Neil Cavuto: Dean Baker really doesn’t have a problem with all the Congressional spending. The Center for Economic Policy Research economist has a big problem though with our Federal Reserve and its spending. The same Fed officials he suggests maybe should be waterboarded to explain where all that money is going. I think he’s being facetious there, I hope he is because it’s a good thing he being remote here because it could get ugly.
Dean, good to have you. Thanks for coming.
Dean Baker: Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Neil. I am being facetious. Yeah.
Neil Cavuto: But your premise was, in all seriousness, look, we like to know what they’re up to, right?
Dean Baker: Yeah, the basic points here, you were just talking with Mike Huckabee and he mentioned the TARP and the TARP gives roughly 700 billion of money to the banks as a bank bailout and that of course is a big issue and I agree with him. We didn’t have to rush that through as we did.
But we have even more money about three times as much money, over $2 trillion being lent out by the Fed and at least with the TARP, I could look up on the web and find out how much does Citigroup get, how much does Bank of America get. I don’t get any information from the Fed.
So the point here is there’s a bill before Congress [HR 1207] that says we should have the Fed audited by the Government Accountability Office, so we will know where the money is going and the response have been… that’s where my waterboarding line came in. It is as though we were suggesting we waterboard them. We’re just saying we want to know where our money went. Simple story. Continue reading “Economist Dean Baker: Audit the Federal Reserve!”
Ron Paul: This week there was a lot of concern expressed about North Korea’s nuclear capability. It was reported that they detonated a small nuclear weapon. This indeed is a serious thing, but as usual, I think, most of the world has overreacted to it. But more interesting is the fact that they wouldn’t have had these weapons if they hadn’t been subsidized by the West.
We directly helped them in their nuclear program in the way of bribing them under the Clinton administration and actually helped them. During the Clinton administration, they were trying to negotiate a deal, so they promised some technology to the North Koreans if they promised not to build nuclear weapons.
But, you know, any type of nuclear intelligence and nuclear ability is always helpful. Not only that, we have subsidized the Pakistanis to the tune of tens of billions of dollars over the years and it is said that probably a lot of the technology also came from Pakistan. So this to me is sort of an expression of the weakness of our policy overall, and besides I think the reaction was overblown a bit.
If you look at what the South Koreans did, they hardly blinked an eye. They weren’t yelling and screaming and they are the most vulnerable and if there is indeed a military threat in that part of the world, it should be the business of South Korea. It should be the business of Japan. It should be the business of China. Not the American taxpayer.
Interestingly enough, there has been a treaty with South Korea for 50 years or so, which means that no matter what happens over there, we have obligated the next generation of Americans to go over there and fight. I don’t like these kinds of treaties. I don’t think we have the moral right or the constitutional right to obligate future generations to automatically go to war, and for this reason, I don’t think this kind of a treaty that we’ve had with South Korea is proper.
As a matter of fact, I think we’d be a lot better off if we follow a completely different program with South Korea. I’ve advocated bringing the troops home for a long time. I’ve advocated to get out of the way of any negotiations between the South and North Koreans, and obviously we shouldn’t give them any more money. That’s the last thing we should do.
North Korea is sort of like a spoiled child. They get up there and they yell and scream and they’re going to blow up the world, so we say, “Oh, don’t do it. We’ll give you more money”, or we threaten them, even, you know, militarily. And I don’t think we should do either one. I think it would be proper to even talk about trading with North Korea. We started trading with China a long time ago and they have become more capitalistic, not less.
While China has become more capitalistic, we have become more socialistic. So I don’t see anything wrong with talking about trading with them, but I don’t think we should threaten, we shouldn’t intimidate them, we shouldn’t promise them any more money, and I think the world would be a lot better off under those conditions.
North Korea is not going to start bombing anybody. They’re just threatening us and we’ve actually encouraged it indirectly by rewarding people who have nuclear weapons. They know that they will be treated differently if they can prove they have a nuclear weapon. The last weapon they exploded several months ago was, in essence, a fizzle. So they were really motivated to come back and show that they really know how to do it and that puts them in a different position for negotiating.
I don’t think for a minute they have any intentions of attacking South Korea or attacking Japan or attacking China. I mean, that is not their goal. Their goal is to play with us and it’s just a shame that a nation as powerful and supposedly as smart as we are that we can be easily intimidated by a Third World nation like this, a country can’t even feed itself.
So once again, I think it brings to our attention that we ought to reconsider our foreign policy overall. A foreign policy of non-intervention makes a lot more sense than us trying to be the policeman of the world. Besides, how much more can we offer to the world? We’re flat out broke, so we can’t be buying our friends any longer.
So it’s very necessary for us to be serious and start talking about changing our foreign policy to one of non-intervention and one that is based on the Constitution and one where we could save a lot of money and have a lot more friends around the world.
This Wednesday afternoon, Ron Paul joined Tom Woods, Peter Schiff, Wayne Allyn Root, Michael German, Mancow, Sam Dodson, Michael Maresco and Shelly Roche for an insightful discussion about the latest political and economic developments.
Audio only:
Download the show as a podcast here (53:57 minutes).
Channel: Fox News Strategy Room Show: Freedom Watch Host: Judge Andrew Napolitano Date: 5/27/2009
Transcript of Ron Paul’s appearance:
Judge Andrew Napolitano: But now, it is my great pleasure to introduce to you one of the great defenders of freedom and liberty in the Congress today and my good friend, Congressman Ron Paul who joins us from his home state of Texas.
Congressman Paul, welcome back to Freedom Watch. We are also joined in the studio by Peter Schiff and on the telephone by Tom Woods from the Mises Institute.
Congressman Paul, to you first. It’s probably no surprise, but what is your reaction to the nomination of Judge Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court of the United States?
Ron Paul: Well, I would have to say I’m not surprised. I mean, this is sort of what one would expect from our current president and I guess I can’t be too optimistic. Oftentimes, you know, the judges don’t turn out to be exactly what they’re picked to do. You know, some of the judges that the Republicans picked turned out to be pretty liberal and vice versa.
And if you come from a libertarian constitutional viewpoint, sometimes you can always be hopeful. But I don’t know enough about her to say in which areas; the few cases I’ve heard about haven’t been too reassuring to me that she’s going to come out on the side of very limited government. Continue reading “Ron Paul, Tom Woods, Peter Schiff on Freedom Watch”
Channel: CNN Show: American Morning Date: 5/27/2009
Transcript
Kiran Chetry: Well, if you’re feeling better about the economy, you’re in good company. More than 90 percent of leading economist say they see the recession ending this year. They were surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics. These expert forecasters say they expect a moderate recovery, but unemployment, often known as a lagging indicator, continuing to rise.
In a recent C-SPAN interview, President Obama was asked about the $1.7 trillion debt the government has racked up along with an $11 trillion deficit and he had this sobering response, “We’re out of money.”
One member of Congress has been sounding the alarm on out of control spending. He is Texas Republican Ron Paul and he joins us this morning from Clute, Texas. Congressman, as always, it’s good to talk to you this morning.
Ron Paul: Good morning. It’s nice to be with you.
Kiran Chetry: So President Obama says that in the short term, the government needs to spend this money to salvage the overall system. Do you agree that the short-term spending is okay, so long as it’s not protracted and the end goal is to reduce our debt and deficit?
Ron Paul: But he contradicts himself. He wants to spend more money, but he admits we don’t have any money. So the question is where does he get the money. Well, we can’t tax the people anymore. They’re overtaxed and the economy is weak. The commonsensical to do is to cut spending, but nobody wants to cut spending. Everybody gets everything that they want in Washington, whether it’s overseas spending or any welfare spending. It’s endless.
Just this week, the President promised $100 billion to the IMF and he says we don’t have any money? I mean, it makes no sense. It’s just absurd. The people are outraged over this. They can’t figure out what we’re doing in Washington and I go there on a regular basis. I can’t figure out what they’re doing. They seem to live in a different world. They’re not living with reality.
To get out of bankruptcy, when you don’t have any money, the goal is “to spend more money, run up more debt”? And it makes no sense whatsoever.
Kiran Chetry: Does Congress have the ability and the will to try to put some strings on that as you guys talk about these budgets? Are there timelines in place, so that it’s not just rhetoric, but that there is actual process of showing how we’re going to eventually try to make sure that we pay this money back?
Ron Paul: Yes, they have the absolute responsibility, but they also ought to realize what history shows that once you get a certain amount of debt run up by a government, it’s never paid back and we’re past that point.
Debt is always liquidated. The only question is how you liquidate debt. Now, General Motors is going through a liquidation of debt. That’s the way you should do it. Governments don’t do it that way. They liquidate debt by devaluing the currency and paying back their debt with money that has no value. That’s what they’re working on.
They want inflation. They want to be able to take this huge amount of debt, and if we owe $11 trillion and you have a 50 percent inflation rate, you know, you’re down to $5 and 1/2 trillion. That’s what they’re working on. They’re begging and pleading for inflation. Continue reading “Ron Paul: Economic Conditions Have Not Changed”
Ron Paul and Neil Cavuto discuss Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court and America’s decline from interventionism to socialism.
Channel: Fox Business Date: 5/26/2009
Neil Cavuto: Texas Republican Congressman and former Presidential candidate Ron Paul on the phone with me now. Congressman, it’s always a pleasure to have. Thanks for joining me.
Ron Paul: Thank you, Neil. It’s good to be with you.
Neil Cavuto: This is a woman who has a history of lodging moderate in her rulings, but not so when it comes to the government assuming bigger roles and input on key business issues. What do you make of that?
Ron Paul: Well, it’s pretty scary, especially with the trend that’s going on with the financial crisis happening and Congress rushing to support all the nationalization and all that is going on. It’s really frightening, but it makes stop and think though because she was originally George Bush’s senior appointee, so it doesn’t really make me happy that, “Well, all we need is a Republican appointee as judge and we’re going to be okay.”
To my knowledge, no one has proposed waterboarding the US Federal Reserve. But the hostile reaction of much of the country’s political leadership to suggestions that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit the Federal Reserve Board might lead people to think that waterboarding was being called for.
The basic story is straightforward. The US Congress has lent more than $700bn, via the Treasury, to bankers at below market interest rates through the troubled assets relief programme, or Tarp. This was to keep the banks from going belly up. At the same time, the Fed has lent more than $2 trillion to banks and non-financial institutions to maintain liquidity in the financial system.
The congressional oversight panel, led by Elizabeth Warren, has frequently complained that the Treasury has not always been altogether forthcoming in providing information about its lending practices under the Tarp. However, there is at least a public paper trail. We can find out how much money each bank received and under what terms.
By contrast, there is no public paper trail for the Fed’s loans, even though it has more than three times as much money outstanding as does the Treasury through the Tarp. The Fed has only provided aggregate information on the amount of loans in each of its various lending programs, and general information on the terms of the loans and the types of collateral received.
However, it is not possible to find out in detail how much money Goldman Sachs borrowed, for example, at what interest rate, and which assets it posted as collateral. The Fed has explicitly refused to make information about specific borrowers public. In fact, the inspector general who has the responsibility for overseeing the Fed told congress that she does not have this information. Apparently the Fed doesn’t even trust its inspector general with information on its lending practices.
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