Mike Maloney interviewed US Representative Ronald Ernest Paul regarding gold, silver, freedom, free markets and sound money topics. He explains the problem of the country and how it still fail with all the doings and solution of the government. He elaborates how constitution is acting but no one cares to use it well and instead break the system.
Transcript
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The one characteristic about a country that debases its currency and goes to a paper currency, the currency always self-destructs. It always ends. It is declared by government that this is money. It's paper and it's money and it's by government declaration where if you use a gold coin, uh the value comes from the marketplace and government can't reproduce this.
So, it's always exchangeable and the people uh will accept it. If this is sunk on a boat in a ship uh now or it was a 500 years ago, you dig it up, it has tremendous value. There will be numismatic value plus the real value of gold. This sinks, you put it to the bottom and who who cares.
Every generation has a champion, someone who will pick up the gauntlet and do battle with the Federal Reserve. In 1913, it was Senator Charles Lindberg, Senior. From 1915 to 1933, it was Congressman Lewis T. McFaden.
From 1929 to 1976, it was Congressman Wright Patman. From 1976 until today, it's been the Honorable Congressman Ron Paul, presidential candidate for 2008 and today's guest on our show. It's a pleasure to have you. Let me tell you, nice to be here.
You recently wrote a piece uh about Milton Freriedman on his death about how our politicians don't understand any of the basics of economics. They don't have an understanding of monetary policy. Monetary policy has been my special interest. And uh there's a saying goes that money is important because it's one half of every single transaction.
So it involves everything that we do whether we're selling our labor or selling a product. So it's most important. And of course, uh, if you understand free market economics, you realize that money and the way the money is manipulated causes the business cycle. But there's essentially no understanding of that.
Not too long ago, I I was talking to a a uh member of the financial services committee, the banking committee that I'm on, and uh, the individual said, "I heard you ask some questions about gold the other day, Alan Greenspan, but isn't it true that uh that we're under gold standard? you know, she she was still under the belief that the dollar was backed by gold and she she had been on the banking committee for years and uh so that and uh that's really the level of uh education, but there's there's no real interest. They do not understand how important monetary policy is and basic economics. What do you think about the availability of credit these days?
Well, it's too available, too easily available and that's part of the problem if not the major part of the problem and it causes a business cycle. In a capitalistic society, one should work for subsistence and what's left over becomes capital and that's what they save. They either reinvest it or somebody else reinvests it and they put it in a savings account. But because of our monetary system, we have created a disincentive to save.
There's no incentive to save because the dollar is constantly depreciated and we're taught to spend the money because consumers drive drive the economy. And uh you would say, well, if they don't save, how can you get so much money? How can you go out and buy a house today? And even though mortgage rates have crept up some, still 5% is astoundingly low.
Well, it's all artificial. It's not real credit in the sense of it coming. It's coming from savings. It's coming from our monetary system, the Federal Reserve system.
The Federal Reserve has beg been given the power and the authority by our constit by our Congress in contrary to the constitution to create money out of thin air. That's essentially what they do. They've created a system where we as politicians are rewarded by spending money because that's how we get reelected. We get we spend the money and we pass out the goods and people say, "Oh, yeah, he's an effective congressman." And then they give you lower taxes.
Ah, there's no taxes. We will just print the money. And uh and the Federal Reserve doing this creates it and in addition to the fractional reserve banking system, it is magnified. If the Fed creates a billion dollars out of thin air and puts it in as a reserve, eventually that turns into $8 billion and sometime weeks the Fed can create 510 billion in a week and whatever they want, whatever is necessary to fix interest rates.
They're price fixers of what they are. So the the Federal Reserve makes credit available. But in a way, it's it's fraudulent and it's theft because it does have value. You know, if you go to the bank and they give you a million dollars, if we all take it, but it becomes valuable only by diluting the value of somebody else who's holding money.
If there are those who are left saving money, they're being robbed because their value of their dollar is is going down. At the same time, you get cheap credit because you get the million dollars. And of course, the people who benefit the most in this system are those who get the money first, and those are usually the wealthy people. So the characteristic of a uh country that depreciates its currency is one that's destined to destroy their middle class.
So if you're in the rich class and you're in the banking elite or you're in the military-industrial complex or you want want to run up deficit because you're going to fund special interest groups, then you like the system. But it's ironic that some who believe that you have to give welfare to everybody to take care of it. Rich welfare and poor welfare are literally really hurting the poor because uh it's a tax on the poor. They don't pay income tax, but they pay the inflation tax and it hurts the poor and low middle income especially because they end up with an inflation rate price inflations go up much faster than uh uh than uh those of the rich and and the rich usually don't care.
Uh so it's it is a tax and uh the easy credit is uh is very seductive. Politicians love it. The people who get to use it love it. Few people understand it.
And uh I think we're going to have a collapse before they come around to uh really thinking seriously, you know, about monetary policy and why we have to revamp it. Recently, we have seen the dollar go down sharply. I think it's going to continue and hopefully it'll wake the people up and find out you have to have honest money and follow the constitution because it says only gold and silver can be legal tender. Yes.
And it specifically outlaws bills of credit, right? That's absolutely. And what is a Federal Reserve note? It it's it is nothing more than paper money and a bill of credit.
Uh and uh and yet if you have a a silver dollar, if you if you have a silver dollar like this, you can't pay your income tax with this. Matter of fact, this says $1 on it and it's legal tender for $1. It doesn't make any sense. But if you have a Federal Reserve note, even a Federal Reserve note, you can't take and pay your income tax on.
They want it electronically. You know, this whole notion that uh you that you have legal tender. If you have a privately minted silver ounce and you tried to uh transact a business transaction with that, you can go to jail. I mean, you're you're breaking the law.
And yet the constitution said gold and silver are legal tender and it's the only thing that could be legal tender. So you know we have a lot of problems in this country economic, monetary, foreign policy. And yet we fail once again back to education. We fail to look at the guide.
Not only is it a guide for us and advice for us, it's the law of the land. It's the rule of law. It's the constitution. So you say, well, you know, let's say the economy gets much worse and we have a lot of inflation and you know, all kinds of well, we have to do something.
Just look to the Constitution. We'll find an answer. If if somebody thinks, well, we're doing too much overseas and spending too much money and our foreign policy is not successful. Look to the Constitution.
Is there any authority for Congress to give the president authority to start wars when he pleases? That doesn't exist. No. And and and we do that endlessly.
So it's so simple. Constitution is so neat and and and thin and easy easily read yet nobody reads it. We ignore it. Yeah.
We don't use ignore it. Instead, Congress is up there. You know, we'll be finishing up our session soon and there will be what they call an omnibus bill and it'll probably be about that thick. It'll be thousands of pages long and nobody's going to know exactly what's in there.
And uh it it's it's just an outrage. And uh as long though as long as the people think they're getting something stuff and not worrying so much about their freedoms, they're going to tolerate the system. More lollipops. Yep.
And and and the point is is uh should we try to correct it right now or should we wait? Well, we should try to correct it right now, but quite frankly, I think that the people are only going to be awakened and the politicians are only going to pay more attention once there is a serious crisis. What do you think the founders of this country would say? I mean, if Thomas Jefferson or Andrew Jackson uh came back today and took a look at what has happened to their country, to this system that they laid out in the constitution, what would their view of what our society is?
What what would it be? Do you think they would describe us as socialists, as communists? Yeah, but they they might want to arrest us and put us in prison, especially Congress because you know what was interesting on the monetary issue, the uh monetary act of uh of n 1792, the first one after the constitution um said that if you if you participated in uh counterfeiting that you could get the death penalty. And to them, counterfeiting was printing notes that were worthless, bills of credit, because uh they they knew what it was like when the uh Federal Reserve notes when the when the uh continental dollar went to zero and and they knew what runaway inflation was.
And I'm sure Jefferson, others would say, look, don't you remember, you know, what happened? Uh so if they instituted the death penalty for counterfeiting, he would say, you know, in the moral sense, this is what we've done. We have legalized counterfeiting. You and I can't counterfeit.
Fortunately, that's still against the law because it's fraud. But why is it that the government's allowed to do what we're not allowed to do? See, there's a basic principle in a free society is that governments can't do what you and I. We can't steal and rob and hurt people.
Uh, unfortunately, that's still generally understood. That that's a that's a good rule. But we have failed to recognize that the founders understood that governments can't do that either. So if if fraud and deceit and paper money is all bad and wararmongering is bad, you know, for the people, then governments should be held accountable.
So I think they would be outraged. But I bet you they would understand because they warned us against this, you know, they warned us and they did not like pure democracy. They they wanted a republic and and they would say well well you're you're not uh their first words would probably be well you become an obsessive democracy where the majority rules and you're picking socialism but it's the idea that majority rules and comes in and say well we want this and we want that and as long as the majority opinion thinks they're getting something and they they would probably say well you have succumbed to the temptation of uh of getting something for nothing but you better watch out because if you get something for nothing, you're going to lose it. Yes.
Um you were talking about the government printing money and um uh but what most people don't know is that the government uh actually borrows money from a private bank that they've authorized to uh create the money for us, the Federal Reserve. Um, can you expand on that part, how it reflects on the constitution, Congress allowing a private bank to create our money? Yes. And that's tricky and it's a trick tricky language as well because it is a central bank and and Jeff Hamilton liked it from the very beginning and and started a national bank and uh then of course Jefferson got rid of it and and then soon there was another national bank and Jackson got rid of it.
But the constitution does not authorize central banking. But the current central bank we have is the Federal Reserve system. And a lot of people refer this a as a as a private bank. And in some ways that isn't fully descriptive of what it is.
It's private in it's it's private in the sense that private individuals benefit. The banking elite benefit and they're the insiders and they rule. Uh and it's very secretive. I can, as a member of Congress, I can find out more information about what the CIA is doing than what the uh FOMC is doing, the uh the central bank, what they're doing on monetary policy.
That's very very secretive of of what they're of what they're doing. But the Congress created it. So, it's not like General Motors being a private company. In some ways, it's almost worse than just saying private.
It's it's the benefits are privatized. Uh and yet, it's ultra ultra secretive and uh and and all powerful. Uh a person that runs the Federal Reserve, especially when you have somebody like Alan Greenspan, he is probably the most powerful man in the world. As long as the dollar is the reserve currency of the world, uh Federal Reserve Board chairman can make or break a president.
They have more control over the economy. Ultimately though, and this is where I find a sense of optimism. Ultimately though, the uh the marketplace rules, and that's why I'm optimistic that this will all be sorted out. Take for instance, in the 60s, we all knew that $35 an ounce wouldn't hold for gold because we knew they printed too much money.
But the authorities, the central bank, and the Treasury, and everybody got behind supporting gold at the dollar at $35. You're talking about the London gold pool. the gold pool and and the pseudo gold standard of Breton Woods. And this is when I became a true believer because I read Austrian economics and I said it won't work.
It won't work. And boy, August 15th, 1971 that Bretton Woods collapsed and of course uh gold took took off. So the market ultimately rules even though under today's circumstances a Bernani or a green spin very very powerful and they might I'm sure they are trying to manipulate the price of gold and they're always trying to manipulate the value of dollars and the people are deceived and the world plays this game that the dollar is as good as gold and it's a reserve currency. So we have this wonderful benefit in this country of printing gold.
Used to be you had to earn the gold and then if you spent it you had real money. But now the world has been deceived. Instead of it totally collapsing 1971 we inherited a system that allowed America to be the uh producers of gold which is paper. And we have great commodity or uh consumer goods, but we lost all our industry because the it was much easier to to ship these jobs out and let somebody else do the hard work because we get to we have the unlimited supply of gold which which is our dollar.
And so it's been a fantastic thing. But but I'm convinced that the system we have today will no longer last and did. We're abusing it too much and and people will come around to rejecting the dollar because the the uh we depend on countries like Japan and China to finance our current account deficits. So we get their the money comes flowing back and they loan it to us at cheap rates and we finance our war and our welfare.
I mean, if this system could continue to work indefinitely, it would be uh it would mean that Americans would not have to work ever again. We would just just loaf for the rest of our lives and just print the money and buy whatever we needed. And uh one day uh a long time before we all quit working, the world will wake up and find out that we in this country who have lived beyond our means unfairly will be living beneath our means. And even though the very wealthy who have benefited tremendously from this system, many of them will know the tricks of the trade and they know what to come and they'll protect themselves, but there'll be many of those who don't quite understand this and think that uh this wealth is perpetual and they'll be brought down as well.
I'm in the business of of of protecting liberty as a congressman. So that's my my goal and I think of what's happened in third world countries or in particular in Germany ultimately when you have chaos economic chaos brought about by monetary manipulation runaway inflation the threat is not to the loss of their personal wealth which is a possibility. The the real tragedy is is the coming of a dictator. You know who whom are we going to blame?
the the the Nazis blame the Jews and it has to be always a scapegoat and then they go in and and uh and uh and accept the dictator and they uh takes a long time to iron that out and too often that leads to to war and and just back to the basics the education the understanding the founders message the message we have in our constitution it could all be preventable but we we yield to the temptation of a free lunch is the problem. Can you tell us a little bit about the entitlements? Well, there are too many because we should be entitled to our lives and entitled to our responsibility to take care of ourselves. That's what's in the free society.
But entitlement is a very very deceptive term. Most people think an entitlement is like a right. Uh an entitlement, you're entitled to medical care, entitled to a job or entitled to uh education. and and those are misnomers uh because they have become uh rights and demands.
So if you need something or demand something or want something, you're entitled to it. It becomes a right. And if you reject it, then you're antisocial and unamerican. And uh yet we live with that.
But there are two two groups get entitlements. those people when we talk about entitlements and I really bought into this before I first went to Congress and that was it was always those poor people you know and they have been taught to be entitled to something they they've been mis uh misled or they've been uh unfortunate so therefore they're entitled to be taken care of by the people who produce and uh I thought that was most of the entitlement welfare system but I think the entitlements and the welfare for the rich is much bigger a much bigger deal. The monetary system we talked to is an entitlement uh that they think that they have this right to earn the money at least they've devised devised it so that they can but but then there's the uh entitlements of privilege regulations and tax benefits here and there and the military industrial complex and and contracts. Just think how many billions of dollars are going into big corporate coffers in uh in trying to rebuild Iraq.
First first the military-industrial complex makes all this money building weapons. Then when they destroy a country, then they then they get more money to rebuild it. It just goes on and on. And who who gets it?
The rich don't suffer. The rich get richer, but the middle class suffers because of the inflation and taxes. But then again, there's there's a challenge to the poor, and they're the ones who want entitlements. Liberals in Congress will come up and and they'll always harp on the stagnant wages of the poor and middle class.
And I agree with them, and a lot of conservative Republicans won't. They, oh, no, they're doing fine. They don't pay any income tax. But I agree with the liberal who said the the uh income for average people was being fixed last six or seven years.
No, no increase whatsoever. And yet the liberal says, "Well, they're entitled to a better living. We're going to raise the minimum wage. We're going to give them more money for their entitlement, more education, more schools, more medical care, more housing, and we're going to tax the rich." But that makes the problem worse.
What what they what they have to do is understand back to the monetary policy. the the liberal has to become more populist understanding about how monetary policy is so anti- middle class and anti-poor and that just taxing productive citizen. There's a lot of productive citizens in this country who do it on their own and they're not part of the very rich who benefit from government and to tax them is detrimental. Uh it doesn't solve the problem and it takes away jobs.
you know, if you tax productive individuals, you you hurt job production. And uh and yet that's where we are today. I think is it's starting to recog people are starting to recognize that uh our economy is in bad shape and people are getting poorer. In this last election, I think people expressed themselves not only about the war, but I think there was a lot of deep expression about worry about the economy in spite of the low the low rate of unemployment.
Uh I think it's the uh underemployment you know poorer jobs that we don't have the jobs that we have uh sent overseas because of the way the monetary system works and they uh they're getting pretty nervous about this. So it's a really great opportunity to to get involved in this education. That's why I'm delighted to hear about what you're doing with programs like this and other activities. uh not only because it's important to understand economics but it's also in their best interest that entitlements do not satisfy the best interest of the people that eventually destroys a country.
So it's the understanding of economic policy which is in the best interest of all of us. Most people in the United States don't realize that you can go to the US Treasury's website and you can download the financial statement of the United States and you can read it yourself. I do this. I don't know anybody else that does.
But in it, you see uh the entitlements projected out for 20 years. You also do not see the money that they're spending. Where's the money coming from that they're spending in Iraq and Afghan? The the unfunded, not the unfunded liabilities, but the offbudget items.
They're not in there at all. Uh yet somehow the money appears for them to spend on Iraq, Afghanistan, and uh and the war on terror. uh but the entitlements and the coming generation of retirees. What's going to happen when the baby boom generation retires and you see expenses and income on graph after graph in the financial statement of the United States.
They're basically telling us what is going to happen in the future. And it's not a pretty picture. No. And we don't know exactly what year that's going to happen.
uh the economy is shaky right now. The stock market is shaky. That say we are moving into a pretty steep downturn then all the projections are uh you know uh inaccurate because we don't know how many people will be working next year or the year after. So we don't know the income and uh we can estimate to a degree the the expenses but even that is difficult because uh you know private pension funds are insured by the government and they're going to inherit a lot and we are transferring some of their medical responsibility from from private corporations who no longer can happen like uh the the prescription drug program was a transfer from private responsibility to government responsibility and this is so huge that nobody can quite comprehensive.
It's into the many many trillions of dollars. All we know for certain is it's it's it's not workable and uh it it will fall apart. But I never uh I always tell the elderly, you're always going to get a check. We're always going to send you a check for your social security and it's going to go up, but we will always fudge on what the real rate of inflation is.
So it will never go up quite for so your in your real income is going to stay flatter or go down but you're always going to get a check and they'll try to keep up. But the question is is what's it going to buy? You know uh even if it goes gradually and you and electricity go doubles and your check doesn't double you you're going to suffer. And uh I think that is what's going to happen.
Uh I I think this country is going to get much much poorer and uh the entitlements will finally have to end because uh just printing the money and running up the deficit or expecting foreigners to continue to loan us the money. It's it's not going to last. It's it's just it's just a dream and it's very very serious. And uh even though there's a few people in Washington talks about it uh that it's uh they're not really serious about it.
They put it off. There's a deep concern in Washington for the next election already. We've just had election already. What is the deep concern about two years from now?
How do we get power back for the Republicans? How are we going to maintain power? Who's going to be president? It's a it's a game that they're playing.
They're not thinking about the cause of liberty and the future and understanding monetary policy and and why this thing won't work. That's the lowest on their priorities. and it's all to pander to to get votes and uh and and they they're dealing in a very corrupt system. There's less corruption than you might believe in the conventional sense of members of Congress taking money under the table.
It's they're dealing in a corrupt system where they're transferring wealth back and forth and that's their job. And the better they transfer this wealth from somebody else's who's paying the taxes to their district, I mean, that's the the sign of an effective congressman. So, so they work very hard at that. That's it's a system that is is corrupt and it invites a lot of abuse and and that's why this entitlement system has just gotten totally out of control.
But in a way though, when the crisis hit, there'll be some good things that come about it. People will recognize that hard work is is is an honorable thing to do and we have to work to uh maintain a standard living. And it means also that we're going to pull in our horns. We we won't pretend that we can tell other people how to live and that we're we're going to take democracy.
Well, the founders didn't even like democracy and and we're expending lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to go over there and tell the Iraqi people how they're going to live. I mean, this uh that's going to end. It's it's going to end not because of great wisdom gravitating to Washington. It's going to end because we're going to run out of our wealth and and the entitlement entitlement system will be declared bankrupt.
uh you mentioned earlier about uh printing money and the decline of the middle class when this happens. There's a number of examples in history of this happening before. Have you got any comments on that? Oh yes, they're they're frequent and and one characteristic about a country that debases its currency and goes to a paper currency, the currency always self-destructs.
It always ends. I mean today you know you take tell us the difference between a assetbacked currency and a fiat currency. Well well the fiat means that it is declared by government that this is money. It's paper and it's money and it's by government declaration where if you use a gold coin uh the value comes from the marketplace and government can't reproduce this.
So it's always a ship uh now or was 500 years ago, you dig it up, it has tremendous value. it to the bottom and who who cares, you know, this loses uh probably 5 to 10% a year in value. So, it it's very very destructive and uh that that's why it's so important to have real money. And the other important reason other than the economic reason is it restrains government.
Uh if if we had hard money and we had to pay our bills, uh we would have to tax everybody for the entitlement system and the war, taxes would double maybe. I mean it would be huge increase in taxes. The other thing I would like to do is make everybody pay on a monthly basis. mainly not not to well to annoy them to remind them to say this is what you're paying for government and the government's not allowed to spend any money other than what they take and they have to get out of this business of financing big government because when you do this when you have this right to print money you you you produce big government and government does the wrong things always at the expense of the individual liberty we have examples uh so many examples uh India up until just the past couple of decades China under Mao the USSR managed economies.
When government gets big and tries to manage an economy, uh it's always disaster. It never works. Is there ever any example in history of a government being able to print or borrow its way to prosperity only temporarily? And I would say that we're in that stage right now.
We're temporarily very wealthy uh because there's still this trust in the dollar. And I would say 30 years uh since it's just pure fiat money since 71 30 some years now uh that uh we have on the short run benefited by this but long term no I don't think there's any example uh the longer it goes uh uh and and the more uh pervasive it is uh the more likely it is you're going to end up with runaway inflation like they had in Germany or or third world countries in Central America even Mexico they've had several uh new new pesos introduced because peso lost devaluation. So it ends but nobody can say well you know the Chinese uh thousand years ago had a paper currency that lasted for a thousand years and it was great you know great prosperity with it. No it's it doesn't work that way.
It always brings poverty and always ends. The paper money will end. You're a Republican, but all of your everything that you stand for seems to be libertarian. Uh why is it that you run on a Republican ticket when uh I don't see much correlation?
You know, to be honest with you, I usually don't like or trust politicians. And for some reason, there's an exception here. And and it's because of your stance and because you're willing to say things that the rest of them aren't. Um uh why are you running under the Republican banner when you're to me you're clearly a libertarian or do do you take exception with that?
Are are you No, I I don't uh uh shy away from the word libertarian, but I volunteer that I'm a constitutionalist. And what you're saying, if you put the label libertarian on me, that means the founders must have been libertarian because even if I had a libertarian belief that contradicted the constitution, I would want to change the constitution because I believe the rule of law is important. But the constitution is pretty libertarian. It gives the government essentially no authority to run our lives or police the world or run the economy.
So that's a it's a great document. and uh to run on a party other than the two one of the two majors it's it's too difficult to win. uh there some have been able to do it as independent and I have a lot of respect for those whether they're left or right or libertarian uh to run as independents independent and win but we have monopoly control uh of the political system and the republican and democratic party although they v for power the power the power struggle is real but the philosophic struggle is absent there there's no difference between the uh I I guess I'll qualify that a little bit there's very little difference between the uh the welfare beliefs uh of the Republicans and the Democratic Party, the monetary policy, uh the the the foreign policy in the current day. I would say the biggest difference is the Democrats are more easily swayed to raise taxes than the Republicans are.
But since they both spend and spending is a tax because if you don't tax the people directly, you tax them indirectly through inflation. So it's all a gimmick. They believe in they believe in big government. So, I run as a Republican because it uh it it it allows you a chance to win.
Uh because as a as a third party, you don't get included in debates and and it's it's harder to raise money. It's hard to get on ballots and uh Libertarian Party tries real hard to get their candidate on ballots. Uh and they do, but uh I tried it one time back in 1988 and I spent most of the money just battling the rules. So you have to be a Ross Perau in order to do that.
So if you're wealthy enough and you can find the the people who will go out there and and overcome the legal system and go to court and get signatures, you can get on the ballot. But uh for an average uh philosophic stacked against and uh I think somebody could have my views uh and run as a Democrat. Matter of fact, after this last election, a Democrat that beat a so-called conservative Republican called me and she was all excited. She says, "Guess what I did?
I used a lot of your supporters up in my district and I use some of your literature and I won a seat, you know, which was exciting that uh they took these these constitutional views, more libertarian views, and were able to use it uh and win a Democratic seat." And she said, "I want to be an ally of yours." And she had never been in office before. So, uh, this can happen. So, uh, we we have a mess and, uh, a lot of cards stacked against us, but we're still free enough to participate. The fact that you can still do television programs and you can do homeschooling and private schooling and even a guy like me can get elected to Congress.
So, there's still enough uh, freedom left and we need to use it to go in the opposite direction of of recapturing our freedoms rather than sitting back and saying, "Well, there's not much we can do." And they say, "Oh, the media is opposed to us." Well, who's who's the media? You know, the media is everybody now. All you have to do is get a computer and you're on the website. I mean, my stuff doesn't make the news, but boy, I get a lot of letters around the world.
When I give talks on the House floor, I mean, I get a lot of uh interest. You said your stuff doesn't make the news. I was watching C-SPAN one time. uh Congress is grilling Greenspan and then and it was all softball questions and then you step up and you ask a hard ball question and C-SPAN immediately cuts away to some silly commentary.
Do you think um that we have a truly uh free uh and fair uh media in the United States? Um, not really because I consider it I mean you take you take a station like Fox I mean it's just it just works for the Republican party and works for the president and they promoted the war and all their their their propaganda. Uh it's ironic that u PBS um has given me a fairer shake than the so-called private stations. Of course I wouldn't go and even C-SPAN.
Oh yeah, C-SPAN treats me very well and they they get me on. Uh but but it's sort of ironic. I wouldn't vote for a penny at the subsidized public broadcasting. But in a way, it's more fair and balanced than the so-called fair and balanced statement station of Fox.
But Fox has a right to do that. And so somebody else has a right to be more liberal. So I'm not I don't want to, you know, take take that away. But the people don't quite recognize that.
They they're more likely to say PBS is is unfair and it's always leftists and and finally we have Fox to balance this and they love Fox News. Yeah. Okay. I want to thank you for being here.
This was just incredible interview. Is there anything that you would like to say at the end here? Well, I don't have anything real special, but I think most people have to realize that the real cause is to fight for the cause of liberty because I think when we have a free society, individuals then can do what they want, take care of themselves and work for their own virtue and excellence and take that out of the role of government. It's when you give that responsibility to government to make this economy fair and make you a better person and uh tell you how you should be virtuous and all these things.
the government can only do that or pretend to do it at the expense of liberty. And then when they make this attempt to make this perfect world, it doesn't work. So there's there's a very practical argument against all this big government. And it's a shame that we who believe in freedom and liberty have done such a lousy job in convincing the people that's in their best interest to fight for the fight for liberty.
And uh we will have our prosperity. Too often people say, "Well, we'll get our prosperity by getting our entitlements and giving up on the concept of liberty." And and that's a problem that we have to overcome. Thank you. Thank you.
Wow, that was so good uh that I've forgotten what the next questions were. [Music] If you know how the world financial system works, you know the game that you're playing. And if you don't know the game and the rules that we're playing by, you're going to get slaughtered. You are going to get slaughtered.
Ever since the Federal Reserve was born, we have been living under a lie. In order for us to maintain the levels we've got and to maintain the prosperity, Obama has to be twice as far in debt when he leaves office than when he came in or we the whole thing is starting to collapse. The Federal Reserve, they're buying bonds directly from the Treasury. This is quantitative easing, they're calling it.
And that means there's an emergency going on. I could see that there wasn't anything in history as far as finances go that was as much of a sure thing as gold and silver accounting for the expansion of the fiat currency supply. There's absolutely no chance in hell that this won't happen. Right now it takes about 15 to $20,000 an ounce gold.
I believe that there's going to be deflation first and then all of the world's central banks will start printing like crazy to get us out of that deflation and Ben Bernani will be leading the charge. And you can't have a debt that is 10 times the size of your economy. It's not possible. Everything comes to a screeching halt first.
I got to show you that the world's uh stock markets and real estate bubbles have to continue crashing because all it is is the market trying to seek fair value. It's trying to seek equilibrium. This is what the markets do. It is their job.
Basically, you know, our entire currency system is imaginary. It doesn't really exist. It's just that we're all dreaming the same dream. If anybody chooses to wake up, it's over with.
Thank you very much. I'm Mike Maloney, uh, author of the best-selling book on precious metals investing, guide to investing in gold and silver. It's part of, uh, the Rich Dad series that Robert Kiyosaki started.