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May 19, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
26:15
Government Deceptions on Inflation

Is inflation really 'under control'? Well, just take a look at your bills. Does it look like 4.9%? Most likely not! Government, however, is always trying to spin reality into narratives that fits its own agenda; and its agenda is to always spend more money (that it doesn't have) at artificially low interest rates. So is inflation really 'cooling'? Look at your bills. No outside "experts" needed.

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Inflation's Deception 00:14:31
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Chris Rossini, our co-hosts.
Chris, good to see you today.
It's great to see you, too, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
We're going to talk a little bit today about inflation.
That's been around a bit.
And unfortunately, there's a lot of distortion on the understanding of inflation.
Inflation is very, very simple, but governments and other special interests are destined to confuse it with the people so the people don't know what to do to how to defend themselves against it.
So we'll spend some time with that.
But the inflation right now is giving a lot of people a lot of trouble.
And protecting finances is more difficult, protecting your investments.
And there's a lot of shenanigans go along.
Sometimes the reports that the government gives us are misleading on purpose.
And we have to do whatever we can, how to protect our savings and protect our jobs and protect against the dissolution of our liberties.
But to do this, you have to deal with assets.
And we partner with a company that that's their special interest, and that is trying to protect people's financial assets, and that's Birch Gold.
And they have a program that is offered to our listeners some information.
So if you text Ron 989898, Birch Gold will send us some material to you.
There will be no charge on this.
And this gives you another opportunity to get more information on some of the decisions you have to make because they're not easy decisions.
And it was something I discovered in the 70s that is going to be more difficult.
Once the Bretton Woods ended and there was no definition for money, I knew precious metals would be very, very important.
So we live in an age where it hasn't gotten better and with the deficits exploding, the inflation is going to be with us for a while.
So if you're looking for a little bit more information and finding out what Birch Gold is all about, you can text Ron 989898 and they will send you materials.
There will be no charge.
Chris, we want to go ahead and talk about this inflation.
I'm disturbed by the reports from government and the deceptions that go on.
The one article that caught my attention this week that you and I have talked a little bit about, it came from Mich Talks.
It says, retail sales rise in April, but price inflation accounts for all of the increase.
But a lot of times you never see a headline like that.
I don't see it.
I always look for it because I often wonder, yeah, you know, the things that said sales are up, but have they separated the two?
Sales went up because they had more customers?
Or did sales go up because they charged more for their products?
So you have this idea that the economy is weakening.
You may have less sales and the business may be getting poorer.
At the same time, there's more money that came in and say, oh, this looks like a pretty good company.
So it's not that easy to figure out.
So I've been fascinated with that.
But there's more than one thing that distorts just understanding inflation.
Because the inflation in the definition from Austrian economics is the increase in the supply of money and credit.
And that in a way becomes what happens after that.
The secondary effect to this are rising prices.
And it's really no more complicated than that.
But the last thing the government wants you to concentrate on and find out why the prices are going up, because if the people knew, they would say, well, we don't need more cash from the government.
We don't need to do this and that.
And we need to deal with it eventually by dealing with the printing of money, which means deficit.
Oh, really?
They're concerned about deficits, aren't they?
Not really, because deficits, you know, right now there's a big debate going on on raising the debt limit.
The debt limit is going to be raised.
Then they threaten the people and they say, you know, if we don't raise the debt limit, they'll default.
They won't send you your check.
That is not true.
They always send the check.
There's been a few occasions that a few agencies got closed down for a couple hours, you know, but they always pay for it.
It's all a political gamesmanship that they're playing.
It looks like they're coming to an end of some type of agreement.
And they say, and then the people who warn you, well, we just saved the default.
Well, if they knew and understood what spending does and what default can how default can be understood in a little different manner because defaulting is going on constantly.
Governments will never stop sending checks once they gain power to write checks with nothing behind it, print money without anything defending the value of the dollar.
That's why 1971 was so important.
They declared bankruptcy and they say we can't honor our commitment.
We're bankrupt.
We don't have the gold in the bank that would ever meet up with all the money we created.
So we're going to default by just giving you out money that has less value.
So if we have a debt of $10 billion, we double the money supply.
And in real terms, it's only $5 billion.
So it's the dilution.
But the big problem with this is that you don't know who will be the real victims.
Usually it's the middle class and the poor that get hit with higher prices.
But instead, there has to be a lot of distortion and there has to be a lot of gimmicks, taxes being manipulated, all these things.
But it's always directed to deceiving the people so that they'll go along with it until it gets so bad, then the people revolt against it.
And I think we're getting close to that time, Chris, where something like that just may well happen.
Who knows, Dr. Paul?
You know, we always advocate peaceful and education, but the government always pushes people to the brink.
Unfortunately, that's the history.
You know, we talk about the proper role of government, and today that just does not exist with ours.
Ours is an extractive institution.
It extracts wealth from the mass of people to itself.
It takes away freedom in order to give more power to itself.
You know, this is not how government should operate in a free society, but we have to deal with what is.
And since they extract wealth by direct taxation, by trillions in debt that has to be paid for, and inflation, they need deception in order to keep this going.
That's why they are a lie machine.
It's an empire of lies.
A, they have to lie to tell you that they need to do these things.
They need to rob us.
And in addition to that, it's not so bad.
You know, however bad it is, it's not so bad.
So inflation is very high.
Yet I see articles about it, you know, it needs to be explained.
It's not as bad as you think it is.
Well, I see my grocery bills, and it is bad.
But this is how they work, and they do it in all aspects of government.
Remember when the vaccine, when everyone was questioning what's going on here, what's going on here, they were just saying, oh, no, that just means that it's working.
And during the wars, they're always turning the corner, turning the corner.
You know, so everything is lies and deception because that's how you keep this parasitic arrangement.
Again, it doesn't have to be parasitic, but today it is.
That's how you keep it going.
So they need lies and deceptions, and we just want to help people to help see through those lies.
Most people see the inflation as rising prices.
And that is a consequence.
It doesn't affect everybody equally.
And it's a distraction from what causes inflation.
And that is, governments spend money and the money they don't have.
They try to make up for it with taxation.
They can't do it.
So they devise a system which is a destruction of money.
They just print more money.
And guess what?
When the value goes down, prices go up.
So that's been used for a long time.
But then the people get nervous and worried about it.
And they say, and the politicians have to respond.
In the past, on several occasions in our history, they resort to wage and price controls because they'll blame labor unions.
They say, oh, you're pushing labor up too fast.
And they might be just trying to compensate for the devaluation of their dollar.
So they can, you know, regulate wages and also they put on price controls, which makes everything worse.
And then, of course, they try to spend money to help people out who are suffering from higher prices.
And they did it immediately, you know, after the COVID epidemics was orchestrated.
They sent checks out, trillions of dollars, and they wanted to take care of it.
But they said, well, maybe it'll cause a little inflation, but it's no big deal.
But then the other solution that they come up with is Congress needs to hold hearings on that.
We need people to understand what's going on, what they're doing.
They'll have holdings to try to distort the understanding of inflation.
They're not going to have hearings and say, you know what?
None of this could happen if you didn't have a Federal Reserve.
Get rid of the Federal Reserve.
They can't run off deficits and you will have a sound economy and a sound monetary system.
That's not going to happen.
And then they, because they actually have a committee, and it's called the Oversight Committee.
So when you get into trouble, oh, we have an oversight committee.
What do we do?
And then they come up with a law that says, oh, we have to punish.
We have to punish people and we have to watch it.
So we have to watch for people who fraud and abuse.
And if we just do that, if we just control that, we're going to save a lot of money.
And that's the way they do it.
That is not the case.
Everything government does is fraudulent and abusive and deceitful and built on lies.
So they'll do that.
And they go through this gimmickry because they cannot.
They cannot lay the blame on the Federal Reserve, even though there's talk about it.
But really putting the blame on the Federal Reserve and wanting to do something about it, they would have had to challenge what the founders had because they had runaway inflation during the revolutionary period with the Continental Money.
It went to zero value.
So they put into the Constitution, no central bank and only gold and silver can be legal tender.
Well, that's long been lost, and systematically over 100 years it brought us to this point.
So we'll hear a lot of stuff going around about what we can do and all the gimmickry and ended up getting these reports out that if you're reporting inflation, you can say, well, you know, sales are up.
Prices are up.
That's good.
There's economic growth, which is just another distortion.
So you have to be careful when the government speaks and sends out a report.
You have to be a little suspicious what's up their sleeve, because usually there's a gimmick behind what they're doing.
Chris?
Absolutely, Dr. Paul.
Yes.
And yeah, I wanted to cover the next thing that was pretty shocking to us that we heard that the interest on the national debt is now more than national defense, the biggest discretionary spending of all, the big military-industrial complex.
Now, interest on the debt is greater than that, which is astonishing.
And we have to qualify this.
It's not national defense.
Actual national defense would cost a fraction of what we spend every single year.
What it is, is empire.
The cost of the empire is now less.
You know, the interest on the debt is now more, which is astonishing.
And, you know, there is a silver lining to the Fed raising rates.
We talk about all the, there's this push for war, this suicidal, you know, push against nuclear powers like Russia and China.
Well, the Fed is making it more expensive.
Look at how the interest on the debt is increasing.
So that's a good side effect, if you ask me, because you need a ton of money to fight war, especially world war.
And now our empire is so stretched thin that just paying interest on debt is more than the so-called national defense.
So it's the same old story.
Empires always stretch themselves too thin.
This is a big human flaw that goes all the way back.
This idea that a certain group of people can dominate the entire world.
It has never been done.
It most likely will never be done because it's much too expensive.
And then you have human nature.
Nobody wants to be ruled.
So you're always going to have someone else that's going to go up against you.
So our empire is definitely stretched too thin.
And the interest on the debt is piling up quickly.
You know, in the 80s when Reagan was president, there was a sincere effort made, you know, to cut back and balance the budget.
And they came up with a budget that looked pretty good.
And I remember them debating this thing.
And they said, well, we really have to cut food stamps too.
You know, we just can't pick and choose like that.
So I heard conversation.
They said, yeah, we'll cut it.
We'll cut it in about half.
Emergencies and Funding Crisis 00:03:22
And then what we can do, there'll be an emergency.
They're out of fund.
They're out of fund.
There's no food stamp money.
And the people will say, you better get some money.
They're dependent on it.
What did you do?
So it's always a gimmick.
They start with a budget.
Even if it looks a little bit better than the year before, people say, well, I'll vote for it because it's better than last year's budget.
But the whole thing is, there's always an emergency.
You know, like, well, we can't default on not sending out the money for the food stamps.
But there'll be other emergencies.
There's COVID emergency.
Who could vote against the spending for solving that problem?
Yeah, well, there were a few, but not very many.
And what about a war?
What about a threat?
A war?
We don't even have to have the war going.
We have to just have a preparation.
So what what do we hear day in and day out, you know, about China, the danger of China?
Yeah, they're selling us so much stuff and they're taking their money and they're investing it around the world.
And they are beating us in some of the financial things.
Oh, yeah, but that's not the case.
We have to stop them, stop them.
And it's never, we don't, we have to look to ourselves.
Because if excessive spending does it, if central banking does it, and you say, well, everybody has a central bank, don't they do it to a way to a degree?
But we own it.
We own the international currency.
It's getting weaker all the time.
But the world reserve currency is a dollar.
So people have to use it and therefore it's absorbed into the system.
So we get to export it.
So if they keep passing out these dollars and they're in motion, they're in circulation, and you spend it in China and different places like that.
We've literally exported it because if all the money we created was at home, prices would be gigantic.
The worst part about all this is if you had inflation, people say, well, if there's inflation, prices go up, everybody's prices go up.
That's not true.
Every prices may go up to a degree, but it's going to vary because some people's prices are going to go up much faster than others.
And unfortunately, the percentage of the price increases will always hit the middle class and the middle class and the poor the most.
And that's why they end up out in the street more often and they suffer.
At the same time, the super wealthy get wealthier under these circumstances.
Statistics show this.
So it's in a way risky because you say the rich are getting richer.
Well, you know, libertarians shouldn't care about that if they're selling a product measured in a sound currency.
But if it's accumulation of it because they have influence with legislation and they're taking checks from the government, you know, the rich shouldn't get richer.
And unfortunately, in corporatism, which we have, you know, where the government is so much involved and in bed with government, just look at the embedded with pharmaceuticals and with social medias.
So they make a lot of money, but the average person doesn't share in this.
Inflation's Unequal Impact 00:07:38
And so it's expected to be unfair.
And how do you keep up with labor?
Labor might not be able to.
They generally don't.
Labor wages don't usually keep up with inflation.
So therefore, that's an incentive.
Well, we have to make up for it.
So it's the understanding of an issue that is not complex.
And you have to listen carefully to what the government is saying because even their reports, unemployment reports, the whole works, they have so much license to distort the information.
So I would suggest anytime you see it's a government report, it doesn't mean that it's automatically wrong or you shouldn't look at it, but you should look at it with a good questioning attitude.
Is this really the way it is?
Because they're quite capable of doing, number one, on their job is to protect the interests of the corporate state.
Chris.
Excellent, Dr. Paul.
I'll finish up by saying, yeah, it's illegal for all of us to counterfeit, and rightfully so.
If any of us had the ability to counterfeit money, it would destroy us as a person.
It would destroy all your values eventually.
Now, it's also illegal, unconstitutional for the government to counterfeit.
But they found a way around it, a loophole.
They created a bank that will do it on their behalf, the Federal Reserve.
And As can be expected, it has destroyed the concept of government.
They've destroyed the money.
You know, it should be illegal for everyone to counterfeit us and them.
But they do it, and it is destroying them.
We have a group of people over there in D.C. that are addicted to power and money.
That's what they're there for.
There's not going to come a time where you're going to turn on the TV and see the Treasury Secretary say, you know what, we've gone too far.
We're going to stop.
We're going to stop this spending.
They're not going to do it voluntarily because that's what they live for.
That's how they gain their power.
They have people that virtually worship them because of this.
Look at the great that I'm doing for you with this printed money.
And they always will claim that it's a crisis if they stop.
And that's what Janet Yellen is doing today.
If they don't raise this debt ceiling, it's going to be a crisis.
If they don't keep going broke, there's going to be a crisis for us.
That's what they're basically saying.
The real crisis is the opposite.
Them continuing on this path is the crisis.
And while they will not voluntarily stop, they will come to a point where they will have to stop because they will have no other choice.
And whether it's because other countries are dumping the dollar, there's just too many variables in play to say what will cause that.
But they will have to stop because they have no other choice.
And that is going to be a big crisis to take it to that extreme.
You know, so we'll see what happens.
But what they are doing is only digging the hole further.
You know, a lot of people say, you guys want too much liberty, and it's dangerous because people might not do what they should do, work hard to save their money and take care of themselves in old age, which is true.
It could happen.
But there would be the incentive factor that most people would take advantage of the fact that they don't have to pay income taxes to the government and they may have an incentive to invest in things.
Today, there's no incentive to put money in a bank.
You can't even make enough interest to keep up with the inflation rate.
So we do the opposite.
We discourage the people to take care of themselves.
And I frequently refer to the Bastiat principle, which teaches that you could solve the problem by prohibiting the government from doing anything that you have, the people have been technically not able to do.
You can't do it.
It's illegal to do it, like stealing.
But there was one issue that the government wanted to make it very, very clear that there was not to be counterfeiting and counterfeiting of money.
They were really hacked off about the destruction of the currency.
And it was made in 1792 with one of the first Monetary Control Acts, they said that the penalty for counterfeiting money would be death.
You know, that's how serious they thought about it.
And they were libertarian.
They weren't looking for a lot of federal laws.
But for them, the money issue was a big issue.
And yet, it's still, don't mess with the currency.
You know, somebody made a coin when I was campaigning, and it was a significant coin.
And they had the audacity to put my picture on it, which made me a little bit annoyed.
But they had the coin and they called it a dollar, I think.
They put the word dollar on.
Boy, I'll tell you what, boom.
The feds came down tough on there.
Don't mess with that.
As if that was going to get circulated or something.
But in a free society, because if you did that and you had a coin at the state level, that's why I like what the states are doing with this issue.
There are states that are making it legal to buy gold and silver coins and mint gold and silver coins because the Constitution is very clear that the states are directed.
You can't use anything other than silver and gold as a legal tender.
So it's not that complicated.
And I think that people will realize, you know, even now, Zimbabwe has talked about trying to issue certificates that were backed by gold.
They've learned their lesson.
Sometimes they want to go in a different direction.
And history is on the side of saying that the precious metals were invented and controlled and designed early on, the first of money.
It's lasted for thousands of years.
And there will be a prohibition.
That was, what did Roosevelt do?
First thing, first week in August, bring me the gold.
You guys aren't going to protect yourself against what we have planned because we plan to print a lot of money.
So for 40 years, Americans weren't even allowed to own gold.
That's how determined they are with that.
So that is why one thing we have to continue to think about, what are they going to do this go around when there's runaway inflation and people are benefiting with the protection of gold.
And quite frankly, my opinion is that I don't think they'll try to confiscate it like they did in the 30s.
But they may meddle.
They may meddle.
And the way that our governments over the years have meddled in what people try to do for themselves is what they do as a tax.
So they may say, oh, you want to cash in and you want to spend your gold eagle.
Oh, okay.
Well, this is what the tax would be on there.
That's not a gold standard.
Anyway, be careful when you hear the government reports because their job is to try to, you know, project deception.
They're probably trying to lead you.
They can lead us into false assumptions economically.
They lead us by false assumptions and scaring people and scaring the people into war.
Be Wary of Government Led Assumptions 00:00:35
So there's no reason to blindly accept everything the government tells us, but there's no reason to accept that it has to be that way.
Chris started his statement off today by saying that libertarians believe in nonviolence and bringing about changes.
And that's what we try real hard to do on the Liberty Report, persuade people to change their habits and to accept this very, very special notion.
Individual liberty can solve most of our problems.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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