention to and don’t even belong to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but the Iranians’ obligation under the law is that six months before they go into production, to do any enrichment for peaceful purposes, they have to notify the United Nations inspectors and they did exactly that, and yet they’re yelling and screaming now that they broke the law, that they’re on the verge of building a bomb.

You know what this sounds like? It sounds like warmongering. It sounds like the same old stuff that we heard prior to the Iraqi war. Remember the yellow cake with forged papers trying to say that Saddam Hussein was buying yellow cake and he was on the verge of a nuclear weapon or had nuclear weapons? It’s the same old thing going on and all the lies told that we were going to march in and find these nuclear weapons.

So it’s hysteria. It’s warmongering and unfortunately, the major media has not reported anything in balance whatsoever. They keep saying that the Iranians are on the verge. Of course, they’re talking tough. That’s the way they operate over there. It’s a tough neighborhood. That’s how they rise to power, so they are… you know, in many ways, rude and loudmouth, but that’s how tough guys exist over there and yet our response to them has been pretty irrational as well because I think the determination to add sanctions.

Right now, they continue this clamor for sanctions on the Iranians. “Don’t allow one drop of gasoline to be imported into the Iranians. Punish the people of Iran and that will bring them to their knees and they’ll throw out their ayatollahs and they’ll be friends with the West.” Quite frankly, it does exactly the opposite. It unifies the people of Iran. It does not help the dissidents in Iran and it actually… once we do this, pursue a policy like this, the real beneficiary are the Chinese because the Chinese happen to have a lot of dollars. They have a trillion dollars of our money, but they are not using bombs and weapons to influence and try to gain, you know, advantages in Iran. What they’re doing is they’re going in there and investing their money, so we, I believe, are on a completely wrong track. I think this is hysterical reaction that we ought to sit back and relax and look at the truth.

One of the reasons why this argument came up was that a few years ago, I think it was in 2003, the Iranians did sign a supplemental protocol with the West and they were in negotiations, and the protocol said that they would even report when they start building a nuclear facility, not just when they were getting ready to go into production, six months before production, but just when they started to build it. Now, they are building it and they’re said to be in violation of this. But the whole thing is, is that supplemental protocol, which was not a part of the original Non-Proliferation Treaty, they signed this willingly and it was never ratified by their parliament. You know, it would be like us having a president sign a treaty and never ratified by the Senate, it wouldn’t be the law of the land. And then the Iranian government announced precisely that they’re no longer following it because the negotiations were suspended by the West. They were negotiating with the Iranians and trying to come to an agreement and finally, they just said, “No, we’re not going to do it. If you’re not going to negotiate with us, we’re not going to follow this voluntary protocol.”

But the United Nations, the IAEA has never found the Iranians at fault. They have never been sanctioned. They have never broken the law. They have lived up to their commitment.

Now, the real problem politically is defending the kind of people who run Iran, but the whole truth is if you’re going to try to operate within the international law, we shouldn’t be so arrogant as to say that they’re doing such and such and they haven’t done it or they haven’t broken the law. So it’s time that we pay attention to our promises and our commitments rather than intimidating and threatening, putting on sanctions, which are an act of war and then setting the stage for ultimately bombing these facilities.

So to me, it sounds a whole lot like déjà vu, exactly the kind of nonsense that led us into a no-win, nonsensical war in Iraq where we’re still bogged down. We’re bogged down in Afghanistan and Pakistan and here they are trying to stir up another fight with another country. It is of no benefit to the American people. It is of no benefit to our national security interest and the sooner we get to the bottom of this and know the facts, the better off we would be as Americans.

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Ron Paul: I’m Congressman Ron Paul and this is my new book, “End the Fed”.

Well, the next book came out this week, “End the Fed”, and we’re having a lot of excitement surrounding this and I’ve had a lot of interviews on this.

Today somebody asked me, “What should I do in this country to improve our economy?” My answer was very simple: End the Fed.

The Fed is the culprit and I talk about about that in this book and explain why the Fed not only creates our problems, they perpetuate the problems and the sooner we come around to understanding that, and first of course get the audit of the Fed, but eventually we have to end the Fed if we care about sound money, personal liberties, limited government.

This is the book that you have to read.

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Source: Campaign for Liberty
Date: 9/14/2009

Transcript

Ron Paul: Finally we’re going to talk about something other than medical care. The summer was saturated with the news and discussions in all the town hall meetings about what we’re going to do about healthcare in this country. Even though that is a very important subject and it’s going to continue for few months longer, right now though, the Congress is starting into a debate which I consider every bit as important, if not a lot more important. And that has to do with Afghanistan.

They’re talking about debating whether or not we should send more troops into Afghanistan. And fortunately, I see some of the Democrats now splitting from the President on this issue. The President has always maintained that we need more troops; this is the “good war”. He called it the long war, but it’s the good war. Not like Iraq, that was the bad war. And now that there is a split there is a chance that we might be able to slow up this interventionism in this region. But right now though it looks like the President will prevail because Presidents generally do prevail because they’ll scare the people and they’ll say “If you don’t, our national security will be threatened”.

The one thing for certain is that our national security is not threatened by us not being in Afghanistan. Our national security is much more threatened by us being in Afghanistan. Or for that reason, any place in that region at all. That’s where our real problems come from. It is argued that they need 240,000 more troops and some say let’s just train the Afghan people. And we need a 130,000 trained Afghan people to do this. But who’s going to pay for this? It won’t do any good. If we have a puppet government there and Karzai is running it and it is our money and their troops are doing our bidding, we’re still occupiers. It won’t help, it will still move us towards bankruptcy and it doesn’t solve the problem one bit. But at least this discussion is getting out and I consider it very, very dangerous what’s happening over there.

At the same time when we’re talking about expanding the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is a relentless outcry about the Iranians by us trying to aggravate the Iranians into some type of a conflict. But up until now we have continued the same old process, the same foreign policy. We were led to believe with the Obama administration that policies might change, but the same people control foreign policy as they do monetary policy. And we will see our presence there for a long time, until we go bankrupt.

So many nations have gone bankrupt because of their overseas militaristic policies. And we’re embarking on the same approach. I am sure Osama Bin Laden is laughing and the Russians are laughing at us because we’re more or less trapping ourselves in this pretence that we’re going to spread democracy and goodness around the world.

Last week they finally got around to investigating the NATO bombing in which some civilians got killed. They come up with the number that 99 civilians were killed. Though our side keeps saying “Oh no, they were all terrorist”. You know, the definition of a terrorist used to be that a so-called terrorist when they were fighting the Soviets, we called them the freedom fighters. But now they are the terrorists.

Regardless, when Muslims are killed with our presence over there, we anger more and more people. That’s why I argue that our national security is more threatened because of our bankruptcy. At the same time we just anger more and more people.

There is a lot to be said that our founders tried to get us to follow, and that is: mind our own business, stay out of entangling alliances of people around the world, and stay out of nation building. That day will probably come, but it will come on the heels of a bankruptcy, because we’re moving rapidly toward that direction as we see the dollar tumble and our deficits skyrocket. But the sooner we come to our senses the better off we all will be.

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Date: 9/8/2009

Ron Paul: Well, it’s Tuesday morning and we’re getting ready to go back to D.C. Congress has been out for five weeks. It used to be said that the country was safe when legislature was out of session but in this day and age it’s not true anymore. Government’s on auto-pilot. The bureaucracies work, the IRS works, the wars continue so Congress isn’t all that necessary but anyway things could get worse as we go back into Congress. But already we’ve been told, we won’t even be voting on Friday so there’s not gonna be too much of a legislative agenda this week. Obama of course will be speaking to the kids today and speaking to a joint session of Congress tomorrow. I’ve already heard that the vote on the medical care bill might not come until December.

So some good things that happened this summer, these past five weeks especially at the townhall meetings, the American people spoke out and they got their fifteen minutes of fame on TV and it looks like the American people aren’t very happy and I don’t blame them. I like the idea that they’re directing their attention to Washington. So we will soon find out whether or not the Congress and the president had become more cautious. Let’s hope so.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether or not the president should be addressing these kids in the public school today and I’m sure his message will be rather benign and in many ways very positive. But the stronger message is why is he doing it and under what authority does the president enter into every classroom in the nation. To me it’s nothing more than symbolism to show where’s the power, where’s the authority? Where does the control of education come from? And unfortunately, it comes out of Washington. The finances come from Washington, the dictates come from Washington, we have No Child Left Behind, Republicans and Democrats span the Department of Education, now we have a president, the man in charge is going to be talking to these kids to let them know.

But there will be a lot of yelling and screaming about what this all means and if you object to it, you’re going to be painted as some sort of a bad person. But in a free society, and in a constitutional society, if we followed our Constitution, the federal government wouldn’t be involved in public education. And of course we would be much better off for it. The more the federal government’s been involved in education, the worse the education has gotten.

So I don’t think anything very good will come from this and tomorrow night everybody will be anxiously waiting to hear what the president will say about his plans. After all these months of talking, now we might hear from the president what his actual plans are. My guess will be that if anything is passed, and I suspect something will eventually be passed, it won’t be the original intent of what Obama wanted. We’re not going to have socialized medicine. That’s not gonna happen. But we could have more corporatism involved in medicine. Much more corporations, he has not taken on the corporations.

The insurance companies are gonna persist, the management companies are gonna exist, the drug companies are going to exist and worst of all, the bureaucracy will grow, the patients will suffer, costs will go up and we’ve seen a recent program saying, “Well, the culprit is the doctor. The doctor makes too much money and therefore if we could make sure the doctor doesn’t make any money, everything is going to be okay.”

That is narrow-mindedness and this is the whole point. What we need is true competition in medicine where actually the doctor would make less with true competition because he would have to compete for patients. And yet today, it’s a locked system. All medical care is delivered by a monopoly and it’s getting worse because even those individuals who would like to practice preventive medicine and natural cures are prohibited by government regulations and the drug companies want to take over control of all the vitamins and nutritional substances so we’re moving in the direction of less competition rather than more competition.

Nevertheless, I think it will be exciting. Fall this year, there will be a few elections coming up that may tell us which way the country is going. People are even talking that Democrats next year may suffer legislatively and that can’t hurt anything because the more competition the better.

Actually under today’s conditions, a little bit of gridlock wouldn’t be harmful to us. So as I said, this is Tuesday morning, getting ready to back to D.C. We will have some votes this evening on some suspension bills but not much else is going to happen this week other than we’ll be hearing from the president.

But I’m sure the issue of the Fed will continue. I continue to get numerous calls about the Federal Reserve and the Auditing Bill and there’s going to be a lot more excitement in the next month or two on this piece of legislation to audit the Fed and the real significance of the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve of course, said their goal is to give us a sound dollar and stable prices and a healthy economy and they’ve done exactly the opposite. They’ve destroyed the dollar and the economy is a wreck and yet what they want is no transparency. So I would say that anybody with some common sense could look at the Federal Reserve and say that they deserve secrecy and no transparency when they, the Federal Reserve, has been so responsible for our very weak economy and the potential of the total destruction of our dollar.

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Ron Paul: Well, it looks like the economic crisis is over. Last week it was discovered in Washington that the “Cash for Clunkers” campaign worked. The program is been heralded as a fantastic success. It was so successful that after we spent one billion dollars the House rushed to give two more billion dollars and everybody is delighted that it’s going to stimulate the car industry.

But when you stop and think for a minute, it’s pretty absurd what is going on here. “Print up a lot of money, give it to a few people to buy a car and the numbers look better and therefore this is the way the economy is going to be taken care of and recovered.” But there are lot fallacies in this, obviously. This program when it was first voted on was meant to help people who had old cars and they were in the low income bracket to help them buy a new car.

It didn’t do anything of the kind. The poor people, the people with poor credit did not come to buy a car, they didn’t go through this process. As a matter of fact, this program is being paid for by the poor people, because they’re taking the clunkers off the highway. They’re deliberately hauling these in if they do end up in these car lots, they’re purposely destroyed which undermines the very market that the poor people depend on.

Not only that, the poor end up paying a bigger price for this than anybody else. Because there really is no money in the bank. We know that. They can’t tax anymore and the borrowing is more difficult than ever. So what do we do? Back to the old story again: lets just print up the money. Printing up money gives you inflation. Who suffers the most? The poor people who didn’t get to buy a car. Just like the poor people who we thought we were going to give all these new houses to with all these affirmative action programs. Guess who lost all their houses, guess who are suffering the most? It’s the poor and the low-middle income people. They are the ones who lost their jobs and suffer from the consequences.

But the really disturbing part about all this is that most people in Washington, at least those who voted quickly to put in another two billion dollars into this program, actually believe these are good programs. And they think they help the poor, they think they stimulate the economy, and it’s total foolishness.

I mean, if you had someone to come and propose, say there is a new business in town, and he needed customers. But he has a good savings account, enough to buffer himself over for awhile, and he takes money out of the savings account and goes out on the street and the passes out money. He says, “You can have this money from me if you come and spend it in my store.” And they do that and then he brings out the cash register and he says, “Wow, today I made a lot of money.”

This whole notion that government can stimulate the economy by doing this is just as absurd as that. So, we obviously still have a long way to go. And for right now, the markets and others are starting to feel a little bit better. But, quite frankly, I think we’re just digging a bigger hole for ourselves. Debt is increasing, government intervention is increasing, and there is no end in sight.

We still have the basic problems. Government is too big, they spend up too much money, they interfere too much in all our personal activities, overseas activities, our economic activities and they’re dependent on deficits, they’re dependent on regulations, they’re dependent on the Federal Reserve to keep printing money.

But I’m working on the assumption that time is running out, we are doing well and trying to expose the Fed for what they are really up to. But time is running short and I would anticipate in the next year or two people aren’t going to be cheering and saying “The only thing we need now is another Cash for Clunkers program. If it worked for cars, why can’t it work for everything else?” But truth will win out in the end, and I think this absurdity of last week and this argument that we just pass out cash and they buy cars is a help to the economy, is a complete fallacy.

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