From the Esteemed Ron Paul

This is old news to most. The Honorable Mr. Paul from Texas has a excellent commentary out concerning our banking and monetary systems. These bullet points are taken from that article.

Particular things to remember:

• If one endorses small government and maximum liberty, one must support commodity money.
• One of the strongest restraints against unnecessary war is a gold standard.
• Deficit financing by government is severely restricted by sound money.
• The harmful effects of the business cycle are virtually eliminated with an honest gold standard.
• Saving and thrift are encouraged by a gold standard; and discouraged by paper money.
• Price inflation, with generally rising price levels, is characteristic of paper money. Reports that the consumer price index and the producer price index are rising are distractions: the real cause of inflation is the Fed’s creation of new money.
• Interest rate manipulation by central bank helps the rich, the banks, the government, and the politicians.
• Paper money permits the regressive inflation tax to be passed off on the poor and the middle class.
• Speculative financial bubbles are characteristic of paper money – not gold.
• Paper money encourages economic and political chaos, which subsequently causes a search for scapegoats rather than blaming the central bank.
• Dangerous protectionist measures frequently are implemented to compensate for the dislocations caused by fiat money.
• Paper money, inflation, and the conditions they create contribute to the problems of illegal immigration.
• The value of gold is remarkably stable.
• The dollar price of gold reflects dollar depreciation.
• Holding gold helps preserve and store wealth, but technically gold is not a true investment.
• Since 2001 the dollar has been devalued by 60%.
• In 1934 FDR devalued the dollar by 41%.
• In 1971 Nixon devalued the dollar by 7.9%.
• In 1973 Nixon devalued the dollar by 10%.

The good congressman makes some points of debatable economic quality, however, his basic premise that financial restraint equals governmental restraint is sound.

For instance, gold’s ability to protect against “harmful effects of the business cycle” is highly debatable. I disagree for a number of reasons based in economic theory. What a sound money system does do is ensure that the business cycle fluctuations are due to market conditions not fluctuations in the money supply.

Getting our politicians out of the banking business is a sound decision, politically, financially and morally.