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All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's antiwar radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our first guest on the show today is Dr. Ron Paul, my hero.
Represents Texas District 14 in the U.S. House of Representatives and is the new chairman of the, let's see if I can do this off the top of my head, House Financial Services Committee's Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy.
Welcome back to the show, Ron.
Thank you, Scott.
Good to be with you.
Very good to have you here and very good to see you with the gavel in your hand on C-SPAN.
That's a big change, huh?
Yeah, that's for sure.
Man, that's a big thrill watching that.
All right, so let's start with first things first here.
Obama says U.S. considering full range of options on Libya and CNN is reporting official U.S. military options for Libya being planned now.
So I guess there's a question as to whether they're going to try to go through the U.N. or not, but doesn't seem like there's a question as to whether the Obama administration is going to intervene militarily somehow in the uprising in Libya.
Dr.
Paul, what do you think?
Well, I can't say that I'm surprised.
I'm surprised they haven't done something sooner because that's their nature.
They think that no matter where there's a problem, we're supposed to send in troops and pick the next dictator.
And that's basically the problem with the Middle East.
There's been a lot of dictators over there.
Most of them have gotten support from us.
And even though Gaddafi hasn't gotten as much as others in a way, he's been sanctioned.
We have learned to invest in their country and make deals with them.
So we more or less have been, you know, types of partners with him.
But since he's on his way out, I think whether it's Egypt or Libya or wherever, our CIA, our State Department, and now maybe the military will be very much involved in maintaining, you know, our special control over so many of these countries.
It's funny, you know, in Egypt, it was so obvious that Mubarak's regime was backed by the United States, that the United States was why he was the dictator of Egypt for so long.
In Libya, we've only been, you know, sending military aid to Libya and so forth for the last five or seven years or something since Bush Jr. led him back in the fold there in 2003.
And so it's not so clear that he's an American-backed military dictator like we had in Egypt.
So apparently the Democrats or the White House, they think that they can get away with taking the side of the people against their own U.S.
-backed military dictator there in Libya.
Yeah, it is certainly more a mixed bag than it is in some of those other countries.
But I think overall, you know, the neoconservatives who tend to have a lot of influence on our governments, they always have the same goal, and that is to have influence.
In some places, they have more control.
I mean, look at Saudi Arabia.
It's been total control and support for dictatorship even before we even knew much about the term neoconservative.
That's been going on since World War II.
But Libya is not so clear-cut.
I think the goals are always the same.
And, you know, sometimes they're patient and they'll wait, and I think that this might be seen as an opportunity for them.
If they're talking about military, you know, this means that the military would be used not only for defending some innocent people, but I'm sure it will be used to prop up the next guy that's going to take over.
Well, you know, a lot of people are saying that the reason Libya is so important in this case is not just for, you know, the rights of the people that live in that country, but the precedent set if Egypt and then Libya are able to be overthrown by their own people, then Saudi Arabia could be next.
And that's the one that everybody seems to be worried about.
So, well, let me ask you, if the one group of people or another somehow successfully overthrow the government of Saudi Arabia, would we need to intervene there?
I mean, that's where the bulk of the oil supplies are and all that, right?
Well, I would never consider it a need.
I would consider that a detriment to us.
But there's a lot of others who will feel compelled to be involved.
I mean, it may be just to protect our naval bases, and they're not even principally in Saudi Arabia.
I mean, the whole Persian Gulf is, you know, quote, owned, close quote, by us.
I mean, it's our navy that stays there.
Can you imagine if another country had that much presence in the Gulf of Mexico, what we would think?
So, yes, I think if the government of Saudi Arabia was threatened, I would be very much involved.
But if you were in charge, when something like that happened, you wouldn't be involved at all?
No, and I'd be less involved before it even got started.
I mean, we would bring our navy home.
And there is this potential for disruption because it's not a good situation.
It's all artificial.
The people have been abused.
We've had dictatorships over there that we've propped up.
And so it's unstable.
And yet the people, you know, in a lot of ways, these uprisings are very, very healthy.
This means that the people, you know, are rebelling and they want some changes.
The real problem is, and the question is, is what's going to come of this?
I mean, we love to see the overthrow of Mubarak, but what is going to come of it?
You know, the military is in charge.
The guy that runs the military was a good friend of Mubarak, and he's an authoritarian.
So they essentially have martial law there, and nobody knows what the consequences will be.
But I think we should stay out of that.
I think they should settle their own problems.
But if we'd have been out of there 40 years ago, I think there'd be more stability right now.
But the instability comes from the fact that we have been propping up people who have not been fully endorsed by the people.
Well, now, a lot has been made about the rising food prices around the world.
And in many cases, these North African and Middle Eastern countries have extremely poor populations who live, you know, pretty much right at the edge, a few dollars a day, kind of anyway.
And then, apparently, the price of food is getting so much that that's really behind a lot of this anti-government sentiment in these protests around the region.
And I've heard it said, but I'm not sure I could prove it, that America's monetary policy has something to do with the price of food in North Africa.
Could you make that connection?
Oh, yeah.
I think so, because we've been allowed to export our inflation.
We print up the money.
It's the reserve currency of the world.
We don't have to absorb all that new money.
It goes overseas.
I think countries like even China, especially since they take so many of our dollars and they send us goods, that they're going to have an inflationary bubble.
But all the world is going to be inflated.
The prices aren't set by individual states.
And so food prices are going up, not because of food shortages in places that may be true to a degree, but they're going up because of the basement of the currency.
And in many ways, you can say central banking, ours in particular and others, cause these problems.
And people are rebelling because prices are going up.
That's essentially what the problem here in this country is.
The debt is overwhelming and we can't afford the things that we own, the things that we want.
There's not enough money to go around.
And so they're printing like crazy, but it's still not satisfying the people.
In the past, we would tolerate the unions and they'd demand wages that get wages way over the market value.
And since we were so wealthy, it was OK.
But now the price of labor is so high that we can't afford it any longer.
And the people who are paying it, the Tea Party type people, they're rebelling.
So in many ways, the disruption that we're starting to see in this country is related to central banking.
And I don't think we can ignore the central banking.
But let me tell you, Bernanke's coming to the committee next week, and I may well bring this up, but he will deny wholeheartedly that the central bank has nothing to do with rising prices of anything.
You know, I don't know whether he's just in denial or whether he has to say those things to try to protect the central bank.
But he will not accept the notion that central banks are responsible for even contributing significantly to these uprisings.
Well, wise men used to always say up until and including this week, I think, that all empires eventually fall and usually for financial reasons.
And that's really what we're talking about with all these uprisings in the Middle East.
These are almost entirely against American-backed dictators there, you know, American protectorates there.
And there you have it.
You inflate to prop up your empire, and that ends up being the cause of its disillusion.
That's right.
And, you know, they're going to say now that the oil prices are going to go up, the Federal Reserve will come back and say, well, it's the disruption over there.
It's the rebellion that's causing the price of oil to go up.
That's where the inflation is coming from.
In the 70s, when we had inflation, you know, 15, 20 percent, that's when they put an oil embargo on.
And the oil was, you know, a couple of bucks a barrel, and it soars up four or five times as much.
So it was always the Arabs that caused the inflation.
But it was the fact that there had already been a lot of printed money circulated and the dollar was buying less for other commodities.
And it was the embargo, you know, as part of it.
But it was also the inflation and the debasement of the currency.
This is the same way again.
It is, you know, the disruption over there and the uncertainty about the leaders of these countries.
That's the precipitating thing.
But it's also the fact that people want to get more for their dollar.
And this is what the price of gold has been telling us, that, you know, the value of the dollar is way down and prices are going to go up and they're going to go up in food commodities and energy.
But believe me, they will use this as as an excuse for the high prices.
And they will be there'll be a total denial that will never admit having to do with the fact that we print money like crazy and double the money supply in the last couple of years.
Well, now, to be realistic, none of us have too high hopes that from your new position as chair of that subcommittee, you'd be able to actually repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and get rid of this institution.
But I wonder if you think that it's possible, if not likely, that you actually could push through some legislation to legalize competing currencies, as you so often talk about.
I don't think yet.
I don't think they're going to buy into that.
Matter of fact, you know, last year we had a lot of co-sponsors on on the transparency, the Fed, the audit, and that's still going to be popular.
And we got token, you know, audits of the Fed, and we are getting a little bit more information.
But we've tested that among other members, and they seem to be very, very vague on having any idea what we're talking about.
So I don't think it's going to happen.
But that doesn't stop me from talking about it, because, you know, whether it's legalized or not, there will always be competing currencies.
You know, the black market always exists when the economy breaks down, and it happened in the Soviet system, and it happens to some degree here already, and it's happened around the world.
And I just want to talk about it, because if we have total breakdown and people reject and say, hell, you know, those guys are right.
The dollar is collapsing.
Prices are too high.
What are we going to do?
Then that is when we have to start saying, well, what we ought to do is obey the law and have alternative currencies.
And if you don't want to close down the other system entirely, just allow us to use silver and gold as legal tenders, like that is still the law of the land.
We're supposed to be doing that.
All right.
Well, I know you're out of time, and I'll let you go, Dr. Paul, but I really appreciate all your efforts, all your great interviews on TV, and all your great speeches you give on the House floor, all the great YouTubes that these things provide us, and all your efforts on behalf of Liberty.
Thank you, Scott, and keep up the good work.
And if I can just say one last thing on behalf of Civil Liberties, I'd like to ask you to try to reintroduce that American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007.
That was my very favorite.
Okay.
We'll certainly be able to do that.
All right.
Excellent.
Thank you, sir.
Appreciate it.
Okay.
All right, everybody.
That's my hero.
Dr. Ron Paul represents District 14 on Texas Gulf Coast in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he writes articles, gives speeches, and votes no.
