Ron Paul: I’d like to talk about monetary policy a bit. The dollar has been in the news,gold has been in the news, and a significant event has just recently transpired. It happened on November 2nd and to me it was a very significant event. That was the day the Indian central bank announced that it had purchased 200 tons of gold from the IMF. And that was more or less the tipping point on this recent surge in the gold price.
The reason I think this is a significant date is in some ways it is almost the opposite of what happened back on August 15th, 1971, That was a very special day in monetary history and I talk about that a whole lot. That is when the world announced that gold was officially demonetized, no currency would be linked to gold, the dollar would still be the reserve standard and everything would be okay. Instead what we got was the biggest bubble in the history of mankind, which is now being deflated.
So, to me the fact that the central bank of India has now purchased this gold at the same time the IMF is getting rid of the gold and the west is getting rid of the gold, means that there is a major shift in economic power; and that is from the west to the east. And this is no surprise. Jobs have gone to the east, productivity has gone to the east, savings have gone to the east. The west has become more indebted and it’s not just the United States, it’s Europe as well.
And I think this signals the time when gold will be re-monetized. I don’t think it’s ever been demonetized in the sense. I think gold has always been money, but they pretended it wasn’t money. In the 1960s they wanted to demonetize gold and by 1971 they claimed they officially did it. And even throughout these several decades they pretend that gold is not money. At the same time, economic laws still prevail. But this announcement I think will prove to be a very significant announcement.
On this very date Geithner, Security of the Treasury, is over in Singapore meeting in an economic conference, and he’s talking about the dollar. He says, “It is the official policy of the United States government to have a strong dollar policy,” which always fascinates me. The Federal Reserve is what is in charge of the dollar, and they can double the money supply. But then we have the Secretary of the Treasury… and this is not just this time, this has been this way over the years. The Secretary of the Treasury goes before the public and says, “It is the official policy of the United States to have a strong dollar”. At the same time, they’re chiding the Chinese for having a currency that’s too strong. Which means, we want a weaker dollar against the Chinese Yuan. So on and on it goes.
And I frequently get a question, which I think is an old fashioned question, but we still get it. They ask: “Do you think the United States is going to devalue?” Well, they’re constantly devaluing. We devalue our money on a constant basis. There was a time when devaluations were official and pronounced in the sense that on August 15 there was a devaluation. They took the price of gold from $35/ounce up to $38/ounce. It was an 8% devaluation, it was a big deal. But we constantly do it. Shortly thereafter, two years later they devalued another 10% and then they tipped the price of gold up to $42/ounce. But since that time, since they claimed the dollar and gold are not connected, we’ve had constant devaluation. If you look at gold at $1,100/ounce, you’re looking at about a 97% or 98% devaluation. So it’s a constant devaluation.
So here we have a government’s official announced policy is we have a strong dollar, at the same time the real policy is constantly devaluating the dollar. And, of course, for an economy to grow you ought to have relatively stable currency. People shouldn’t have something wildly fluctuating, and certainly you shouldn’t have a currency that can be created out of thin air.
And that’s where we are today. But my concern for many, many years has been the eventual consequence of what this will have on the dollar. We’ve seen a financial crisis build, we’ve seen a lot of liquidation of debt, we’ve seen a lot of purchasing of bad debt by our government and by the Federal Reserve. At the same time, it’s all done by the creation of new money out of thin air. We can do that just so long. You can defy economic laws for a while. But just like you can keep gold at $35/ounce and you can manipulate markets, eventually the economic laws will rule.
And I think this is what will happen – is we will continue to do this. Congress has no concern; they’re willing to pass a medical care program which is going to cost trillions of dollars and pretend it won’t cost anything. They’ll always be a cost and the pressure is going to be put on the dollar. The financial obligation we have to maintain our empire and our welfare state is just overwhelming. And they’re illiquid. I mean, if we look at Medicare and Medicaid, these programs are literally bankrupt. So everything is dependent on the willingness of the world and the people to put trust in the dollar, at the same time, regardless of what our Secretary of the Treasury says, we are embarking and continue to just print the money in an unlimited fashion and that means devaluation regardless of what they tell us.
To me that is very, very dangerous. If we want to preserve our freedoms in this country we will have to address the important subject of liberty and understanding that, and what rights are all about. But we also have to understand the issue of monetary policy. We need to know more about the Federal Reserve and that is why the success we’ve had with the transparency act and auditing the Fed is so beneficial. But it looks like right now if push comes to shove, the major journals now are working very hard to downplay our efforts and to belittle what we’re doing. But the momentum is on our side and we need this information out because eventually to preserve our freedoms in this country we will also have to understand money and have monetary policy reform.
Question: Dr. Paul, what is the significance of the IMF selling?
Ron Paul: That’s a very important question because it has a great deal of significance. If the IMF is giving up the gold, this means that they are weakened. They will have less clout in saying what the next reserve currency will be. If they wanted to have an international reserve currency they would at least have to pay a little bit respect for gold. But it also means that great strength is going from west to east. Those countries that are buying gold, like China and India and these other countries, are more likely going to be in the driver’s seats for setting up the next reserve standard. In the west, western central banks and the IMF, the gold is leaving. And this means that the economic power is shifting to the east and if history is of any value to us it means that the military power may shift as well.
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