Ron Paul: 'The Fed is saying that we have lost control'

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Published time: September 14, 2012 19:43
Edited time: September 14, 2012 23:43

Republican candidate Ron Paul waves to supporters at the Tampa Bay Times Forum in Tampa, Florida. (AFP Photo / Brendan Smialowski)

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Banking, Economy, USA

The US Federal Reserve announced Thursday that they’ll be implementing a third-round of quantitative easing in an attempt to salvage the faltering economy. Right on cue, one of the Fed’s biggest critics readily objected.

Reacting to the announcement to Bloomberg News, presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said he expected that the Fed would reveal plans for more quantitative easing, or QE3, but opposed it nonetheless.

“It should not surprise anybody, but it is still astounding. To me, it is so astounding that it does not collapse the markets,” the congressman told Bloomberg.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke confirmed after this week’s Federal Open Market Committee that the US central bank will begin spending $40 billion a month on bond purchases in an effort to kick-start the economy. Rep. Paul, who has long called for an audit of the Fed, suggested that Mr. Bernanke’s plan may in fact do little if any to aid America’s financial woes.

“I think the country should have panicked over what the Fed is saying that we have lost control and the only thing we have left is massively creating new money out of thin air, which has not worked before, and is not going to work this time,” Rep. Paul said.

Elsewhere in the interview, the congressman claimed that the inner workings of the Fed could be at fault for any eventually economic catastrophe. “We have a rigged economy through central economic planning by central banking. The system is failing, it was doomed to fail and we have to wake up to that fact,” he said.

In terms of a solution, the congressmen renewed his call for an audit of the bank, but said that there are other ways that its worrisome actions could be handled by the government in due time.

“Short of getting rid of the Fed, which is not going to come and I wouldn’t do that overnight anyway, I would say that Congress has the authority to say, do not buy debt. Do not buy any debt. The Congress can yell and scream and pander to the people. They can say the deficits are terrible and terrible. But nobody wants to cut overseas spending or food stamps for the poor. They say, ‘we cannot do it without the Fed. The Fed has to buy this debt.’ That is a moral hazard for the politician,” Rep. Paul said.

“If the Fed couldn’t buy the debt, and interest rates would rise all of the sudden the burden would be on the Congress to get their house in order to restore confidence. Even that would panic a lot of people because live within your means? We do not like that. We like this idea that we can give people anything they want for free, so we can get reelected. Well, all of this is coming to an end.”

Although Rep. Paul fell short of securing the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidency, he has yet to forfeit his campaign to challenge incumbent President Barack Obama this November.

Comments (8)

ImaJWalker 16.09.2012 12:10

bobby (unregistered) wrote in #7
when money gets tight at my house i hve to pull back on helping others until i have the extra money. why cant we pull back the help we give to other countries and help ourselves so later we can help others
Becaus e Bobby...Bush, Obama and Romney are buddies with the UN...you know.. forming a One World Government. It's not JUST about the USA anymore. The World Government has to contribute to the 'world' now. It wouldn't be fair if you didn't share your tax dollars with other world dictators...now would it?
Get angry already... don't feed the corporations. The USA is doomed already and has been. They just aren't telling you.Americans think as long as they can 'wake up', buy their morning Starbucks and read the Washington Post.. it will all be good again by the next morning.

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bobby (unregistered) 15.09.2012 16:46

when money gets tight at my house i hve to pull back on helping others until i have the extra money. why cant we pull back the help we give to other countries and help ourselves so later we can help others

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A Window (unregistered) 15.09.2012 15:59

Ben Bernaki and several others signed a statement of how they were against QE (electronically print money and inflate currency while driving up cost of goods and services while lowering labor income) - the QE3. Then, they approved QE3 (to infinity and beyond). The takeaway:: this puts the Fed further ahead of taking more real estate by leaving the middle class and the vast bulk of the population scraping for work. You have no say in this decision over the money which represents the production of value in the economy while the Fed is extracting more of that value from the people and transferring it to the top 0.03 percent (ie. extreme wealthy).
   This is not a program to increase productivity; contrary - gasoline, food, housing go up in price (inflation) while cost of living goes up but real income goes down. Debt and deficit:: the US government, underwritten by the output of goods and services increases to the benefit of finance and banking - a leaching effect. Debt is already of 100% of GNP or total output of the US economy per year. Notice, there is no solution to increasing the GNP, only extracting from it.
The 22 to 23 TRILLION dollars moved from the US meanwhile is not doing anything to improve the GNP where it counts:: the United States. The unelected, unaccounted Federal Reserve Bank cartel of the banking business is living up to Thomas Jefferson's warning.
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
   And, later F. Hayek's warnings in "The Road to Serfdom".

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