March 28, 2024

Ron Paul – “U.S. Treasury Guilty of Counterfeiting Dollars”

When Ron Paul retires after his current term in Congress, one of the most notable voices for a sound currency and protection of civil liberties against a despotic government will be gone from the official Washington scene.  Although Paul was never able to rein in a government that assumes more power over our lives with each passing minute, his warnings gave Americans the opportunity to understand the threats to their financial future and personal liberties.

What may be one of Ron Paul’s last legislative efforts is his campaign to allow competing currencies in the United States in order to break the monopoly on money by the Treasury and Federal Reserve.

I recently held a hearing in my congressional subcommittee on the subject of competing currencies.  This is an issue of enormous importance, but unfortunately few Americans understand how the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department impose a strict monopoly on money in America.

This monopoly is maintained using federal counterfeiting laws, which is a bit rich.  If any organization is guilty of counterfeiting dollars, it is our own Treasury.  But those who dare to challenge federal legal tender laws by circulating competing currencies– at least physical currencies– risk going to prison.

Like all government created monopolies, the federal monopoly on money results in substandard product in the form of our ever-depreciating dollars.

Yet governments have always sought to monopolize the issuance of money, either directly or through the creation of central banks. The expanding role of the Federal Reserve in the 20th century enabled our federal government to grow wildly larger than would have been possible otherwise.  Our Fed, like all central banks, encourages deficits by effectively monetizing Treasury debt.  But the price we pay is the terrible and ongoing debasement of our money.

Allowing individuals and business to use alternate currencies, especially currencies backed by gold and silver, would expose the whole rotten system because the marketplace would prefer such alternate currencies unless and until the Fed suddenly imposed radical discipline on its dollar inflation.

Sadly, Americans are far less free than many others around the world when it comes to protecting themselves against the rapidly depreciating US dollar.  Mexican workers can set up accounts denominated in ounces of silver and take tax-free delivery of that silver whenever they want.  In Singapore and other Asian countries, individuals can set up bank accounts denominated in gold and silver.  Debit cards can be linked to gold and silver accounts so that customers can use gold and silver to make point of sale transactions, a service which is only available to non-Americans.

The obvious solution is to legalize monetary freedom and allow the circulation of parallel and competing currencies.  There is no reason why Americans should not be able to transact, save, and invest using the currency of their choosing.  They should be free to use gold, silver, or other currencies with no legal restrictions or punitive taxation standing in the way.  Restoring the monetary system envisioned by the Constitution is the only way to ensure the economic security of the American people.

After all, if our monetary system is fundamentally sound– and the Federal Reserve indeed stabilizes the dollar as its apologists claim–then why fear competition?  Why do we accept that centralized, monopoly control over our money is compatible with a supposedly free-market economy?  In a free market, the government’s fiat dollar should compete with alternate currencies for the benefit of American consumers, savers, and investors.

As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained, sound money is an instrument that protects our civil liberties against despotic government. Our current monetary system is indeed despotic, and the surest way to correct things simply is to legalize competing currencies.

Ron Paul is routinely dismissed as a naif by the Federal Reserve and Treasury.  Yet a quick look at the  chart of the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar (published by the St. Louis Fed) proves the legitimacy of Ron Paul’s concerns.  Federal Reserve policies have resulted in the systematic destruction of the purchasing power of the consumer dollar.

Will Ron Paul be successful in his quest to legalize a competing U.S. currency?  Let’s look at Paul’s track record.

Of the 620 bills that Paul had sponsored through December 2011, over a period of more than 22 years in Congress, only one had been signed into law – a lifetime success rate of less than 0.3%.   The sole measure authored by Paul that was ultimately enacted allowed for a federal customhouse to be sold to a local historic preservation society (H.R. 2121 in 2009).

Although Ron Paul’s crusade against corrupt government and the Federal Reserve is a losing battle, the value of his message is invaluable.   Ron Paul has seen the future of constant U.S. dollar debasement and positioned his personal portfolio heavily into gold and silver – something that the average American should think about.

Comments

  1. Paul Ryan only passed 2 bills. one was to rename a post office and the other was to change the tax rate on arrows sold in sporting good stores. Laws about(bow and arrows) recreation because Paul Ryan has a hobby of archery. Dr Paul is not getting coverage because the US government is not looking out for the best interests of the American taxpayers. Ron Paul will get my vote.

  2. I will ‘write in’ Ron Paul.

  3. Ron Paul is da man!

  4. There’s a reason things are the way they are!
    There’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed.

    It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it. Be happy with what you’ve got.

    Because the owners, the owners of this country, don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

    Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought—and paid for—the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.

    They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want:

    They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.

    That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!

    You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street—and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later ‘cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club.

    By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue—these are people of modest means—continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you….they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you.

    They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth.

    It’s called the American Dream—because you have to be asleep to believe it.

  5. This author is confused.
    Let this person tell how many times Ron Paul voted to raise taxes (none)or how many junkets he took? (none) How much money he accepted from his pension? (none) How many times did he vote to take away your rights? (none) How many times did his votes ignore the constitution? (never)…I could go on.
    The biggest problem congress has is passing thousands of laws and other trash WE DO NOT NEED! Then when someone comes along and spends 30 years fighting Washington and actually DOING their JOB they are called unsuccessful???
    I suppose a nun living among prostitutes and refusing to “turn tricks” would have a very low lifetime success rate according to the author of this article?
    I would like to take time to thank Dr. Paul for every time he voted to my freedom & liberty and each time he voted alone because he was the only honest brave person in the room. Thank you Dr.Paul!

    • The author IS confused – by your comment. Long time readers of the goldandsilverblog.com know that we are ardent supporters of Ron Paul. Ron Paul is one of the few men in Washington with integrity and who puts the country’s interests above his own. Mentioning the number of times that legislation proposed by Ron Paul passed is based on the factual record and used to support the view that, unfortunately, an alternate currency will never become law. As mentioned in other comments on this article, the country has way to many laws that never should have been passed and, in fact, should be repealed. Hopefully, Ron Paul will reconsider his plans for retirement – the country needs him.

  6. And where is all that purchasing power GOING?? It is being STOLEN from us, and spent, by the counterfeiters and debasers in chief: the Fed and Treasury, in league with their political, corporate and banking cronies.

Leave a Reply to George Cancel reply

*