Is Ron Paul the only one who understands about the economy/monetary policy?

The majority of the sheep out there have no idea about the economy, so they are voting for people who have no clue about the economy.

Ron Paul is the only candidate running who has a CLUE about our economic policies.

He's been predicting this economic downfall for years. He's a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee. He got involved in politics when Nixon took us off the gold statndard back in 1971. He knew that when we went off the gold standard it would only be a matter of time before the Federal Reserve caused another Great Depression. And now it's happening.

In the words of Ron Paul:

Recently I had the opportunity to question Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke when he appeared before the congressional Joint Economic committee. The topic that morning was the state of the American economy, and many of my colleagues raised questions about how the Fed might better "regulate" things to ease fears of an economic downturn. The tenor of my colleagues' questions suggested that Mr. Bernanke's job is nothing less than to run the U.S. economy, like some kind of Soviet central planner.

Certainly it’s true that Mr. Bernanke can drastically affect the economy at the drop of a hat, simply by making decisions about the money supply and interest rates. But why do members of Congress assume this is good? Why do we accept without objection that a small group of people on the Federal Reserve Board wields so much power over our economic well-being? Is centralized, monopoly control over our money even compatible with a supposedly free-market economy?

Few Americans give much thought to the Federal Reserve System or monetary policy in general. But even as they strive to earn a living, and hopefully save or invest for the future, Congress and the Federal Reserve Bank are working insidiously against them. Day by day, every dollar you have is being devalued.

The greatest threat facing America today is not terrorism, or foreign economic competition, or illegal immigration. The greatest threat facing America today is the disastrous fiscal policies of our own government, marked by shameless deficit spending and Federal Reserve currency devaluation. It is this one-two punch – Congress spending more than it can tax or borrow, and the Fed printing money to make up the difference – that threatens to impoverish us by further destroying the value of our dollars.

The Fed’s inflationary policies hurt older people the most. Older people generally rely on fixed incomes from pensions and Social Security, along with their savings. Inflation destroys the buying power of their fixed incomes, while low interest rates reduce any income from savings. So while Fed policies encourage younger people to overborrow because interest rates are so low, they also punish thrifty older people who saved for retirement.

The financial press sometimes criticizes Federal Reserve policy, but the validity of the fiat system itself is never challenged. Both political parties want the Fed to print more money, either to support social spending or military adventurism. Politicians want the printing presses to run faster and create more credit, so that the economy will be healed like magic – or so they believe.

Fiat dollars allow us to live beyond our means, but only for so long. History shows that when the destruction of monetary value becomes rampant, nearly everyone suffers and the economic and political structure becomes unstable. Spendthrift politicians may love a system that generates more and more money for their special interest projects, but the rest of us have good reason to be concerned about our monetary system and the future value of our dollars.

Ron Paul - April 10th, 2007

Ron Paul has been saying this for decades. Allowing the Federal Reserve to control interest rates (instead of the market itself), and having a dollar backed by NOTHING, by definition causes inflation.

Inflation is a TAX on the middle class and the poor. Low interest rates helps the people at the top of the "money pyramid" at the expense of the people at the bottom. Imagine how it would be to save all your life for retirement, and suddenly, in less than 5 years, the value of your savings is 1/2 of what it used to be.

AL FIAT MONEY SYSTEMS FAIL. Every one, throughout history.

More info...

Here's Ron Paul schooling Bernanke just last month...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gldETRlhi...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul53.h...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/ho...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul436....

And personally, I think he would make a great president. He's right about every REAL issue affecting Americans today...

The war.

The economy.

Abolishing the income tax along with the Fed.

Our rights and freedoms being stolen.

Globalization and the upcoming North American Union.

The fact that we ignore our Constitution more and more every day.

And the big one...

He CANNOT be bought. All the other CFR shills running have been bought and sold many times over. Wake up America!

Sorry - inflationairy cycles existed before the Fed. And even though the Fed was in place, your beloved gold standard existed at the beginning of the Great Depression - indeed the inflexibility of our money supply was a cause of the depths to which we fell

The argument for gold backed currency is mindless

1. Where do we get the gold - in order to "back" our dollar with gold we would have to either substantially lower its value, substantially reduce the money supply or just acquire a lot of gold out of nowhere. The first two would be disastrous, the third is the magical art of alchemy that has eluded mankind for centuries - I know you guys think Paul is clever but that clever?

2. The price of gold is just as arbitrary as the value of our dollar. Gold has very little intrinsic value. Why do you people believe that putting our currency in the hands of South African and Australian mining companies and global commodity traders would be more beneficial than in the hands of the Fed?

3. The government does not need permission from the Fed to borrow - congress gives this.

4. When we were on the gold standard before so was most of the rest of the world. Now they are not and have no intention of returning to it. This means the balances that were in play before would be lacking today. The price of gold has more than doubled against most currencies in the past 15 years. If the US had "backed" its money with gold for this period we would now be only half as competetive with the rest of the world as a result.

Paul does not understand the economy/monetary policy. He places most of his economic arguments on the Austrian School teachings, yet ignores the very fundamentals of that group of economists

1. That Laissez Faire economics is fundamentally destructive

2. That the school does not advocate any particular policy, rather offers alternative ways of judging the outcomes of different policies

3. That these alternative methods are neither empirical nor historical in nature. Rather they rely on thought experiments assuming logical behaviour - an assumption Nash showed was flawed in his work in hostile game theory.

So in response to your last question - they have no intention of doing so as they have no intention of returning us to a Dickensian England style of economy.

Your guy threw his dice and lost. He was thoroughly rejected (again) by the American people. How naive to believe that other candidates are suddenly going to adopt his extremism.

If Ron Paul wanted to be taken seriously he should have run as a Democrat. The mythology of the Democrats being the ones who raise taxes is just bullshit rhetoric that the Republicans hope will just stick as a sound bite. Most Republicans are just too ignorant to do the research to find out the truth. I would guess that is because they are largely Christians and Christians do not question authority or they wouldn't be Christians in the first place. They just look to some sort of power figure, be it a minister or gov't. leader who claims to be Christian to tell them how they should think. The Republicans lower taxes for the rich and run up the deficit with their war profiteering, that we will all have to pay for later. Taxes will never be lowered and frankly, compared to most nations the average tax here is pretty low. We are nearly bankrupt because of this war and the mortgage crisis that was actually started by Bill Clinton. At this point we have only one option that I can see and it isn't Hillary or the insaneMcCain. Ron Paul is just too out there to be taken seriously, maybe he is a decent human but I don't trust him.

Would love to see some statistics on how many of the welfare families are Christians who got pregnant because they were only taught about abstinance and who didn't have abortions because of their religious beliefs, and didn't give their children up for adoption because somehow all those Christians out there picketing abortion clinics actually weren't there wanting to adopt their babies. The percentage of our national budget that is spend on welfare is very low. National Defense is #1. Do the math, start here:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://uplo...

Then do the homework to find out just how much all these issues of welfare, illegal immigrants, etc. are costing the average American taxpayer. They really don't want us to actually know anything, they just bring up all these "issues" to stir up the ignorant. It is pretty pathetic that people still buy into this crap. You are here, you have the Internet, think for yourselves and stop listening to the lies. 4,000 dead American soldiers as of today in Iraq. All Americans who don't question authority are responsible for that.

Start learning Chinese, you're going to need it.

Well, the sheeple have ignored Ron Paul.

Everyone is about to learn the hard way the consequences of ignoring basic economics during a political race. It's not going to be pretty, folks.

There are others like G Edward Griffin who understand but Ron Paul is one of the best.

He has a great understanding of economics. Its too bad Republicans couldn't get past his foreign policy, because the number one issue right now is our economy.

he has a very clear understanding of the economy, and contrary to popular opinion his foreign policy is very constitutional

It doesnt matter Obama is no longer in the race.

SENATOR CLINTON . HANDS DOWN.