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Aug. 25, 2022 - The Benny Show - Benny Johnson
33:04
LIVE With Legendary Ron Paul - Who Was Right About EVERYTHING...END THE FED!
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benny johnson
05:30
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26:20
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Speaker Time Text
benny johnson ▲ ● ▼
What is the outlook for economics today in America?
Well, it depends on how old you are.
Are you 100 years old?
You may remember the Great Depression if you are.
My grandparents were born in the 20s.
Maybe you remember the Great Depression.
Chances are you don't.
But there's one man in America who's warning that it...
Could be a Great Depression once more, and it's not something that we want in this country.
If you know anything about history, you'll know the Great Depression led to incredible pain, suffering for the American people, and perhaps the worst economics in American history, arguably.
However, is the elements and the various forces that are coming to bear on our economy right now, and the ignorance?
And the stupidity of those in charge of our economy, the one thing that we all share together, being able to feed our children, to clothe our children, to have shelter over our heads, to afford food, that thing that we all have in common, no matter who we are, what our skin color is, or where we come from, that American dollar, is it going to be worth anything?
And what would happen if there was another Great Depression?
Joining us now, a man with extreme...
On this issue, libertarian, presidential candidate, former congressman, and an absolute legend, Dr. Ron Paul.
Thank you so much for being on the program.
We were reading recently about you predicting that where we could be headed is not just a recession, but a Great Depression.
Perhaps you could illuminate for our audience what you meant by that.
ron paul ▲ ● ▼
Yes, and I think it isn't so much that we're predicting the future because people will talk about the inflation.
Where did it come from?
Blame Biden.
Blame Putin.
Blame somebody else.
Blame the oil companies.
The thing of it is, from Austrian economic viewpoint, you know, it's already established.
The inflation has already occurred and it's continuing.
The inflation...
To me and to an Austrian economist will be the massive increase of the monetary unit, you know, the dollar.
And they've been doing that.
It really got out of control since '08 with the last recession when they went to QEs.
Massive!
Increase in the money supply.
And also, this was related to, you know, the massive increase in the debt.
The debt went, you know, from $20 trillion up to $30 trillion.
And they didn't work for it.
The country just printed the money.
So the inflation was there.
It's just working its way out.
And even though governments can prolong the agony, cover it up, and bail people out.
Ultimately, the market always wins.
The market is stronger.
And this is what we're seeing.
We're seeing a contest between interference by government, but actually the interference by government to try to take care of the inflation that had already been picked.
An effort has been made by Biden.
And he's made it much worse.
Because if you add on to it an interruption in productivity and an effort to produce, you can moderate prices.
It doesn't do anything to the inflation.
Inflation is out there.
Too much printing money.
The value of the dollar is down.
Prices are going up.
There's been a lot of investment.
But there's a debt to be resolved.
And that's so much of it.
It's just plain old malinvestment.
People spent it.
They wouldn't have spent it if there had not been easy money and low credit.
One of the most serious distortion that we are dealing with now, and the reason why we know what is likely to come, is the fact that the most important Pricing that you have to look at is the price of money, the interest rate.
And that was total insanity.
And most people are still recognizing the insanity because they took the interest rates because they didn't know what they were doing and they thought they served their temporary interest.
And they had zero interest rates.
Actually, they were lower than that because there was always a price inflation rate they had to deal with.
So yes, if you look at what has already happened, we're already...
I set the stage for it, and now we're recognizing it, and people, the politicians and the economists, are all trying to reconcile this and try to take care of the inflation.
Well, unfortunately, the people in Washington, including the Fed, have no interest in even talking about what is necessary, and that's where our real problem is.
benny johnson ▲ ● ▼
Do you think, Doctor, we could get to Volcker numbers on...
Inflation and on the debt, do you think with interest rates will potentially get to a 15%, 19%, 20% rate?
ron paul ▲ ● ▼
Yes, I really do.
They don't have to because we're not going to do the right thing.
But yes, and if they don't change something like spending and printing money, it's going to get much worse because at the end stages of cycles like this and the destruction of money, there is no control whatsoever.
There's a lot of control when a country is very, very wealthy, own most of the gold, have the most powerful.
Military, conceivably.
And also manages the world reserve currency.
You can do a lot.
You can get away with a lot of economic activity you never would have been able to.
But that's coming to an end.
Our foreign policy is not doing so well.
Our commitments overseas to manage our empire is there.
The military-industrial complex is very, very powerful.
So that is going to continue.
And exactly how it would have pan out is never known.
The timing is never known and exactly what happens because you don't know exactly what government will do.
But even we don't know what the consumer is going to do.
If they took all their money and put it in a shoebox, that's different than if they start spending it and buying anything they can get a hold of.
That's generally what happens when they see the prices going up and the deterioration.
They spend the money and they can't always find the best hedge against the price inflation.
That's coming.
So yes, it will end.
There are certain rules.
And one rule is, if you run up a huge debt and if you monetize it, you will have these distortions.
And eventually, the central banks and the politicians and the congresses, they will lose control.
And that's where we are right now.
So big talk this year is there's an election coming up.
Everything will be okay after the election.
A lot of things could be improved after the election, there's no doubt.
But are we going to get rid of the Fed?
Are we going to still manage the monetary system as we are?
Are we going to have modern monetary theory?
Are we going to bring our troops home?
Are we going to live within our means?
Are we going to bounce back?
No, none of that's going to occur.
Although, if we had a little bit more...
More sanity dealing with our energy industry, that would help a lot because that had added all the fuel.
You didn't have inflation because of the regulations, but it caused prices to go up a long time along with...
The price is going up because of the destruction of money.
And since you can't predict human action by individuals, you can predict the direction it's going and what will happen if you don't do it.
But nobody knows what will bring tomorrow because tomorrow might be completely different.
Like even today, as we speak, there was a flip around where gold moved $30 in a minute.
You know, and that's probably minor to what will happen when people really lose confidence.
benny johnson ▲ ● ▼
What does that look like?
Explain for our audience, because I think these are things that no one has seen in their lifetime.
The last time a generation saw a Great Depression and the last time that a generation saw governments collapse and economic systems collapse and the systems around them just degrade was 100 years ago plus.
And so what would it look like today in modern society?
ron paul ▲ ● ▼
Well, you can find out a couple ways.
One, people have to be interested in sound economic policy, which means you have to reject...
You know, the Keynesians and paper money and not listen to that, but 90% or more in the Congress have all been taught the same economics.
So that's a losing cause.
But people who are interested in what I understand, you have to look into sound economic policy, which means you have to research out Austrian economics and read about Mises and Hayek and Mary Rothbard, because they can't explain it.
I got introduced to that in the early 60s.
Listen to their prediction of what would happen.
And it didn't take too many years back then.
We had the breakdown in '71 where the gold standard...
Disappeared, you know, just out of the clear blue Sunday night.
Nixon gets up there on a Sunday night in 71, August 15, and said that wage and price controls, we're not going to honor our commitment to our dollar with gold anymore.
So it comes rather suddenly.
So you have to understand economics.
But the second thing is, you can learn from our history, know about the Great Depression, but know about the Depression of 1921, which only lasted They just said, "Okay, you guys messed up." You have a lot of debt.
It was all liquidated, and things got better after a year.
But we still maintain a bad policy.
But if you want to learn more about what to expect, study what happened in Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
There's lots of examples.
Study what happened before our revolution when we were using continental money.
It went bust, and it was runaway inflation.
Look at what happened during the Civil War.
They gave up on the gold standard, and it took...
Decades to get back to the gold standard.
So there's a lot of examples, but I think the theoretical is important.
I think the understanding of the morality behind this on why people do this, why there's a deep state that has control of the monetary system and the political system, and they're up to no good.
They're up to a lot of evil things that they do.
But the worst thing is that I see coming of all this will be the divisiveness among our people, because some people are going to survive.
OK, and they're not just because they're smart and nice people, but the deep state people will be retaining a lot of wealth and rich right now are getting wealthier as the poor get poorer.
The price of goods and services go up.
We've already spent the money and printed the money.
So you have to pay for it one way or the other.
So it's paid for by the currency B&D value.
And that is very divisive.
And that's why we have now people who announce, you know, I'm a friend of Marxism.
Here's the communist salute and all this stuff.
You know, when I was in Congress and over the years, there were socialists around.
But they knew it was so far removed from what America was all about.
Nobody ever says, you know, I'm a socialist now.
But now it's no big deal.
They're there.
And cultural Marxism is a real threat because of the confusion that has been brought about by a monetary and an economic system that was...
Destined to do exactly what's happening.
And the question you ask is the big one, how long is this going to last?
Let's hope it lasts a little bit longer.
Let's hope we do at least temporize the situation by people changing some of these regulations so people can produce and get energy prices down.
But that's all temporary.
The issue is...
Are people who are in charge going to understand the principles of liberty?
Because I think all these problems, if there's a moral defense of liberty and the government gets out of our lives and off our wallet and just leave us alone, the recovery wouldn't be that bad.
It's not likely to happen, but that's really the main goal I have is trying to get people to understand what a free society would be all about.
And if you do the right thing, it's not going to be that bad.
We have an idea what happens if the government did a lot less real soon, and that is a 1921 depression, they called it, where the GDP went crashing down, but they didn't do what FDR and Hoover did during the 30s, and that is too much mischief, you know, trying to bail out everybody.
That was a terrible situation.
benny johnson ▲ ● ▼
Don't know if you're often called this, but on our program, you're called a prophet.
We remember your campaigns and your run.
I grew up in Iowa, and I remember you coming to Iowa and talking about this and talking about the Federal Reserve and speaking about the deep state and speaking about the monopoly on the permanent class in government.
And you were so ahead of your time.
It's got to be a wonderful ring in your ears to hear the coins going into the Ron Paul was right jar, because I know we all have them.
The Ron Paul was right jar is filled up to the very top.
You have been right about these issues for a very long time.
Now a lot of people are awakening to them.
Perhaps you can unpack a little bit when you say there that the deep state is in control of the monetary system and coordinating with the Fed.
Can you explain that process for us?
ron paul ▲ ● ▼
Well, Bill, the whole thing is we don't know all the details because the one thing that I started as soon as I went into Congress was open up the books.
You know, audit the Fed.
If the people in this country know what really goes on in the banking industries and how that operates, where a secret group of people devise the monetary system.
It's nothing more than fraud.
It's illegal.
It's counterfeit.
And open up the books and show them.
Then they'll get rid of it.
And it's going to self-destruct anyway.
So that is important.
But it's not going to be very easy.
All of it is tough.
Because if you do everything that I would suggest we do tomorrow or the next day, it would be chaotic.
It would be a revolution.
Because you say, you mean we can't pass out any food stamps next week?
Well, we need food stamps now more than ever.
So that system is going to continue.
But there's going to be an acceleration of the payment.
Because you can't get it for free.
And no such thing as a free lunch.
And that is when the people will start to wake up, and that's what they're doing right now.
They're waking up, but they do not cling to the answer that's available to him, to all of us, because it's almost like it's unbelievable.
You mean we just have to do ABC and things are going to get better and it wouldn't cost us any money?
There would be no...
Income tax, and there would be no Federal Reserve.
The deep state would fade away because how can they regulate the Federal Reserve if you don't have one?
So you have to do that.
But the founders set us on a course that was very much in the right direction.
But unfortunately, even early on, especially in the last 100 years, there's been a deliberate and a purposeful effort to just undermine the whole principles that brought the country to greatness.
And that is where the...
The real problem is, and the 100 years or so, more than 100 years now, the progressive era introduced the idea of the Federal Reserve, the income tax, deficits financing, Keynesianism, and one of the worst things was the interventionism overseas, this idea that we are obligated, we have a moral obligation to take care of everybody around the world, so we have the obligation to not only manage the reserve.
We have to manage the whole world.
And believe me, there's a lot more people resentful of that.
And I remember very clearly how the Second World War ended.
And things were great and America was great.
America, you know, came to its rescue and they were still, you know, had a good message.
But, you know, it's been really downhill, not only since World War II, but actually for the whole last century when the progressives got control of the educational system.
That's what's...
That is what's necessary, and that's why I talked already about education and why the Mises Institute is so important, because you can get the information that you need.
That is really what is necessary, but the universities have been...
Detrimental and yet I was very optimistic and still to a degree optimistic about the computer age and the internet because we make use of the internet, our programs on internet, but I tell you what.
Right now, social media is there in deep partnership with the government.
So they serve as an arm of the government.
All you have to do is look at the things that we had to put up with these last couple of years over COVID.
And it was all accomplished with this collusion of big corporations, especially in the banking system, especially in social media, and then government.
There's not 10 people that meet in a room every weekend and decide the future.
The deep state are people who have a lot of power and clout, and they're in places where they can influence elections and just about everything there is.
But they have control of the media.
So you have a scenario.
The media supports the wars.
The media supports the Congress when they're doing the bad things.
So it's a big problem.
I'll tell you what, the solution is not that difficult and so wonderful to live in a society which I had a glimpse of, because I was born in 1934, 1935, and I remember the talk very well of the Depression, because the Depression really lasted through World War II, and then things were tough.
But there was a lot of conversation about the Depression.
And this is something that we have to deal with if we want to see the change.
And, you know, we have this reset motion.
Oh, it's going to reset and everything's going to improve and all this sort of thing.
But the whole thing is, it all depends on your optimism and your determination to defend liberty.
Because that's where the answer is.
It isn't found an answer to getting rid of the deep state and then allowing somebody else to play the role of the deep state.
You've got to change the whole attitude about the role of government.
That's why the...
The American Revolution was so great.
They had an image here of what government should be, and there's some great stuff in their writings and what they wanted to do.
I was reading some more about this not too long ago, and I found out that most of the founders, at least in the beginning of their lives, they were educated at home.
They had homeschooling, and there was no...
Government schools and there were there was universities, of course, but they weren't totally controlled by contracts and by donations and money coming from the federal government.
But the whole issue is refuting.
The idea is that it looks like Santa Claus is a great person.
Right now, the whole thing, and it's been around for a long time.
Prices are going up, and people can't pay their bills.
Today, I read, well, AT&T is going to have big trouble because people aren't paying their bills.
And the answer is always, I need more money.
And that's what happened at the beginning of COVID, and it has continued.
The people need more money.
That's why some of them didn't even have to go to work.
More money!
We have to have more money.
And that's where the problem all came from, was the distortion of money, the debt that they ran up, the distortion of interest rate, and the payment being carried out by taxing the middle class and destroying the middle class and including this conflict between the haves and the haves-not.
So it's a big problem, but I think the answers are not difficult to come up with.
And there's every reason to believe that if we do the right thing...
We'll be concentrating on promoting the cause of liberty.
benny johnson ▲ ● ▼
You've talked a great deal about Keynesian economics and our education system and our government schools.
Should we do away with and abolish the Department of Education?
ron paul ▲ ● ▼
Oh, yeah.
I was there in the 70s when I think it was under Jimmy Carter when the department was set up.
Of course, there was a lot of educational involvement in the federal government, but the department was set up just to make a greater emphasis on it.
No, we don't need the Department of Education.
And I believe, you know, we more or less...
I still believe, even though it's not as good as it could be, a separation of church and state.
And no, that was not good.
That's one thing that we have tried to honor.
But I believe in the separation of school and state, education and state.
The federal government should have nothing to do with education, and yet they're in total control of it.
You know, even today I hear stories, people in school districts, in some places, they've been given more authority that, well, we'll leave it up to the school board.
The local schools, and they're still wearing masks.
But that's a reflection of the education, not the fact that local people made up their own mind.
But it's a terrible situation.
But what we really have set up, though, is the federal government didn't come and...
Do all those evil things on lockdown.
They had corporations do it.
They had so much political and economic power, they could force the companies to do it.
So the idea of corporatism being a strong arm for the federal government is one really bad situation besides corporatism inevitably and is already marching in that direction to set up the stage for fascism.
benny johnson ▲ ● ▼
Brought upon us by a permanent class of political rulers.
Is it correct the assessment that the deep state is essentially the permanent state, the permanent class of rulers who stay in Washington, D.C., that are outside of the bounds of the Constitution and outside of the bounds of democracy?
And that would be your functional definition of the deep state?
Taking off from your comments earlier.
ron paul ▲ ● ▼
Well, there's a lot of those people that you're talking about.
The smaller group of people is like a George Soros and others that they can dictate by controlling elections even at all levels of government.
So it's very, very much involved.
But they're not...
If you give up and say they're the permanent thing that's going to happen no matter what you do, then we're in trouble because we have to get rid of them.
But if you remove the motivation, you know, I went there.
I knew exactly why I was going.
I didn't really expect to ever be elected.
And I said, I'm just going to take my oath seriously.
And somebody said, yeah, but you know, the lobbyists will be there and they're going to raise money for you and all this stuff.
But you know what?
It turned out they never bothered me.
I never had to talk to them.
They didn't even knock on my door because I set my rules the first day I was there.
So these people who might want to hang around.
If the people, if you have the right kind of people, and it really, you know, the founders said, you know, we're giving you a Republican.
Benjamin Franklin said, if we're giving you a Republican, if you can keep it, and it's up to the morality of the people on whether or not this works.
Right now, we have a bankruptcy.
We have the financial bankruptcy we still frequently talk about, and people sort of...
Visualize that.
But we have a moral bankruptcy, and we witness that all the time on exactly what's going on.
And the dividing line there is very, very sharp and a very, very important fight to go on because the type of government one has has to reflect a moral standard, and there has to be a recognition of a higher law.
We're in a situation now where the enemy are nihilists.
They say, why do that?
You know, you can't figure, there is no such thing as truth.
Power is what it is, and money.
But the nihilists, they don't care.
How many people do you think have this political power that causes us to go to war, kill millions of people, and say, oh, we made a mistake?
No, they never, they never apologize and say, I really...
Screwed up and I feel guilty about it because they don't believe it.
They believe that there is no thing called truth and that there was a better answer.
So with that, we're going to have the immorality having this tremendous influence on our government.
benny johnson ▲ ● ▼
Let's say that the nihilists lose.
Let's say that the deep state loses and a...
A constitutionalist gets elected president in 2024.
They hand you the keys to Fort Knox.
They say, Ron Paul, you were right.
We should audit the Fed.
And you went into Fort Knox.
Do you think there'd be any gold there?
You took the crowbar to the vaults.
Do you think there'd be any gold?
ron paul ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, I think the gold's going to be there, but there's a good chance that it's been designated to other ownership.
I wouldn't trust on it because that's why I've always introduced the idea that not only do we want to see it, we want to see it.
Passed out to the people, too.
Sold to the people, let the people have it.
If you're going to have a gold standard, the gold should be in circulation, which is not there.
So I doubt very much if that gold is available.
Nobody knows who ownership.
You know, we've held a lot of gold for other people, but some of them have asked for it back, and it's been very irregular when they get any of their gold back.
And this is the case around the world.
People are resorting.
It's sort of interesting that, you know, when I asked Bernanke whether or not gold was money, who knows?
It's not money.
But guess what?
In some of the countries that now have a few type of policies, they're a little bit more capitalistic.
Then our country, and that happens to be the former Soviet Union, you know, Russia.
Russia might come up with it.
It seems like they're not bashful by gold, you know, and even China talks about buying gold.
So it'd sort of be ironic, but even that won't work unless you have the idea.
That the money has to be sound.
You cannot turn the monopoly control of the monetary system over to government.
And that is why I always had a built-in that legalized competition in currency.
If you have one more question, we can go with that.
But time is running out for me.
benny johnson ▲ ● ▼
Yes, yes.
And we appreciate very much your time.
My family invested with Birch Gold for the first time this year.
We highly recommend it.
It is so secure to have actual physical assets, actual physical gold with real value in your bank account.
It is a level of security for our investment that I...
Sleep very nicely at night, knowing that it is sound and it is secure and that it is in something that has value.
I can hold it in my hand.
The American government got off this standard, and you believe that that is when the crisis truly began.
ron paul ▲ ● ▼
Right, and it didn't cause it.
It was a consequence of us getting...
We were off base all through the...
Time leading up in the Depression and all, which brought us 1971.
1971 wasn't the cause.
It was the result of us spending beyond our means and abusing the privileges of having the reserved currency of the world.
The unit of account, and I never even use that term today, but I use it all the time.
The solution really comes when you can define the unit of account.
You have to have a definition.
You have to have a definition for telling the truth.
You have to have a definition.
We had no definition for the unit of account, but we had no definition, and they admitted.
I pressed the Federal Reserve Board Chairman, and I said, "Well, I have a Federal Reserve notice as a promise to pay." Well, what would you give me if I give you this?
I said, we'll give you another Federal Reserve note.
You know, you have to have a unit of the count.
And I do appreciate you mentioning Birch Gold because they have been helpful and people at Birch Gold can help people who are interested, you know, in investing in gold because it's not so simple that you walk into a shop and you pick up a coin because of tax laws and everything else and people's finances vary.
This is very important and I have been pleased to work with Birch Gold.
benny johnson ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, it was incredible getting the opportunity to work with it.
They sponsor the show, but very often you get sponsors and you don't actually use the product.
My wife and I decided to actually invest in gold and it was shipped to us.
We are able to go at any time and hold it in our hand and they were just a breeze to work with.
It was done very quickly and it's...
Just wonderful to have that level of security.
Maybe the federal government.
Can learn from individual investors like you and I, you know, we can pray, I suppose.
ron paul ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, and that's what would happen if you had a free society, you know, and we emphasize personal liberty in making up their minds and making so many of the decisions rather than the deep states and the bureaucrats and all the others that get involved in controlling our lives.
And the example that we saw these last two years in COVID, that's a pretty good hit.
You were asking, what will it be like?
Well, it was pretty bad and it's still pretty bad.
Because we don't have a whole lot of respect for civil liberties.
I get annoyed all the time when I think of what they do to the journalists, especially look at how our governments, Republicans and Democrats, have gone out of their way to punish Assange.
benny johnson ▲ ● ▼
Yes, truly.
Well, okay, so if you're hearing, if you're listening, and we know a lot of people watch this program, if you're watching Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump or Rand Paul, I hear you know this guy, if you run for president in 2024 and you win, Please let Ron Paul audit the Fed.
Please, for the love of God, let Ron Paul audit the Fed, give him the crowbar, and let him go through those vaults.
ron paul ▲ ● ▼
Very good.
benny johnson ▲ ● ▼
Make our country a better place.
Thank you so much, Doctor, for joining the program.
ron paul ▲ ● ▼
Thank you.
Enjoyed it.
Take care.
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