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May 8, 2020 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
22:28
$25 Trillion in Debt, Courtesy of The Fed...Is The "End" Near?

It took over 200 years for the U.S. national debt to reach $1 Trillion. Now, $1 Trillion of debt is added in just 1 month! A monopoly central bank that counterfeits money paves the road to economic ruin. While Americans should have never allowed the creation of the Fed in 1913, and should have put an end to it quickly, the day is approaching when the Fed will have no choice but to end itself.

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Print Money Threat 00:08:30
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, welcome to the program.
Good morning.
It's great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Good.
The markets aren't doing so great, so we have to cheer them up by telling the truth.
Of course, that won't help for tomorrow or next day.
But if it listened to the truth, it would cheer things people up for the long term anyway.
But nevertheless, we have to go ahead and report the news.
Today's a big day.
Yesterday and today, a lot of releases, and this morning there were some financial reports released.
And nobody was surprised.
And the stock market said, oh, we knew all about that.
So the stock market's skyrocketing so far today.
So it doesn't seem to phase them.
But the stats are rather ominous.
They're up around the $25 trillion national debt mark.
How much higher can it go?
Well, evidently there's enough confidence in Wall Street and all the banks that it can keep going higher and nobody's backed off.
It's not just the United States that's spending and monetizing.
It's all the big countries in the big monetary system, whether it's Japan or Europe and the whole world.
Everybody's monetizing.
So it's all helicopter money, print a lot of money.
And for a while, they'll soothe a couple people.
But the people who have lost their jobs aren't being soothed very much.
And that's where the stats are really bad.
We lost over 20 million jobs lost.
And they said the next report might be worse.
Simon Black is somebody that we've followed a bit.
He said that in the last two months, there was $2.5 trillion of money monetization that occurred and pointed out the first 75, no, the first 95 years of the Federal Reserve, that's what they created.
So it's rather rapid.
It's sort of rampant.
It's exponential.
So those conditions are not changing.
And people should be frightened and concerned about this.
The big problem that people have is the excuses they give without admitting the truth of why the Federal Reserve exists.
The Federal Reserve exists for a real reason.
But if you ask the Fed, are there to keep things calm and they're to salvage the economy when the markets get ahead of them, say, oh, Congress spends too much money.
But the plain truth is none of this can happen without the Fed.
It isn't the only cause, but the accommodation of the Fed is necessary for these bubbles to form.
And they've been forming for a long time.
Austrian economists have been predicting many, many decades, really, of the boom-bust cycle.
And there's been many corrections.
The 08 correction was significant and big, but I don't believe we ever got past that.
And we're just right now into what everybody's recognizing is a much bigger one.
But no, the spending is an addiction that a lot of people like, the people who are getting welfare, the financial communities, the military-industrial complex, but without a Fed to monetize the debt and temporarily pay for it with fake money and put it into the debt basket.
See, even the $25 trillion of debt doesn't represent the mistakes made, the spending, the deficits by individual corporations spending money on things that just blow up and smoke rather than spending money and increasing the wealth and prosperity of the middle class.
I would say the system that we've had, the biggest threat for us because of it, has been the misinterpretation on purpose to blame free enterprise, the free market, sound money for these problems.
At the same time, they think that they can keep doing this and not have a real calamity, and that's what we're facing right now.
The calamity is here.
We're in the middle of it.
It's been compounded by the virus, the coronavirus.
But that isn't the cause.
It's just part of the problem.
And the response to that is typical of every response in the financial system.
Print more money, print more money.
Anybody who has a complaint and they have more than 10 people to lobby for it, they get a check.
But that, of course, is going to come to an end.
And the stats are bad.
Ultimately, the real evil is that it's an attack on liberty.
And all we have to see is the tactics of the coronavirus people.
Their attack is on civil liberties, where the Fed's attack on what they do is just dilute the value of the money and cause more economic problems, put them together, and that's a setting for some really bad things happening.
And I think there's an illusion when some of these bad days and stats come out and they say, we'll print, we'll print.
And then the markets say, hey, no, that's not too bad.
As long as they print the money, we'll be all right.
We'll worry about the deficit later on.
So, Chris, I know you have an easy answer for this, and you're going to tell us what it is and what we should do.
But why don't you give us a little of your input on exactly how you see some of these statistics?
Actually, the answer is easy.
It's just getting people to accept it is the hard part.
You know, we just crossed 25 trillion in debt.
And just to put that in perspective, it took over 200 years to get 1 trillion in debt.
It was in 1981 where they hit 1 trillion.
Now, the debt rises 1 trillion in less than a month.
So do you think they have this under control or are they into desperation phase?
Now, it's easy because we've lived our lives through this to think, ah, relax.
This doesn't have to end.
They'll just keep going.
Well, really?
Well, show me the Roman Empire.
Show me the Spanish, the British Empire.
Show me the Soviet Union.
Where are they today?
They're all gone.
They all grow broke.
This has a 100% failure rate.
And, you know, America's founders, they warned us, don't go down this road.
They actually abolished the attempts before the Federal Reserve was formed.
They abolished the central banks.
There was like three of them beforehand, and they got rid of them.
But the Fed stuck.
We're now 100 years later, and we're now living the disaster that was inevitable.
Once they created the Federal Reserve, free markets was gone.
Liberty was gone.
Sound money was gone.
And now we're alive here to experience it.
And it's time to say no more.
It's time to go back to sound money.
You know, there's one statistic that they report monthly, but it doesn't get a lot of attention.
It's been around 63, 64% of the population is in the workforce.
And that's more than it should.
I mean, there's not as many people in the workforce as should be.
But that number dropped to 60%, which means only 60% of the population is in their workforce.
And that's with just these preliminary figures coming out.
But others who have looked at this and study them more carefully, they say this is a prediction that there's going to be in the near future, within the next few months, that there's going to be a 40% drop in the GDP.
And that's going to wake up a lot of people.
But what's really going to wake up a lot of people is when they start changing some of the terminology to stagflation or inflationary depression, because you can have both and most people don't believe it.
Our government and our Federal Reserve has worked on the assumption that if you spend money and you print money, that if you even get the economy moving this way, this will solve the problem.
But they even like inflation.
They want price inflation.
Just remember how many years I complained about, can you believe the Fed has a policy of, well, we got to work hard to get the price inflation up to 2%.
So we only steal from the average person 2% per year, which was a farce because it was much higher.
So I've always said, wait a little GPS, the producer and consumer price index is measured and it's up going 6% and 7%, 8% like it did one time in the 70s.
Quarantine Quandary 00:02:59
It's going to be a different story.
I really think that's what's coming.
But in the meantime, the big thing is the big threat, Chris, you've mentioned it, we mentioned a lot, it's a threat to our liberties and it's a threat to peace here in this country.
And when you see the scandalous things going on with coronavirus, I saw one of the state governors just said that he said, and you know you can issue as governors an executive order.
It's the law of the land and law, at least that's safe.
But he said, we should not allow people to go to a church and occupy a church for at least another year.
I got you thinking, you know, isn't that something that the Soviets might have done?
Oh, but we have an excuse.
We're going to save lives.
But all of a sudden, we're starting to realize that the lives aren't being saved that they claim.
And they fudge those figures plenty because people do die from coronavirus.
And it's very, very serious.
But at the same time, whether we have 70,000 or 35,000 people dying from it, it's a big difference.
But the way they report it, they're conditioned to report these statistics erroneously because hospitals and doctors, everybody else get reimbursed if you have the diagnosis of coronavirus, you know, on the death certificate.
And of course, where you really got the bonus if you got to use the respirators.
And of course, now it's coming out that 90% of the people that's been on a respirator usually dies.
So all that activity and mischief.
But the bottom line is people say, well, yeah, we have to go along with them.
They know what's best.
Dr. Fauci, he's our protector.
So I guess we shouldn't go to church into a church now for at least a year.
And all of a sudden, things are going to be much better.
I wish people would come to their senses on this because you can still have a sensible program of protecting oneself and being advised for the elderly and those with low resistance.
But just to turn the rules on everybody at once and say, quarantine, quarantine, quarantine, instead of quarantine maybe the very ill and the very vulnerable, everybody gets quarantine.
But I guess everybody's starting to recognize that there's even today there are more things opening up.
But it's not going to be, and they could do that.
And Chris, you said it's an easy thing to solve if we would do it.
And we could.
We could open up much faster.
But, you know, the problems of Fed aren't as simple as that.
I think coronavirus rules and regulations are not as easy to get rid of, but it would be less onerous as it is when you try to undo what the Fed has done, because that is when you cause the real chaos and anger of what happens, because they will not give up on the spending and the monetization, and that ultimately is what they have to do.
Shortage Of Storage For Dollars 00:09:27
That's right, Dr. Paul.
And the Fed, like coronavirus, it's fed by a lot of propaganda.
And that's why we're here to cut through it so that you could understand what's going on.
And then, you know, when it's time, you at least understand which direction you want to advocate for.
And I'd like for our viewers to imagine, you know, imagine if Best Buy was putting 75-inch Samsung TVs for free.
What do you think would happen?
There would be a mad rush to that Best Buy, and eventually those TVs would be gone in a snap.
Well, this is how people react when they figure out that there's a counterfeiter called the Fed.
Everybody rushes for this counterfeit money.
And the thing is, unlike TVs, they can't run out.
They could create digits as much as they want.
And that's how you get to this point where it's, you know, now government subsidizes everything.
The corporations, individuals, they've made welfare promises, you know, up to over $100 trillion in welfare promises.
How on earth can they possibly honor that?
And then you have wars, one war after another, after another for 100 years.
And now they're just making them endless, forget even ending them.
And then you have bailout of Wall Street and then bail out of Wall Street and bail out of Wall Street.
And now we're getting to bailing out everyone, where government is prohibiting people from working and creating goods and services and just sending them these digits that are counterfeit.
So the whole thing is absolute insanity and it just feeds on itself until people have finally had enough.
Yes, and it takes a while for people to wake up, but there's some rules in economic policy that demands that these kind of imbalances end.
And I think back, of course, to 1971, when we were on the pseudo-gold standard, everybody knew that $35 an ounce wouldn't hold.
And Bretton Woods finally collapsed, not because the politicians got smarter.
It's because the rules of economics ruled that you just can't honor the dollar at $35 an ounce.
And we're not going to be able to honor the dollar either or the bond market or anything else at the rate we're printing money.
You know, Joe Salerno is an economist, an Austrian free market economist associated with the Amises Institute.
And he's considered a real expert on monetary policy.
He had an interesting article that I want to just touch on for a minute because he was talking about sometimes many people overemphasize the fact that interest rates are too low and that's the problem.
And I can remember so often, you know, three, four, five years ago, well, this all started when Greenspan kept interest rates too low for too long.
Well, there was a problem with interest rates being too low, but it wasn't the issue.
The real issue, and this is what Joe points out in his article, this is what we're talking about all the time, it's the expansion of the money supply.
It's the printing of this fiat money, the distortion, and it does distort interest rates.
And I keep thinking, why should people put their money in Treasury bills and not demand interest rates?
Because we know that the inflation is going to erode the purchasing power of that money in a year or two or three, however long the bond is for.
And then it finally dawned on me, probably the reason for this is there's so many dollars out there.
They're not distributed by the marketplace because middle-class people don't have so many dollars, they don't know what to do with it.
But the people on Wall Street, and the record showed the other day, we're about to have our first trillionaire.
So there's a lot of dollars there.
But what if they think and they know, well, there could be a downturn.
I'm getting so much money.
What do I do with it?
So they decide that there's so much flowing in.
So the best thing they can do under these circumstances is put it into a U.S. state government bond.
So that drives the price down and the interest rate, that's the price up.
Because when the interest rates go down, if they're 5% and they go to zero and then minus, you're paying more for the bond.
So the price goes up.
And so everybody's rushing to it.
It's sort of like a shortage of storage for the dollars.
Instead of dollars being saved by people individually and interest rates being market determined and having a much smoother economy without the booms and busts, we have this collision between these two.
So even the very, very wealthy might be able to manage that for a while, but ultimately, Chris, you've already mentioned it, people are going to rush out of this.
And when they do, everybody suffers.
And of course, what I'm concerned about the most and talk about the most, and that is the lack of concern for liberty because the more you get the government involved in the spending, it erodes, yes, our finances, but it erodes our liberty too.
And this has been compounded with the coronavirus.
So we're living in very dangerous times at the crossroads because I believe we're in the process of making a decision of how we're going to handle this.
How many Americans are disgusted with their violation of other civil liberties?
How many people will be frustrated with the way the monetary system works and do something about it?
And right now, we're seeing a lot of people now are very disgusted about being locked up without due process of law.
And there's a lot of incidents where people are just saying, enough is enough.
You know, let me take my own risk.
And there are risks.
There are risks in the financial markets.
There are risks in taking care of your health.
The one thing I know for sure, if you're looking for somebody to protect your wealth and take care of you and have a fair economic system, the Fed's not the answer.
And if you're looking for somebody to take care of your health matters, don't go to one player system and have some dictator tell you how you should protect yourself against viruses.
And we'd be a lot better off.
We did it that way for a long time, but it's only been in recent history that we have become so dependent on the government for everything.
So the motto for me is move away from dependency of government.
That's what we need to do as quickly as possible.
That's correct, Dr. Paul.
I'll finish up by saying, you know, you can't have limited government with a Federal Reserve Central Bank.
You cannot have liberty.
You can't have free markets.
And you surely cannot make America great again.
You can talk about it all you want, but as long as they're there counterfeiting money, it's never going to happen.
You can't have government have its own printing press.
You know, if government wants to spend money, let them propose what they want to spend and send us the bill.
Do you think they send us any bills?
Now, they don't care what we think.
They don't even like who we elect as president.
So if they have their own counterfeiting machine, they're going to turn themselves into the biggest government in the history of the world.
And that's what we have.
And if you think for one second that Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams wanted the biggest government in the world, you have no idea about American history.
Patrick Henry didn't say give, or he said, give me liberty or give me death, not give me the biggest government in the world.
So if we want liberty, the Federal Reserve has to go someday.
They're probably going to end themselves, but what people want, should want at that moment is sound money.
No more of this government can finance itself, and we have no say in the matter.
And, you know, liberty can be reborn once again in this great land.
Very good.
And I'd like to close with talking a little bit about how does one prepare for what we're going through now and what is likely to come.
And that's difficult because there's so many obstacles.
How do you prepare against runaway inflation and such a gigantic enemy that's involved with the Federal Reserve and the stock markets and the control of all this wealth?
It's not easy, but people can do it.
And they've been thinking about it for years.
And self-reliance is important.
And people have tried to become self-liant, more so now than ever because they're starting to get the witnesses.
And that is, what happens if it's difficult getting food and other things?
And I dread the thought of that because I still hope that we come to our senses before it gets that bad.
But yeah, we can, and people can protect themselves financially with hard assets, metals, and different things like that, and owning some land.
There are a lot of things.
But you know, that seems, when I look at it, yes, in a narrow sense, some people can be very, very good at it.
But other people, when you look at the millions of people who have always been dependent on the government and they had no savings, and then this calamity comes along, and these ideas have been reinforced because every group now is getting money.
And right now, Pelosi is working on another $2 trillion bailout, and Trump's working on another bailout for building highways, trillions of dollars.
But like you said, Chris, this is not going to work.
And that's why we have to be prepared.
But ultimately, the only real protection, I tell people, yes, I do my best to protect myself and tell other people what we should do and shouldn't do and why government is really the big problem.
And monetarily, it's the Fed.
But we have to be able to do something for ourselves.
And that is what really counts.
And what is that issue?
The issue is our freedom, our freedom to operate.
Freedom To Operate 00:01:17
Now people are starting to say, you know what?
Are they telling us we don't have the freedom to go to our church if we went?
And we don't have the freedom to leave our house?
You know, somebody said the other day, it was pretty amazing to see somebody driving around in a car by himself with a mask on.
I mean, yeah, I think there's time I've worn a lot of surgical masks in my lifetime, a lot, for a specific position doing surgery and delivering babies.
But this is quite a bit different.
This is a social chaos that has been created because if you go into the store and you don't have one, everybody else does, they look at you unfriendly, you know.
So we have to realize, put our priorities, and I've argued, yes, we would have troubles if you turned all the switches off, no Fed, no debt, no spending of the federal government, but they gave us our liberties, no taxes, and get rid of the onerous regulations.
People would go back to work and they would welcome it.
And I think they would be back on their feet in a short period of time with that one item, which is what the founders tried to give us.
We had, and we had it for a bit, but it's been eroded.
And right now, we need a renewal in the belief and confidence in a free society.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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