Ron Paul Liberty Report - Weekly Update --- America’s Most Dangerous Unknown Man
Aired: 2022-01-28
Duration: 04:29


=== Powell's Peril (04:25) ===

[00:00:03]  Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the weekly report, America's Most Dangerous Unknown Man.
[00:00:11]  The U.S. Senate will soon vote on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's nomination to a second term.
[00:00:18]  One of the senators opposing Powell is Elizabeth Warren.
[00:00:22]  I don't often agree with Senator Warren, but I do agree with her assessment that Powell is dangerous.
[00:00:29]  However, Warren actually doesn't understand what makes Powell or any Fed chairman intrinsically dangerous to liberty and prosperity.
[00:00:39]  Warren thinks Powell is dangerous because she thinks he will not be supportive enough of imposing her desired new regulations on banks and other financial institutions.
[00:00:51]  Senator Warren, like most progressives, clings to a fantastical notion that regulations benefit workers, consumers, and small businesses.
[00:01:02]  The truth is, most regulations benefit large corporations by imposing costs that big businesses can easily absorb, but that their smaller competitors cannot.
[00:01:13]  Powell is a threat to the American people.
[00:01:16]  Under his tenure, the Fed has kept interest rates at or near zero.
[00:01:21]  The Fed's balance sheet has grown to over $8 trillion.
[00:01:25]  This has caused prices to climb at a rate America has not seen in several decades.
[00:01:33]  At his nomination hearings before the Senate Banking Committee, Powell reiterated the Fed's intention to fight inflation by reducing its monthly $120 billion purchase of treasuries and mortgage-backed securities.
[00:01:49]  Powell also stated that the Fed is planning to increase interest rates this year.
[00:01:54]  However, even if the Fed follows through on this, interest rates will remain at historically low levels.
[00:02:02]  Powell, like Elizabeth Warren and other progressives, dangerously believes that the Fed should go woke.
[00:02:09]  However, Powell is still not woke enough for progressives who lobbied President Joe Biden to replace Powell with Fed Board Chairman Brainerd, the biggest supporter of Elizabeth Warren-style regulations on the Fed board.
[00:02:26]  Brainerd is more committed than Powell to using monetary and regulatory policies to advance the woke agenda.
[00:02:34]  President Biden did end up nominating Brainerd to become vice chairman at the Fed.
[00:02:40]  A Powell-Brainerd Fed would likely use social and climate justice as a justification for expanding the Fed's easy money policy.
[00:02:50]  President Biden has recently nominated Sarah Raskin to the Fed board, who also has advocated for the Fed to use its power to fight climate change.
[00:03:01]  A central bank committed to the social justice and climate change agendas will inevitably increase the Fed's inflation tax.
[00:03:10]  Contrary to the claims of some progressives, lower-income Americans are primary victims of this hidden and regressive tax.
[00:03:20]  Powell prefers to pour his rather zealous and extremist philosophy behind the scenes.
[00:03:27]  Thus, not surprisingly, he is a leading opponent of Audit the Fed.
[00:03:31]  Powell claims that bringing transparency to the Fed's conduct of monetary policy would somehow jeopardize the Fed's independence.
[00:03:41]  Powell's claim is truly fake.
[00:03:43]  There is nothing in the Audit the Fed bill giving the Congress or the executive branch any new power over monetary policy.
[00:03:53]  Any group of individuals given the power to manipulate the money supply and manipulate the interest rates that are the price of money poses a threat to our liberty and prosperity.
[00:04:06]  The solution is not to replace Powell with a better Fed chairman or to force the Fed to follow a rule that still allows it to erode the dollar's value.
[00:04:17]  The only way to protect the people from dangerous individuals like Jerome Powell and the rest of the Fed board is to audit and then end the Fed.