Chances are, if you go to see Ron Paul speak this election cycle, you’ll hear the Republican presidential candidate talk about two things: the Federal Reserve and the gold standard.
For those voters who are as clueless on these subjects as this writer is, Paul provided “a three minute summary of Federal Reserve 101” on Monday at a Town Hall Meeting in Nashua, NH. His comments were captured on video and posted to YouTube by the LFDA.
“In the early 1970’s we delinked our dollar from gold,” Paul began. “At that time, I was convinced we would go on a spending spree and a borrowing spree and develop a huge bubble because the Federal Reserve then could monetize any debt it wants."
“… it gave license to the Congress to spend money and it didn’t have to be responsible on borrowing and taxes,” he said. “If you didn’t have the fed and Congress started spending a bunch of money, interest rates would go up and it would be self limiting.”
“That’s why the gold standard holds big government in check,” the Texas Congressman explained. “The people who like big government, they don’t like the gold standard. They want to be able to print money, but of course they pay the bills later on.”
“The Federal Reserve is bad economic policy because it’s the instrument where the financial bubbles are caused,” according to Paul. “If you understand the financial bubbles, you know where the busts come from. The bust causes, you know the unemployment and depressions.”
“Also, the Federal Reserve causes the inflation of prices, because you keep printing the money prices have to up because the value of the dollar is going down,” he claimed.
“It is the instrument of a lot of mischief,” Paul concluded. “It is a moral issue too, because it is counterfeiting money. The most disturbing part about inflation is that when you destroy a currency, you destroy the middle class and wealth is transferred from the poor and middle class to Wall Street and to the wealthy.”
“Those are just a few of the reasons why we shouldn’t have a Federal Reserve system,” he said in closing, drawing cheers from supporters in the audience.
We the People Forum organized Monday’s Town Hall with Rep. Ron Paul. The group is led by Nashua resident Jennifer Horn, the Republican Party’s 2008 nominee for Congress in New Hampshire’s 2nd District.
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