The founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, still serves as chairman and CEO, Mr. Lew Rockwell.
How do you introduce Ron Paul? I could obviously take the rest of this meeting, telling you about his qualifications.
qualifications. I'll just mention a couple of things. When the Mises Institute was founded, this man who, from the time he was a medical student, was reading Austrian economics and his, because long ago, even though his professional qualifications are in medicine, is a real Austrian economist, was a big help to the founding of the Institute financially, helped get us on the road. And one of our members here was just reminding me of our first conference in 1983 in Washington DC on the gold standard.
that a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors came to debate Ron.
Fed was, I think, a less arrogant institution maybe in those days. Ron beat him, by the way.
Charles Partee, you won't be surprised to find out. Ron has been beating the Federal Reserve ever since.
The fact that Ben Bernanke is having so much trouble today in Washington
due to Ron Paul and all the work he's done.
So building on the work of Mises and Rothbard and Hayek and all our other great heroes,
we have our current hero, who in his presidential campaign took the Austrian School to a big
step up, so that today, there's no question that all over this country, as Tom Woods mentioned,
young people, old people, everybody's interested in the ideas of the Austrian School, and we
We have a lot to say, a lot of thank yous to say to our next speaker for this wonderful thing that's happening, for the trouble Bernanke is in, Dr. Ron Paul.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Like I often say, I don't get that applause in Washington D.C.'s.
So it's good to be at home, it's good to be in Texas, and it's good to be back in America.
So it's very nice to be here and among friends, but I do notice, Lew, I think there are more
people here than before.
It seems like there's some growth in our movement, and thank you very much for coming.
There was a time when we would have meetings, and maybe there'd be six or eight or ten or
Well, we're talking about what we ought to do with the future.
And now it is a delight to see the growth and the enthusiasm, and to me it's very encouraging.
I get a lot of credit for encouraging other people and getting them involved, but the
truth is, is especially when I go to the universities, I get a lot of encouragement because I find
and the young people are responding so favorably.
But this is, there is definite signs that significant change is occurring and I do truly
believe there is a revolution going on in this country.
And I say that in the good sense of the word, a revolution, a true revolution is philosophic.
It's a change of ideas and it's pervasive, it's not a republican revolution or a democratic
revolution and I often think about, you know, how the revolution occurred in the 30s, at
least a continuation of when I actually started a little earlier, but a significant revolutionary
change in attitude and then it was sort of, the climax came when it was announced, it
was official when we had President Nixon say, we're all Keynesians now.
So there may be a day that we'll get up and we'll have somebody in Washington say we're
all Austrians now.
You know, it has been a lot of fun and a lot of enjoyment, especially for me in the last
two years, and also very hectic at times.
But things definitely changed after the presidential campaign, dramatically.
There was a big change in my personal life.
There was a big change in attitudes and respect for what we all have been saying for so long.
But actually there's a change in walking through airports.
And that sometimes is quite enjoyable.
I meet a lot of people.
But it is fascinating.
Why I'm so fascinated is by the individuals who come up and are excited about getting
I can tell you, the people who come and talk to me and want more information and all, they're very diverse.
Believe me, they do not look like the typical Republican.
And I think this is great.
Those interested come from all walks of life.
Life.
There is no doubt that they don't come from the business class or the banking class, although
we'll have them, but they'll come from the working class in all areas of the society.
But because freedom is so popular and brings people together, which has been my argument,
we follow the Constitution, defend liberty, then all of a sudden we melt away so many
of our differences.
But it also invites a bit of a problem because individuals who do come, sometimes I am dumbfounded
and all of a sudden new friends and they seem to be even more than I expected.
For instance, it's sometimes hard for me to totally understand why the TSA employees
would be excited about talking to me but it does happen so I just wrote it off
for a while yeah they know I'm a congressman and they just think that they
have to you know be real friendly but I swear some of them are very very sincere
and just the other day this individual was reading all of my stuff and calling
in the weekly report on the telephone and listening to it so he's been very
So this idea that we can take people and stereotype them and say, well, they're in this category and they're not open to our ideas.
I'm marveled at it to think that really, with the ideas of liberty and limited government, we can approach anybody and everybody.
And to me, I think that's just fantastic.
You know, for a long time, we were a very small minority. We still are a minority and we have to recognize that.
We still have a long way to go. But several years ago, before we were getting any attention at all,
I was talking to a member of Congress, going to the Black Caucus,
and there was some moaning and groaning about, you know, taking care of people who were in the minority.
And I told him, I looked at this congresswoman, and I said, look, you have no idea what it's like to be in the minority. You ought to try being a libertarian in the U.S. Congress.
But that is changing right now, and fortunately I think all to our benefit.
but we certainly have a lot of problems yet to deal with this past week we had
a perfect example of where we really stand especially on the foreign policy
foreign policy might be the hardest not to crack as far as getting people to
come to a better understanding I thought maybe after the election you know up in
Massachusetts that people might say hey maybe maybe they do really want some
changes here maybe we ought to look at things more carefully and we had a vote
this week some of you might have read about it had to do with Haiti and I
thought well maybe they'll look at this maybe they'll read the bill maybe they'll
pay some attention and maybe there'll be more than one vote maybe there'll be
three votes or four the vote the bill simply said we express our condolences
as our sympathies for the people who have suffered in Haiti that is what the
That is what the title said and that's what nobody looks at any of that stuff until they get to the floor and that's what the little sentence is on the desk.
What are you voting on? Oh, to express our sympathies for the people hating.
But if you read the bill, you find out that it was an endless commitment of militarism and occupation and no limitation on funds to stay there as far as anybody's concerned forever.
So the vote was going on, and it was about 430 to 3, and I thought, well, see, tripled our vote.
But I was wrong. It didn't work. People started looking at it, and probably people running over and saying,
do you know what you're doing? So then it was 430 to 2. Then all of a sudden, you know, you can change your vote at the last minute.
Then it turned out 432 to 1, and I was sitting with close friends who understand a little
bit about this, but they also understand from their viewpoint this is too risky for them
to deal with, you know, standing on principle on this.
They said, and they looked over and they said, Braun, it looks like you're all by yourself
again.
And I said, well, I said, let's just soon have that, because my message is that there's,
You know, it's me against the state, so it's a terrible way to get symbolism, but in a
way that's the way we all are when you think about the numbers.
But the difference is, is we're dealing with ideas, and we don't have to deal with 51%
of the population.
Most people are followers, Congress eventually will follow when we become the dominant philosophy
of the country and everybody is desperately looking for some answers for the crisis and
the problems that have been created by the illusion of Keynesian and socialist economics.
And they're looking more carefully all the time.
The other delight about coming into politics from our viewpoint is that, you know, typically
if you're a conventional conservative Republican, you know, you get a lot of interviews on Fox News Network, you know, but if you come at it from a free market viewpoint and an Austrian viewpoint, all of a sudden, you know, occasionally on some of the liberal stations, they'll be good civil libertarians and they'll understand foreign policy and instead of, since the campaign was over, instead of being excluded from Fox, I was excluded, of course, during the campaign and gave
But now I think it's been over 50 times since I've been interviewed on Fox on economic issues since the campaign.
But the more liberal stations, some of them wouldn't dare want to talk to me because their agenda is Democratic Party politics,
and they're not for liberty, they're just for Democratic Party politics and big government.
Government.
But even on those stations, you will have a few on there that are very honest people.
Now the one individual that I never had heard of, and that shows my shortcomings, before
the campaign I had heard of but had never watched the program, and that was John Stewart.
But that guy is pretty fascinating, I've come to respect him, and I see he's most likely
comes from the left, but he's an honest person.
But when the left really messes up, he loves to go and get them, and therefore it is not
unusual to see somebody like a John Stewart befriend us, all of us through me, by, I don't
know, I've been on a show, I know at least twice, maybe three times, so those kind of
shows we get onto, they're considered liberal shows, but the delightful message here is
is that we do approach all spectrums and that means this can be a true movement, a true
revolutionary change and we should be very optimistic about what we see so far.
The question of the Tea Parties come up, I believe it was during the campaign, the presidential
campaign that somebody during a campaign it wasn't always our astute central
organization occurred I mean we were we ran a campaign because there was an
excitement out there and there was a lot of spontaneity to it and there was a lot
of spontaneous fundraising efforts in the use of the Tea Party in modern days I
believe really started at that particular time the the subsequently
though, since then there's been a lot of tea party movements, a lot of tea parties
and now it's pretty hard to identify exactly who they are and what they are
and exactly what's what's going on but it it is a I think it's a good sign
because they're anti-Washington and they're anti-republican establishment and
and anti-democrat establishment, and I believe that's good.
But those of us who deal only in academic education and also in trying to change ideas,
that's a little bit different than dealing with Tea Party movements.
But those who are more involved in politics, I think they're rather significant.
But all I've got to say about it is that you just can't reject them all or endorse them all because they are very diverse.
And I believe what has happened was there are a lot of people who spontaneously came together not fully aware of exactly what they believed in.
They had the energy and the disapproval of what was happening and they came together.
But then all of a sudden, when the conventional politician realized, hey, there's a few people
disgruntled out there, hey, that must be a new movement, I'd better get into that movement
and get in front of the line so I can be a leader of that movement.
And that's essentially what has happened there, jumping in and claiming.
And there's pretty strong evidence that many of the Tea Party meetings are infiltrated
by the neoconservative element and not an anti-war sound money group of people.
But nevertheless, our job really is spreading ideas and those ideas being so pervasive that
they will influence not only the parties but the Tea Party people as well.
But it is certainly encouraging that there is this much excitement.
You know, the other day I was talking over in Atlanta, and I had just been reading and
doing some research on a subject dealing with intelligence gathering, you know, that thing
that the CIA does every once in a while.
And I made the statement, which I don't back away from, but it came out after me expressing
I'm concerned about, you know, the secret government and how much control they have, and I had just read recently that, you know, when the Soviet system collapsed, guess who really got in charge? The KGB.
The KGB took over, ran things, and right now, 70% of anybody that has an important position in Russia today were KGB members.
And my thoughts were that, you know, we ought to be cautious.
I mean, I know we've complained about it, and the CIA is something that I've been criticizing for so many years.
Quite frankly, I believe that if you have a truly constitutional republic, you would not even have a CIA.
Then the opposition will immediately say, oh, you don't care. You don't care about protecting America and all those arguments.
But then again, the other side of that argument is how much more money do you want?
You claim that you have, well, we know you have $75 billion for the 16 agencies, and you don't do all that good a job.
And you want more money and more personnel to do things that we don't even know what you're doing,
and yet the CIA is funded not only directly, but indirectly.
They run their own businesses every once in a while, they get into drug business.
And they're a government unto themselves.
Chalmers-Johnson said it was a private army for the president.
That is, until they turn on the president, and then who knows what happens.
But it is. It's done in secrecy, and they're pervasive. They're into elections around the world, they're into assassinations, they're into interrogations and tortures, as well as being involved in just about everything around the world, and nobody really knows much about it.
And that, that to me is the big complaint. You know, you wouldn't have to spend a heck of a lot of money if it just had a few people who were responsible for gathering off information of individuals or groups that might want to attack us.
And maybe what they ought to do is maybe just listen to the person who wants to tell them, well, my son's a bit crazy and he's liable to come over here and do something to the tear gas.
But that would have probably cost about a $10 for a phone call, you know?
That's not likely to happen.
They're going to want more and more money.
But you know, we've talked a lot about the Federal Reserve system, and I think we could
deal with the Federal Reserve system the same way I suggested we deal with the CIA.
We really don't need the Federal Reserve at all.
The big question is what's going to happen to the audit bill?
It's in the House bill of regulation, the bill I voted against because it's an atrocious
bill, but still the system works that way, so I had the chance to stick it on there.
I did.
It's not doing so well in the Senate side, and there's a lot of effort over there to
make sure it's not in there.
But this very week, this whole Bernanke issue is related to the audit, audit the bill and
the energy so many of you put into it to get the attention of the American people and the
congressmen right now to get 317 members of congress to sponsor this bill doesn't mean
that it does mean that the American people have sent a message there and I think it's
very positive.
But they're likely to water down, but the fact that Bernanke may not make it through
means that this is closely tied to the audit bill because there have been holds put on
the confirmation process and they have to have 60 votes in order to get that out unless
they have an up and down vote on auditing the Fed.
So the issues are closely tied. I generally over the years have not chosen to go after
the individuals even though sometimes it's much better to do that because you get a lot
more attention because I think it's the philosophy of money and the banking system. It's not
Bernanke who created our crisis. It's the Bernanke-like people that have been around
for way too long, especially since 1971. That is the real problem. So I generally don't.
But this week, really, it is a big issue. You know, if Bernanke goes down, that means
that they have a real setback for their desire to cover up and not allow to have transparency.
But there are some over there that are adamly outspoken against what we're trying to do
to do and get some openness with the Federal Reserve.
I sense from the discussions I've had and the hearings that we've had that the most
important thing to the Fed to conceal is, of course, two things.
One, international activities and second, how they bail out their buddies through the
discount window.
Those are the two things that they get hysterical over and that means, oh, you want to turn
and the power of the money system over to the Congress
so that we will let the people know what's going on.
And what if a bank is weak and the people get to know that?
Well, isn't that what you're supposed to know?
Why should the Federal Reserve cover up the information?
You know, in this day and age, you know,
you take a company like Enron, if they fudge the books
and lie to the people, and they go to prison for fraud.
But here they're saying that if the Federal Reserve comes in
and finds out that the bank is very, very weak,
Their job is to keep it secret. It makes no sense whatsoever. They do not like that information
getting out about their friends and who they bail out. But the other thing is the international
stuff. They have the exclusion on what the GAO can order is that we're not allowed to
look at any international agreements with governments. Other central banks are international
of Financial Organizations, IMF and World Bank.
And here we have a central bank that can do all these things
and they never have to ask the Congress for anything.
They don't have to say, hey, you know,
we want to send a billion dollars over to country A
and we want to make an agreement, guaranteed loans
and all these kind of things.
No, they don't have to.
They just have to click a computer
and they can get themselves involved
in all these dealings.
So in many ways, my suspicion is, if we ever got to look at the books, that they're probably very much involved in foreign policy.
If our CIA is going over and being involved in elections and assassinations and, you know, just running the world in a secret manner,
and they only get $75 billion a year in the open and they might need $100 or $200 or $300 and they have unlimited credit,
To me it's unimaginable what kind of deals they might make.
So is it conceivable that the CIA and the Federal Reserve may get along quite well together?
And it's a possibility.
But the whole thing is, is we're not even allowed to know.
The Congress is just there, they're oblivious to it all.
The Conservatives say, well you can't dare restrain the CIA in any manner whatsoever.
and then also nobody wants, the banking industry and all wants to protect, you know, the central bank.
Now, my guess is what will happen is that we will not go through the system, get the Senate to pass something,
the President signs an audit, next year you're going to have an audit and you're going to know what's going to happen to Fed.
I don't think so. It'll be sort of like McCain-Feingold.
you finally get a favorable ruling and allow a little bit more freedom on how to spend money and being involved in in politics but immediately next week they're going to have a bill up again that will reinstate some of those same restrictions and it'll be in effect by November and it'll be back to the courts again and take two three or four years to you know overcome it so it that'll probably happen on the on the audit even if you get something through
The two cases going on right now, one by Bloomberg and one by Fox, one case has been ruled favorably for the Freedom of Information Act,
the other not, but they're on appeal, but it's going on and on, and I think they're very beneficial.
But even if you get something through and signed, even if it's good, it's going to immediately go to the courts.
In this age, in this time, from my viewpoint, is that's a long time, because we're working with a financial system where the foundation has been shattered.
There really is no foundation to our monetary system and our financial system.
We've had the financial crisis hit, and we have seen this a lot of liquidation and transfer of debt.
Of course, the debt was transferred from the big guys to the little guys.
is, it goes from, yes, there was no deflation because debt was transferred, and we, the
taxpayer, end up buying this debt, and they're back at it again, and feeling good about it.
But the foundation is not stable. The financial system, I do not believe the worldwide financial
system can be rebuilt on a dollar reserve standard. I think they got away with it for
a lot longer than they ever dreamed, which means that they just had a bigger bubble than
ever before, from 71 up until now, until 2008. So I don't think that's going to be rebuilt,
but the dollar is still being accepted around the world. People still, you know, the stock
market goes down and the dollar goes up in value. I think that's all temporary. The one
thing I think that we're facing is not only the dollar bubble, but the bond bubble. Why
Why in the world would bonds ever serve anybody's interest if you could buy a ten-year bond
and make a couple percent interest and think that you're going to have something of value
at the end of ten years or twenty years?
Nobody invests in bonds to protect their assets.
So it's all just gambling and trickery that's going on and then if nobody will buy them
out there, the Fed buys them or the Fed's, you know, wheeling and dealing with other
and other central banks, and they prop up these markets, so right now I think it's in everybody's interest to prop up the dollar.
But eventually, I think the dollar is going to go down and down sharply.
Since 1971, the dollar against the basket of currencies, the Federal Reserve basket of currencies, is down about 32%.
That's serious and significant, but it doesn't tell you a whole lot because other currencies are the same thing.
is the same thing. I mean, why would anybody think, well, okay, the dollar's in trouble, let's all buy euros.
You know, that wouldn't save us. But even in spite of that, our dollar, which is supposed to be the king
of all the currencies, is still down a third from the other currencies in these last several decades.
But the CPI is down 82% and against gold it's down 97%. So the dollar is very, very weak.
but it's been you know I've had people before the banking committee and from
from either the Federal Reserve or Treasury and talking about you know the
dollar going down and what significance and their response usually is it's okay
to go down as long as it's orderly so I say oh okay if you steal from people in
in an orderly fashion, then it's okay.
But their attitude, of course, is that as long as you don't have the crashing dollar,
but I don't believe they can prevent the crash in the dollar.
But I don't believe the dollar is going to crash all by itself.
I think they're so interlinked.
I don't know of any time in our history, the history of the world, where it's been so global
in Nature, where all the currencies are linked together, all the currencies are fiat, and
that the dollar, of course, is key to this.
So some event will come along that will shatter the confidence in the United States.
It may be that Osama bin Laden is going to win on what his plans were.
You know, his plans were rather precise.
He said his goal was to stir up so much trouble that we would go into the Middle East, of
course we've been there a long time and he didn't want us, you know, having anything
to say with Saudi Arabia or any place else, but in order to bring this to a head, he says
I want to entice the American people over here to get them bogged down in a war.
and the bogging down will be something that will drain the support from the American people.
I think he's doing a fairly good job, but it's going to get a lot worse, but he also
wanted to drain us financially and lo and behold, I think we have a few financial problems.
So we're doing his bidding there.
The other thing he wanted us to do was get so involved and get so careless with how we
We were dealing with our foreign policy that there would be more victims which would create
more recruits for him.
So I believe very sincerely that since 9-11 that probably the number of Muslims around
the world that hate us and despise us, those numbers have probably grown.
This claim, well, they don't belong to the Taliban or they don't belong to Al-Qaeda,
and I think those numbers don't mean very much.
I just believe that there's a lot of people in this world responding logically to our
foreign policy and that there's many more enemies out there than ever before.
So this means though that nothing in that manner will be corrected overseas unless we
we have a change in our foreign policy but you know the significant changes I don't expect
them to come with next year's election a lot of times I hear the statement this coming
election is the most important election in the history of the country and therefore we
have to win this and we have to put we have to put in this individual and because it's
so important. Now they're all significant and all, but I just don't think it's going
to be that way. I think what's going to happen is that since we were not going to get 10,
20, 30 or 40 more constitutionals in the Congress, I think we're going to see a crisis. And when
the crisis hits and the dollar crisis hits, then there'll be a time when the market, the
The free market will demand that we do something differently.
If people don't trust the money, what power does the federal government have?
They've been totally neutralized.
The only thing left for them is the creation of new money out of thin air.
They can't tax us anymore.
I mean, every day there's less people working.
For 10 years now, the middle class has been losing wealth.
We lose wealth, we lose good jobs.
The standard living is going down. The good jobs aren't going to come back. So they can't
tax us in the true sense of the word. There's not enough wealth left to do it. It'll just
make the crisis that much worse. Eventually they'll quit loaning money to us, but then
the telltale sign will be when they can't print the money at will. And then the more
they print, the more the people become disenchanted. So right now the checks will keep coming.
They will print the checks for as long as necessary. Social Security will keep getting
their checks. But what they cannot control, because it's beyond all governments, is to
maintain value in a currency. The markets ultimately determine that. And even today,
the value in the dollar depends a lot on the force that they use, the legalized cartel,
the emphasis that we in this country is using the currency. They have legal tender laws.
And if you start trying to circulate silver dollars as currency, you can go to jail and
have your silver stolen from you.
So this is, you know, we're at a point where something will have to give.
And I think what will happen then is that when it stops functioning, there will be like
de facto nullification.
I don't think we'll ever have legal nullification.
This is not going to go to the courts.
Oh yeah, that sounded like a good idea.
We think the original intent was that states could nullify laws.
Well, what the states will do and what the individuals are going to do, they're just
going to ignore the federal government.
And that, of course, will bring on, you know, more problems, but then again, the society
will have to be rebuilt.
And that is where I think we come in on how it should be rebuilt, how pervasive our ideas are, how important it is to have sound money.
I did make a token step a couple weeks ago and talked about it last week, just to make the point of how we would rebuild, you know, when the time comes where we could have another currency.
and my suggestion has been to allow competition in currencies and I made the
point that you know even in the post office we have a little bit of
competition because you don't have to use the post office to mail a package
you have UPS and FedEx and and it hasn't been the end of the world and the post
office is still there I don't know how long they would last if we legalize the
and the delivery of first-class mail, which wouldn't be a bad idea, but we allow competition.
We're always being challenged, but we still have the legal right to educate our children
in private school and homeschooling, and that's good to people who can do it, afford it or
manage it.
That's excellent, but it also sends a message to the public school system that especially
I really get the greatest delight when I see homeschoolers winning some of these geography
B's and spelling B's and find out, you mean they actually got educated at home? How did
that happen? But there's competition there. It'd be great if we could do something in
medicine to preserve competition in medicine. You know, they talk so much on all this reform
about the public choice. How many times have you ever heard anybody on TV get up and say,
what's the matter with the private choice? Why don't we guarantee a private choice in
medicine, which would be the medical savings account? Every penny you put in the account,
So the one thing that we should always strive for is to have enough option to get out of a government system, but I think it's becoming tougher all the time.
and I'm afraid if and when they do something more with medicine there won't be any chance at all for you to opt out of the system.
But in money, money's a little bit different, it's more esoteric and people don't understand it as well,
but the bill that I've introduced does three things in order to allow individuals to use gold and silver.
The first thing is it should be appealing to a few people if you say,
People, if you say, well, you know, the Constitution has never been amended, and what does the
Constitution say? Only gold and silver can be used as legal tender. That wouldn't be
too bad. Just legalize the Constitution. But that's...
But that's a... You guys are radical. That's a radical idea. That's a radical idea for
Washington to do that. To do that, though, you have to repeal the legal tender laws.
That's where they get their monopoly control. You can't use anything other than Federal
Reserve notes as legal tender. And the other thing you would do is allow private mints.
If you have a gold coin or silver coin, you ought to be allowed to use it. They say, oh,
the private mints might defraud you. They might not have a full ounce of gold or a full
ounce of silver. I said, well, the fraud laws would take care of that. It's just too bad.
We can't apply those fraud laws to the Federal Reserve system.
And the other issue is you shouldn't tax money.
You know, if you want to, if you want to deal in silver, silver dollars and you go and trade
in some of your Federal Reserve notes for silver dollars and you just go into a shop,
they're going to, they're going to say you have to pay a sales tax, oh, 7% sales charge
on that.
You take your silver and you spend your silver. Oh, the silver went from $18 to $20. You have to pay capital gains tax on that.
You know, it can't work. So you have to get all taxes off money and all taxes off silver and gold.
So, why should they be so intimidated? We're not forcing it. We're not blowing up the buildings. We're not closing it down.
and we're just saying allow competition. Of course, they know the reason is the competition
might embarrass the opposition and the price of gold embarrasses the opposition as well.
They don't like to see and governments are notoriously anxious always to keep the dollar
price or the currency price of gold down because that's a vote against the currency and I told
Let's tell a story in the Fed, and Lew knows about this story, is one day in the midst of the dollar crisis and gold soaring up to $700, $800, we had a private meeting with Volker, and that's one thing I have given Volker credit for, he at least would talk to you in a reasonably sensible way, but he had a private breakfast over there for us just to talk, but Lew and I got there and there was a staff person there and we were just chatting,
and nothing special. And Volcker came in, and the amazing thing is Volcker, you know, he wasn't being not cordial, but he went immediately to the staff person.
He says, what's the price of gold? So they know about it, and just think how long they artificially held gold at $35 an ounce.
People always talk about, well, what are they doing these days?
Well, you know, with our Federal Reserve's ability to make all kinds of deals with other
central banks and financial organizations and foreign governments, they have the facility
to do whatever they want in the marketplace.
They, you know, the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, they've actually been
given authority to get involved in markets.
So do I have proof that they get involved in reading the gold price?
No, I don't, but I suspect it's in their interest to do it.
My guess is that they usually come in and maybe get involved, not when gold prices are
getting too high, but when there is a more or less natural correction.
You know, let's say markets do that, they go up and then they go down.
That they'll do this and then they'll come in and maybe try to punish people.
But that might be too conspiratorial for a group like this.
We wouldn't buy in any of that, but I think that a little competition shouldn't hurt them
but they're not likely to give that to us.
But in the meantime, if we establish what real money is, then in the midst of a crisis
we ought to be able to come up with an alternative.
The issue of liberty itself is, of course, what I have been involved in.
I frequently said that, you know, the financial system motivated me in the 1970s to run, and
I've been interested in a lot of policy changes, but really the true interest I have, and I'm
sure it's also yours, and that is the preservation of liberty.
That to me is what it's all about.
If we were permitted, if we were in charge and permitted to keep the government's hands
off the needed correction, there would have been some painful moments.
As a matter of fact, some of those big companies, AIG and Goldman Sachs, could have been very
painful for them.
They might have gone bankrupt, who knows?
But just keep our hands off and let it happen.
But if you have really some significant changes made, a lot of liquidation of debt and a lot
and a lot of scary things happening after a year or so, if we had our freedom, if we had the marketplace and property rights and contract rights and sound money and strictly limited government,
I am so convinced of that philosophy that within a year or two, we would all be back on our feet again, even if those of us who have tried real hard to protect ourselves and our families,
If all of it gets wiped off the table, but you're allowed to go back to work, and allowed to keep what you earn,
I'll tell you what, I think economic growth would come back so fast, and we wouldn't have to worry about it.
What has happened in Washington, they've lost confidence and an understanding about freedom and liberty.
That's secondary to everything that they do, and the argument, of course, is that we have to give up our civil liberties.
We need all this interrogation. We need this torture. We need all this because what good is it if you're not safe, how can you be free? You can't enjoy your freedom unless you're safe.
But of course, we know that once you start sacrificing your liberty for the so-called safety that government is supposed to provide, you end up, of course, with neither.
with Neither. And I think the point is well made when it is said that when President Bush
or Olin Bauman comes out and he says, my main job is to make you safe. Well, is the main
job of a policeman to make you safe in your home? Well, can you imagine how many policemen
would be to make you safe in your home? I thought we were safe with the Second Amendment
is the way we were supposed to meet ourselves.
But too often we've made these sacrifices and the people are willing to go along with it.
If there's a major crisis overseas with another major bombing or a lot of Americans being killed,
there will be a much greater eagerness to even sacrifice more of our liberties.
The issue is liberty, and the two issues that I have picked to concentrate on in relationship to protection of liberty has been the monetary system because it is so key in everything that we do.
It was interesting when I first read that, why is money so important? Well, it's one half of every transaction you have.
So therefore, the issue of money and the value of your money and what they do is involved in every single thing that we do.
And the other interest I've had is in foreign policy, and I have to admit that probably in the early 70s, although I did have some personal experiences about what it was like for our government to be involved, remembering World War II, remembering Korea War, some of my teachers going off and being killed, and then Vietnam and being in the military for five years in the middle of the 1960s, and thinking about it, but it wasn't the top interest
issue on my mind but as time has gone on it is interconnected with the monetary system as well as the issue of liberty and of course you can't talk about the money issue and the issue of liberty or the foreign policy without considering the foreign policy because the more we're engaged overseas the bigger mess we get ourselves into and I have a little note paper that I
at home and the one quote on there is, war is the health of the state. And I believe that so
sincerely that our civil liberties are undermined. One time during the presidential's debate, Tim
Russert came in and he made the initial announcement, well this debate is going to be on domestic
Economic Issues because last time you guys talked about foreign policy and I
even you know when I had my first chance I made a I hope a polite objection to
this by saying that you can't separate the two how how can you believe that
your foreign policy doesn't have a lot to do with your domestic economic policy
because it runs up debt and all the problems that you have so it's all
All intertwined but it should be narrowed down mostly significantly to the issue of liberty.
I think our country was the greatest and we had the greatest amount of wealth and abundance
of any other country because we were the freest nation.
But that freedom is on the ropes and I think a growing number of American people are agreeing
with us because they see what's happening and we have a great opportunity.
I see a grand coalition building. They will not ever be in agreement on all our views,
but if we respectfully present our case for civil liberties and the anti-war position,
I really am convinced that we will soften the market for them accepting our economic
views, because their economic views are non-viable. It's not so much that they will think, oh
Yeah, this is really important and that's what we must do and we accept their argument
that the greatest prosperity and the greatest amount of wealth and the best way to take
care of the poor and the middle class is through free markets.
But it's the failure of their system that will make them think differently.
So we have this tremendous opportunity to bring this coalition together and be available
to help rebuild.
And this is what I think is happening, and as I mentioned about the Tea Party, not reflected
in that, but we have to obviously influence them.
I am under the belief that 100 years ago or so, for some reason, our intellectual community
got divided on the ideas of liberty, and I don't think the founders were divided.
I think they understood that if you had personal liberty, it meant freedom of speech and your
civil liberties, and that you aren't going to have an income tax, and that the government
was supposed to run everything.
But all of a sudden, in the beginning of the 20th century, it became more understood that
freedom is divided in half.
You have economic freedom over here, and you have personal liberties over here, and everybody
is supposed to join in and make the world safe for democracy.
And that's where we've been stuck. And we've got to put it back together again. I think
there should be a rallying cry for financial reasons and moral reasons and constitutional
reasons for us to change the foreign policy. And we will know that we're making progress
then on that when we see the troops coming home from all over the world.
And on personal liberties, we get a lot of good lip service from the conservatives.
Yes, we want individual liberty, we're for this, except when it comes to what you put
in your mouth and what you smoke and what else you do and what you say and what political
correctness is and all these things.
And maybe we can get them to come around and knowing what real liberty is all about.
And put personal liberty in context of the property.
If you only had one thing to protect, you don't need ten amendments. Wouldn't property
protect it? If nobody could take your property, including the government, and you have property,
it would protect your First Amendment rights because it's your personal property. It's
your house, your home, your church, your newspaper. That's private property. So if you could just
get the conservatives to come over and say, oh, this is a property right for you to defend
and Individual Liberty, but it has to be put back together.
And it has to be started with the idea of where our rights come from and what is important.
One thing that annoys me to no end, that I hear constantly in Washington and you hear
it all the time, is hyphenated Americans.
I mean, why do we have to be hyphenated?
And when we make progress, there will not be hyphenated Americans.
There will be individuals, Americans, deserving equal rights for everyone.
Freedom actually is a rather new idea, if you look at all of history, thousands and
thousands of years, and yet we're about to give up on this grand experiment.
The grand experiment has lasted for a couple hundred years and is about to fade.
So this is a time that has come upon us to make our stand.
The Mises Institute has made their stand for a good many decades and they've had a great
deal of influence and I was impressed.
Lou, when we were at the University of Michigan, they started talking about Austrian economics
and all these things, so it is pervasive.
The Mises Institution and other libertarian think tanks and free market groups deserve
A lot of credit for the change and the mood of this country, so I congratulate you.
I thank you for coming today and I will be around for a little bit fighting for the cause
of liberty.
Thank you very much.