In his latest column Ron Paul announces that he will soon introduce legislation requiring an audit of the Federal Reserve. If the audit reveals what he suspects, he will strongly urge Congress to abolish the Federal Reserve. But if neither of the above happens, Congress could at least repeal legal tender laws, thereby ending the Fed’s stranglehold on the lifeblood of our economy and opening the door for for competing currencies to be used by anyone who wants to.
Download the column as an MP3 file here (3:42 minutes).
On Transparency of the Fed
by Ron Paul
This week the Federal Reserve responded to the American people’s increased concerns over our monetary policy by presenting new initiatives aimed at enhancing the Fed’s transparency and accountability. As someone who has called for more openness from the Fed for over 30 years, I was pleased to see the Fed acknowledge the legitimacy of this need.
The Federal Reserve controls the flow of money and credit in our economy because Congress has abdicated its responsibility over the nation’s currency. This process therefore occurs centrally, and almost completely outside the system of checks and balances. Because of legal tender laws, people are left with no real choice, except to build their lives and futures around this monopoly currency, vulnerable to powerful central bankers. The Founding Fathers intended only gold and silver to be used as currency, however, inch by inch over the decades, this country has backed away from this important restraint. Our money today has no link whatsoever to gold or silver. For many reasons, this is extremely dangerous, and has a lot to do with the boom and bust cycles that have resulted in the crisis in which we find ourselves today.
The Fed is now pledging to reveal to the public more about its economic predictions, and calls this greater transparency. This is little more than window-dressing, at best, utterly useless at worst. Many analysts, especially those familiar with the Austrian school of economics, saw the current economic crisis coming years ago when the Federal Reserve was still telling the American people their policies were as good as gold. So while it might be nice to know what fantasy-infused outlook the Fed has on the economy, I am much more interested in what they are doing as a result of their faulty, haphazard interpretation of data. For instance, what arrangements do they have with other foreign central banks? What the Fed does on that front could very well affect or undermine foreign policy, or even contribute to starting a war.
We also need to know the source and destination of funds provided through the Fed’s emergency funding facilities. Information such as this will provide a more accurate and complete picture of the true cost of these endless bailouts and spending packages, and could very likely affect the decisions being made in Congress. But with so much of the Fed’s business cloaked in secrecy, these latest initiatives will not even scratch the surface of the Fed’s opaque operations. People are demanding answers and explanations for our economic malaise, and we should settle for nothing less than the whole truth on monetary policy.
The first step is to pass legislation I will soon introduce requiring an audit of the Federal Reserve so we can at least get an accurate picture of what is happening with our money. If this audit reveals what I suspect, and Congress has finally had enough, they can also pass my legislation to abolish the Federal Reserve and put control of the economy’s lifeblood, the currency, back where it Constitutionally belongs. If Congress refuses to do these two things, the very least they could do is repeal legal tender laws and allow people to choose a different currency in which to operate. If the Fed refuses to open its books to an audit, and Congress refuses to demand this, the people should not be subject to the whims of this secretive and incompetent organization.
In his latest video update Ron Paul addresses important issues such as the housing bailout, the stimulus package, Obama’s war in Afghanistan, and the destruction of the dollar.
Source: Campaign for Liberty
Date: 2/22/2009
Transcript:
Ron Paul: Well the administration has just announced a new bailout for the housing market, 275 billion dollars; 75 billion dollars of new money and 200 billion dollars coming from the TARP funds that would go to propping up Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. But so far the markets aren’t buying it, the markets still remain in the doldrums and it seems like in the past year one program after another. More spending, more borrowing, more inflating and there’s no reassurance but we shouldn’t be surprised because we can’t get out of this mess by merely doing what we’ve been doing all along getting us into this mess.
But the whole idea that the people who have been paying their mortgages should now suffer the consequence of bailing out those who can’t pay their mortgages; those individuals who got mortgages, that really didn’t qualify, no down payments, borrowed against the increase and the value of their house. And now they’re saying: “Well there’s 92%. See it’s about 92% of the people are doing okay and paying their mortgage.” 8% of defaults are causing these problems that we have and I’m sure there’s some innocent people being involved and ultimately a lot of innocent people suffer from the dependency on inflation. Inflation of course is when the Federal Reserve tries to solve its problems or manage the economy by increasing money and credit out of thin air and artificially fixing interest rates. Continue reading “The Decline of Obama’s America”
Channel: HBO
Show: Real Time
Host: Bill Maher
Date: 2/20/2009
Transcript
Bill Maher: [...] here is the 11th term U.S. Representative from Texas, 14th District, a former presidential candidate, you all know Congressman Ron Paul. Congressman, look at that, the economy is so bad you can’t afford a jacket.
Ron Paul: That’s right. They took it away from me. Maybe next year.
Bill Maher: So, Congressman. I wanted you on this first show because of course we’re spending a lot of money and you have always been the guy who stood up in Congress and said, “this is what’s going to be the death of us”. But my question to you I guess is, now that we’re in this fix, what is your alternative plan to spending a lot of money and how would that be better? Continue reading “Ron Paul on Real Time with Bill Maher”
Ron Paul was interviewed by Scott Horton on Antiwar Radio. The Congressman discusses the wisdom of using letters of marque and reprisal instead of waging conventional wars to fight terrorism, the slippery slope from government-mandated national service to military conscription, why the richly deserved criminal investigation of key Bush administration officials won’t happen, and the deleterious effects of Plan Columbia and the U.S. war on drugs.
Download the radio show as an MP3 file here (31:49 minutes).
Source: Antiwar Radio
Host: Scott Horton
Date: 2/18/2009
Transcript
Scott Horton: Alright everybody welcome back to AntiWar Radio, chaosradioaustin.org, also streaming from antiwar.com/radio. I’m Scott Horton and introducing our guest today, Dr. Ron Paul; he represents District 14 on the Gulf Coast of Texas and the US House of Representatives. Of course he writes for us at antiwar.com, his archives are at antiwar.com/paul including his new one that we ran in yesterday, “Just say no to the draft” and of course ran for President last year and did a great job teaching people all about peace and liberty. Welcome back to the show Dr. Paul, how are you?
Ron Paul: Thanks Scott, I’m doing fine thank you.
Scott Horton: That’s great. It’s good to talk to you again. I guess the first thing I want to ask you about is the news that Barack Obama has approved the sending of 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. You did originally vote for the resolution for the attack on Afghanistan, isn’t that right?
Ron Paul: Well, the resolution never said, I don’t believe it had the word Afghanistan in it, and it was authority to go after those individuals who were responsible for 9/11. So it was rather specific on who the target should be, but it was never for taking over. The resolution that dealt with Iraq was much more specific; one for, you know, that he could use authority to go into Iraq. This one was generalized to go after those who were responsible for 9/11 but never once was an implication, “Oh yeah, this is the authority you need to occupy Afghanistan and go into nation building and protect oil lines,” all that kind of stuff that wasn’t there. But that is right, I did vote for the authority to go after Al Qaeda.
Scott Horton: So this point is it not, or is it clearly the legal case that Barack Obama does not really have the authority to expand this war without some sort of new resolution by the Congress? Continue reading “Ron Paul on Antiwar Radio”
In the interview, Ron Paul reveals the name of the person who is most responsible for the crisis, condemns the scaremongering tactics and planned takeover by Obama and his cronies, and reports on the shenanigans surrounding the passage of the stimulus bill.
Station: 1210 AM The Big Talker
Host: Dom Giordano
Date: 2/17/2009
Transcript:
Dom Giordano: We’re happy to welcome back Representative Ron Paul, Congressman Ron Paul in the Big Talker 1210; Congressman welcome back.
Ron Paul: Thank you good to be with you.
Dom Giordano: Well Congressman, I had Bill Press on last night. Every prominent person I bring on, we’ve been asking them, coming off TIME magazine, who are the one, two or three people, because there are a lot of them I guess, that are responsible if you had to sort out responsibility for where we are now?
Ron Paul: Of course, sometimes I think immediately about the philosophy that does it rather than the individual.
Dom Giordano: Okay.
Ron Paul: But who were the individuals that did it? But philosophically it’s the economic system we have of interventionism and inflationism and the Federal Reserve. But I would put the person who’s had the biggest contribution to the bubble was Alan Greenspan.
This afternoon, Ron Paul participated in Judge Napolitano’s new online show “Freedom Watch”, joining Peter Schiff, Cody Willard, Lew Rockwell, Tracy Byrnes and Steve Moore in a refreshing discussion about the latest economic and political developments, including the impact of the stimulus package and the dirty tactics surrounding its passage. Thanks to LibertyMaven for recording the show and putting it up on Youtube.
Channel: Fox News Strategy Room (online only)
Show: Freedom Watch
Host: Judge Andrew Napolitano
Date: 2/18/2009
Transcript:
Andrew Napolitano: It’s Wednesday, it’s 2:00 Eastern, 11:00 on the West Coast and that means Foxnews.com Freedom Watch. Welcome to this strategy room session for the next hour we will analyze what the government has done to, for, and with your freedom. We will do so with my colleagues Tracy Byrnes from the Fox Business Network, Peter Schiff who is one of the great defenders of the free market in our modern day and who is the president of Euro Pacific Capital, my good buddy Cody Willard who is the host of happy hour the only live cable television show broadcast from a bar and joining us in this hour my good friend and one of the staunchest defenders of the constitution in anybody in the government today, Congressman Ron Paul who joins us by telephone. Congressman Paul, welcome here.
Ron Paul: Thank you, good to be with you again.
Andrew Napolitano: Did anybody read or did anybody had an opportunity to read the 1000 page stimulus package and as Peter Schiff points out the only thing it has stimulated so far is the price of gold. Have anybody ever had the chance to read it before you were forced to vote on it?
Ron Paul: Oh yeah, certainly. The 20 people who wrote it, the 10 in the house and the 10 in the senate who were involved. And actually a lot of other people read it too because they e-mailed to me and told me they had copies that I couldn’t get. The lobbyist got hold of it. If you are conservative or have conservative friends or liberal working on this thing, they send it to your liberal friends. And the banking industry sent my staff 130 pages of the bill and I had no access to it. So no, I think your question really is did any members of congress really read that bill it was over 1000 pages. No they did not. They didn’t have the chance, it did become available til 12:30 after midnight the night before and there were no hard copies and the hard copies that were sitting on the desk, they had several copies there. There were still a lot of handwritings up and down the edges which they considered still the official documents that would eventually be printed. Continue reading “Ron Paul, Peter Schiff on Freedom Watch”
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Ron Paul has been married to his wife Carol Wells since 1957. They have five children: Ronald, Lori, Rand, Robert, and Joy. Paul's son Rand is the junior senator from the state of Kentucky.
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