Ron Paul: Federal government ‘one giant toxic asset’
Published: September 14, 2009
Updated 4 days ago
The US economy has not really recovered from last year’s financial crisis, and the policies of the Federal Reserve, the US’s central bank, are ensuring that the suffering will continue much longer than necessary, US House Rep. Ron Paul told CNN on Monday.
“They claim there’s a recovery but the recovery ought to be measured by the people working. True unemployment is now 16 percent, and the people who lost money have not regained the money. The people who lost houses have not gotten their houses back. There is no recovery,” said Paul.
The official unemployment rate in August was 9.7 percent, but Paul was referring to the broader unemployment measure, known as “U-6,” which measures not only the number of people looking for work but also those people who have given up looking for work. The official unemployment measure does not include people who have stopped looking for work.
In August, the broader U-6 unemployment rate was a stunning 16.8 percent, two-and-a-half percentage points higher than it was in the 1982 recession, which had been the worst recession since the Great Depression.
“There is no recovery, all there is is a lot of fudging,” Paul told CNN’s Kieran Chetly.
Paul was on CNN promoting his new book, End the Fed, in which he argues that the federal government’s bailout of Wall Street has indebted it to the point that the government itself is now “one giant toxic asset.”
Chetly asked Paul about the assertion by many prominent economists — including Nobel-winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman — that say the Federal Reserve rescued the global economy from another Great Depression last year.
“I think the Fed has done a wonderful job for Wall Street, but … the average guy lost a lot of money. They [the Fed] come in with more credit, and pump it up and bail out all the big guys getting all these bonuses for all these individuals who should have failed — and they claim there’s a recovery.”
Added Paul: “We need enforcement of contract law … [so] that when you do something dumb, you ought to go bankrupt. We shouldn’t protect these people.
“I don’t think we seem to be recovering,” he continued. “There are more people unemployed all the time. … We’re doing everything wrong, we’re doing what we did in the Depression, we’re doing what the Japanese did in the 1990s, which is propping up bad investment.
“When you prop up bad debt and prop up these prices … it prolongs the agony. I see no good outcome from the policies that we have.”
This video is from CNN’s American Morning, broadcast Sept. 14, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
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I agree with Ron Paul. The fat cat fuckwads on Wall Street are making out like bandits, because they are bandits. They are getting gigantic bonuses from the bailout money while the rest of us go down the drain. Why do we let them get away with it?
The problem with the bailouts was more nuanced than that. Paul has no problem with Fat Cats, at all. His only problem was that we bailed out the banks. I agree that bailing out the banks was problematic.. but that has 2 fronts…
1) the Fat Cats would not have lost much when the banks collapsed, they had already looted millions upon millions each..
2) the collapse of those banks would have hurt the general public a LOT.
I’m still torn on the public getting bitch slapped. We’re seeing that bailing them out isn’t also coming with swift and hard reforms, if the public would have gotten fucked (directly, not through this long term debt that they don’t get to see directly in their lives), they might be making more demands for reform and oversight of Wall Street.
The Fat Cats making money on this is just insult to injury, but most people have no concept of the injury, they are reacting to the insult.
Just make sure you fully understand Paul’s position. He’s very much pro-corporate and anti-regulation. That combination creates more Fat Cats over the short term, then some really FAT cats in the long haul.. they are fat because they take all your food.. Bad policy, if you ask me; Paul supports such a system.
Okay, great. But if the problem is that the jobs are gone, why not start by repealing the tax breaks that your lovely corporations got you guys to pass for shipping those jobs overseas, along with the factories we USED to work in? Oh, that’s right, you don’t BELIEVE in gov’t oversight, do you? You just believe in that stupid Ayn Rand BS about how business should be able to police itself. It’s never been able to do so before, why should it do so now?
You talk a good game out of one side of your mouth, and in principle, I agree with lots of your statements, but this idea that gov’t is the problem is a holdover from the Ronnie Reagan days, and that is where the REAL problem came from. Gov’t is the ONLY thing that can keep corporations anywhere NEAR honest, the “free market” is just another pair of words for open season on people.
Sorry, but it’s the GD Libertarians philosophy that has put us where we are now. I’m sure that you were all for the Gramm repeal of Glass-Steagal, weren’t you? Of course, it’s removal of gov’t “intrusion” into business. And if there is one thing we can’t have, it’s gov’t keeping those whose goal is the accumulation of great wealth playing fairly and honestly. That is communism, or fascism, or socialism, or whatever “ism” you can scare people with today.
Sorry, Sir, but I look at people’s actions, and yours are NOT those of someone who really has the best interests of the majority of people at heart. Liberty doesn’t always mean unfettered. It has to come with RESPONSIBILITY, something that you republicans just don’t want to have anything to do with, and the Libertarians even less so. You would have us all back in the 1880’s, wearing guns at our hips and using shoot outs to solve our differences. You talk a good game, but actions speak MUCH louder than words. And I just don’t see you DOING anything to fix the damage that your party has done over the last 30 years.
Very, very well stated.
Ron Paul, at best, is the Conservatives’ Ralph Nader. At worst, he would be a disaster as President…just like Nader would have been. For 30 years, we’ve been living with the every increasing consequences of the “government is the problem” philosophy. We are, without question, worse off as a country for it.
Republicans don’t enter into elected offices in an effort to make Government work for the country’s citizens. They run on and embrace a mindset to destroy government and bend to the will of corporations and businesses. And the American Dream has evolved into a nightmare as a result.
The Man that SHOULD have been president.
Except, he wants to let corporations make all the rules while removing the public’s ability to block that.
He’s got a lot of good points, but some of his thinking on certain topics seems clouded, and misguided. He’s of the mind that “markets” will fix their own problems, but the failing is to see that citizens get tossed around like rag dolls while they do it. People running companies aren’t concerned with the big picture, only their ability to take in a bigger piece of the pie “today”.. Government sets boundaries that are designed for long term stability.
Now, if you want to have a discussion with regard to if our current Government works or not, that’s a different matter. If you want to say “government is bad in all cases”, like Paul does, that’s something different (and clearly not true).
The official “unemployment” number does not measure unemployment. It simply measures people ELIGIBLE for unemployment benefits. Clearly, the true unemployment figure is higher, probably much higher, than the federal gov’t will ever report.
Its 21 percent
http://www.shadowstats.com
Preach on brother!
Talk about a fucked comment section for a web site. I see your counter is way off RAW. At the bottom of the article there’s a claim only “2″ comments were made. Seemed to be a bunch more than that when I scrolled down the comment page.
Anyway, to Ron Paul—You sure seem to enjoy collecting that government pay check. What would happen if the government just up and went away? Into whose ear would you then be able to slide your ignorant bullshit?
I’m don’t agree with all of Ron Paul’s positions, but I give him props for NOT VOTING for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and speaking out during the presidential campaign about the United States’ aggressive militarism. He rightly understands that we blow trillions of dollars maintaining an empire of over 700 military bases worldwide, all for the purpose of projecting US power where it is not wanted or needed. He also accepts that you can’t legislate morality by criminalizing drug use and prostitution or impose your views on “marriage” by banning gays from marrying. I’m not sure about his stance on The Fed as there were many bank panics and economic crises before The Fed was created.
the Fed helps cause those panics. They did it in 1930, as well (after the Fed was well established).
And you prevent the bubbles and bursts by regulating those markets that are showing bubbles, but that requires you to pay attention, and understand those systems. When you have Representatives that want the 10 commandments displayed on Federal property, but can’t recite even ONE of them to you, clearly you have some pretty ignorant Representatives. You don’t need the Fed to keep stability, you need smart leaders in Government.
in fact, it was the FDIC that came after the 1930 depression that has kept banking fairly stable; the Government, again, put in public protections against private corruptibility.. and _that_ has helped the public.
Democratic Governments are designed purely to impose the public will. They are the vehicle by which laws are made, and the same principle applies to regulations that keep general social stability financially. They are a natural evolution of man.. caves, clans (with leaders), societies.
The next step is to leverage our technology (for people, not profits) and abolish money. Communism, pure ownership of all resources and means of production by everyone in the society, is the next evolutionary step. Until everyone has access to resources (and are SMART about how they use them), we can not truly be free people. Today we’re slaves to those that came before because they took ownership of everything and we can’t live our lives without doing their bidding so they might offer us some of that which they claimed for themselves. Those that come tomorrow can’t be free if they can’t feed and clothe and shelter themselves without doing the bidding of someone else. The future can not be free if the present keeps pretending like they have some right to own nature and the planet for themselves.
http://www.thevenusproject.com
The Federal Reserve was created in 1913. Prior to that there were bank panics and or depressions in 1819, 1832, 1836, 1837, 1837-1843 (depression), 1857, 1869-1871 (depression), 1873 (bank panic), 1873-1879 (depression), 1893, 1901 & 1907. The US has a pretty volatile economic history.
“The FDIC was created in 1933 in response to the thousands of bank failures that occurred in the 1920s and early 1930s”
http://www.fdic.gov/about/history/index.html
The Federal Reserve Bank (the privately owned central bank that exists in violation of the Constitution) was around in 1913 as you noted. And it was there bringing about the Great Depression in cahoots with J.P. Morgan (who bought up a lot of banks back then, just like during this “melt down” which the Fed is making a killing on).
Government mandates, regulation, and oversight are what bring stability, not “free markets”.
whoopie! the venus project, a control freak’s panopticon of socialist paradise in a utopian guise. yes, ’cause “freedom” means being locked in an island designed by a bubble-loving idiots who delude their designs are the best and most utilitarian, where the rest of us give up all control to a bunch of technicians who are the only one capable of thinking the most sustainable design for us.
As with all things, anti-imperialist “progressives,” if there are any on you left since lord oBUSHma got in, we disagree with proposed solutions.
Until some of you can grasp the concept that the ENEMY of FREE Humanity is Collectivist-Statism, nothing will change. How are you to have your Venus Prj IF you do NOT live in a nation that ensures you can pursue such? Monetary system is of the Banksters design, of course. And frankly, while a proponent of Austrian School of REAL FREEMARKET economics, NOT U of Chicago Corporatist-Fascist Milton Friedman bullshit, I do tend to agree, in the future, while humans will forever have a medium of exchange, the fundamental concept of “need” for money must be addressed. But, frankly what you want cannot happen, UNLESS we can all have an over-unity device at home, where cost of energy becomes ZERO, products can by designed from atom-up at anyone’s home via nanobots, assuming the cloud computing do go the way of Crichton’s novel Prey, where what Kurzweil wants will be a DOOMED reality for humans, unless measures are secured, based on what Bill Joy has proposed.
You do NOT get to dictate to sovereign what is BEST for them, in a supposed free society. Proponents of Venus Proj and Peter Joseph, while well meaning are utterly clueless as to the entire notion of voluntary associations, FREEDOM, origins of, and natural rights. In the end, what you want IS socialism, no matter how benign or efficient you think you ought to be. Frankly your best model, is Wall-E. The fatso, non-thinking, all-serviced, sheeple in the Pixar flick is what you’ll get, when only a FEW technicians are the only ones who know how to design and operate the core systems of your Venus colony.
In fact, the very notion of giving up such sovereignty to a few unaccountable technocrats is no different than the NWO Banksters. How after realizing 9/11 is an inside job, FED is PRIVATE, and NWO banksters CREATED, FUNDED BOTH “fascism” AND “communism,” that you’d be led to believe a control freak’s wetdream panopticon, aka, the Venus Proj. is the ideal solution, is beyond me.
As for the rest of you feckless false L.vs.R. Hegelian Dialectically stuck political paradigm, at this point, you are all revealing yourselves to be functionally retarded hacks. NONE of you READ HR3200, you have NO idea that it IS actually written by BigPharma, nor do you want to accept the REALITY that oBUSHma SOLD US ALL OUT by making the $150 MILLION deal with BigPharma in which all the CONgressional shenanigans of back and forth of will there be public option or not is a charade to make you delude that in fact there is a debate, when there aren’t and the final version WILL favor BigPharma, not us. YOu have NO idea that 99% of bills are written by lobbyists and thinktanks. you have NO idea the difference b/w what is actually written in the legalese vs. how it is carried out in reality, nor WHAT Fed.Res. actually does or how that matters to utterly bankrupt govt, NONE of “trusts” in gvt programs are actually funded, yet you’re all geniuses. Frankly, at this point, if you have NOT woken to all of this con, it is hopeless. Yet you LOVE ridiculing a man who has proven to the champion of the Constitution for over 30yrs w/records to back it up.
Hell, most of you are fine and dandy with the fact that oBUSHma has EXPANDED ALL of W’s policies of warcrimes, illegal spying, murder, bombing of civilians, and all domestic Constitutional violations. Frankly, the number of moronic idiotic, detached from reality comments I see some of these idiots make against the doctor, is getting sad, and pathetic. It’s like the entire “Left” is stuck in an abusive relationship, since oBUSHma got in. Yes, he beats you, spy on you, detain you without habeas corpus, secretly & indefinitely, carry on another Constitutionally UNDECLARED war against another sovereign nation, and tortures you, steal 24 TRILLION dollars of OUR WEALTH FOR the Wall St. banksters in less than 7 months, promise you healthcare, when he’s not even supposed to be crafting a bill, one regardless IS written by and for the sole interest of the Mil.Ind.Complex, just as ALL other bills brought forth in Congress are with the exception of Ron Paul, Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders’ , ALL because he LOVES you, right?
Delusional traitors. Be happy. Ignorance is bliss. I’ll bet you cannot wait to get “free healthcare” at the FEMA camps, ooh those gardasil and H1N1 untested flu vaccines, like the ones that Baxter was CAUGHT shipping avian flu laced vaccines. Oh they’re so good for you.
There are a few true public servants out there sounding the alarm, and the best you can come up with is “paul-tard.” Keep up the driveling, on a internet forum while you sit delusionally unaccountable and ignorant at the comfort of your homes. Those of us who are truly informed, frankly, don’t give a frakk what you morons think; we’ve done our best during the Bush regime and leading up to oBOMBa’s reign what was really going on. Even after all that, you still want to keep taking the blue pill? You’re all lost causes and deserve what you get. Go ahead, diatribe on, thinking you’re the smartest frakkers in the universe, as if what you say here will change reality. Kinda like you don’t like guns, but love the idea of taser-happy enforcers doing the dirty deeds for you, eh? Afterall, isn’t “let someone else do it while I take the moral high ground, in an environment made possible by socialist, collectivist, statist, tax-leeching lemming,” the fake-ass “liberal-progressive” things to do?
Keep loving the ‘ignorance is bliss.’ I’m sure the world will be the way you want it to be.
Ventura Sheehan Perot Paul Nader McKinney Kucinich Kaptur Gravel Gonzalez Clemente Choate Carter Baldwin Anderson
Ron Paul is a nihilist. He believes there should be no government at all, that everybody in America should be a survivalist, like isolated monkeys in isolated trees.
E Pluribus Unum means something, remember? Our nation is stronger and healthier when we engage in organized, collective activities for the good of all our citizens. Government is supposed to promote the general welfare, remember?
No, you don’t remember.
….and paul was “hawking” his own book…..I guess he used “public” roads, or airports to get to his “signings, plus health care they “we” afford “him.” And thanks to the “commons” he gets to read his book by “light” and flush his turds with “water”, furnished by the “commons.”
And the dribble he spews is one gigantic pain in everyone’s rear end…GO AWAY!!!
And Ru Paul is one giant toxic blithering money-worshiping economic Darwinist racist cock sucker. Fuck you, and everything you really stand for you two faced lying old bastard.
Like someone said before, Ron Paul needs to live in Somalia- the Libertarian’s paradise. Pretty much no government at all, just anarchy. He just needs to have his roving band of brigands be bigger and more powerful than the others and he might do all right. He could even buy himself a speed boat- it’s not too late to turn pirate.
Ron Paul is one stupid, ignorant, teabagger, possibly a bigger train wreck than the Repudlickers. Just another Corporate Christianist waiting for his chance to ruin Amerika for his evil God.
You would think folks would grasp that anyone with R-TX behind their political name would make them think Bush R-TX …
Think about what he has to tell those who elect him in Texas, the state that wants to withdraw from the United States, that has more prisoners in prisons than any other state, and the fewest insured.
“Trust me” is the government motto there.