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Oct. 13, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
33:08
Wars & Inflation Thrive on Lies

The purpose of the U.S. military is to defend America, and not to perpetually intervene in conflicts around the world. Never-ending wars have bankrupted many nations throughout history. We should not pretend that we are immune from such an outcome. Endless wars need endless money. The Fed's printing press must counterfeit dollars to pay for them. Rampant inflation has also bankrupted many nations. Wars and inflation are the destroyers of nations.

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War's Impact on Gold Inflation 00:09:03
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, good to see you today.
Great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Good.
We're going to address the subject from an economic way about what the war does and what it does to inflation, because the two go together.
But I've maintained that sometimes the definition of inflation and understanding the economics of it always gets distorted and is described in political terms.
And that's why, you know, even the economic reports you have to be wary of, because when the government does it, they may have something out in their scheme.
There may be a benefit they think they're going to get if they change it.
But there was a lot of activity in the past week, about a week or so ago, the gold market was really hit hard.
It went down after one of the PPI reports were out.
And it sounded like, well, it should be going up.
But it actually went down.
And as soon as it gets last year, as soon as it got anywhere near 1900, there was usually a sharp correction.
And yet today and this week, there's a tremendous difference.
But right now, I think the thing that's putting the most pressure on the interest is the war.
Even though with the war starting, gold didn't jump up because there must not have been a conviction.
But I think the way things are going there, that is.
So perception-wise, that is the reason.
But just that perception, it makes sense, but the perception itself is not the inflation.
The inflation and the money supply going up and the gold going up, that is something a little bit different than just saying, well, this is going to in the future have an effect.
But right now, today, gold is up very sharply.
And it's one of the reasons why I work with Birch Gold and partner with them because there's a lot to learn.
I tell people so often that I got fascinated with our first declaration and really an important declaration of bankruptcy in 1971 when we closed the gold winner.
We said, well, we printed too much money.
We can't honor our commitment.
And that, to me, was a serious thing.
And gold was $35 an ounce.
And the next 10 years after that happened, gold went up as $800.
So the whole thing is there's a lot you can predict, but there's a lot of misinformation about inflation because too many times it serves the interest of the establishment to get people convinced.
Well, inflation is when the CPI goes up.
And that's not true.
Yes, the CPI can go up when they've inflated the currency and debased the currency.
So there's a connection.
But one reason why they do that and give us that misinformation is they do not want people target their concerns at the Fed.
It's the Fed's fault.
It's the Fed's fault.
Well, they're the major participants.
They're the enzyme of inflation.
But they would rather people think about, well, maybe labor unions costs going up and maybe there was a COVID virus that did it or something else.
They'll find some of the things that they can blame somebody else profiteering, you know, or oil prices.
But those are not the inflation.
But one of the factors that we want to spend a little bit more time with today will be on the issue of the inflating the money supply and the issue of war.
But in the meantime, I think we'll continue, as we always do, watch carefully what's going on with gold and gold hovering around $1,900.
It's done it several times.
But probably when it gets over solidly over $1,900, it just might start a much longer term surge in the gold price.
But the market will determine that.
That's why I don't predict and say we know what will happen in three months from now because nobody knows that.
Sometimes they guess right, but that's the one thing.
But Birch Gold's been in the business a long time, and I've worked with them for a couple years, and they are offering some information now.
So if you would like to get some free information from Birch Gold dealing with the gold issue, what you can do is text Ron 989898, and they'll send you the information.
They won't charge for that, but there will be some information.
And even though I have studied gold for a long time, I still read just about everything.
I read everybody's opinion because I'm just fascinated with all.
And it's not like I know everybody's going to do it.
So it's good to have different opinions.
And that's why I'm interested in getting as many people involved as possible.
I also know when the big crunch comes, the more people who are protected with gold and the more people who understand it will understand why the changes will have to be made.
The reforms are not always thought.
It's not a pie in the sky.
That's what they're doing now.
Any problem we've had, especially in the last decades, all they do is whether it's war or social problems, whether just print more money, deficits don't matter, all that nonsense.
So this is the reason why I advocate getting them more information.
Once again, if you'd like to get some of this free information from Birch Gold, text Ron 989898.
And now we're going to go on and talk a little bit about what's going on now with why is the war continuing as such and is that having the effect in pumping up the gold price?
And I certainly think that is the case.
The war is.
And you say, people will say the war caused inflation.
There's a war going on.
There's anticipation.
That's a partial truth because that generally happens, but it isn't the inflation.
Why the gold prices go up and general price inflation goes up is because they know that if a war breaks out, there will be such chaos.
There will be more spending, more debt, and there will be a requirement for the real engine of inflation.
And that is when people get scared about this and have to protect the people, take care of them, and spend the money, and they don't have the money.
People know what is the government going to do?
They're going to print money.
And they've been doing it.
But it's amazing to me how long they've been doing this with no restraints, a little bit of gabbing about it, like they are right now in Congress, gabbing about how do we cut some of this spending.
But most of them don't even care.
And the ones who do care, they can't do anything about it.
So the conditions are that when they say it's inflationary to have a war or something else, it sort of is the incentive for the inflation.
The real inflation is narrowed down to the Fed.
And that's why over the years I've concentrated on the Fed and want to audit of the Fed, understand the Fed, understand the monetary issue.
And even during the time we had the Bratton Woods, and we were pretending we were still on the gold standard by saying, oh, yes, we will convert our dollar into gold at $35 an ounce for foreigners.
And we weren't even allowed to own gold.
So it's been around.
It represents a bankruptcy.
And right now, I think it's really on the verge of doing something.
But only time will tell.
And the market, in spite of all the power of the Fed and the government and the spending, yes, we can anticipate what we're going to do eventually, but we don't know.
We didn't know last week that gold wouldn't do very well, even there was some announcement.
And today is soaring.
We don't know exactly about tomorrow.
But one thing we do know is they're going to keep spending.
They are unable to deal with the debt.
The debt is going to continue to go up.
And guess what?
They're going to print money to monetize the debt.
And that means the value of the dollar is going down.
And that means almost any price is going to rise until we straighten out our monetary system.
Chris?
Very good, Dr. Paul.
Yes.
War and inflation, they go together.
They're both upheld by lies.
Military Defense vs. Domestic Decay 00:02:08
And they both lead to demise of nations throughout history.
And yet nations don't seem to learn.
They keep repeating over and over.
And our nation unfortunately succumbed to the lure of empire.
And, you know, we have to go back to basics.
And it's sad that I even have to point this out, but that's the way it is.
You know, the purpose of the U.S. military is to defend America.
You know, anybody could go get a map out, look at America.
That's what the military is for, to defend that part of the world and the people in it.
But that's, you know, that went out the door a while ago.
And they decided to intervene in conflicts all over the world all the time.
And once you start doing that, it's the rest of the world becomes much more important than that place on the map at home.
You know, and we just talked about this week.
Dr. Paul and Daniel, they're now sending money to Ukraine, to Israel, and to Taiwan, all at the same time.
Meanwhile, here at home, everything is seemingly falling apart with people on the streets, with our infrastructure, with our borders.
We could list this stuff all day.
And this is what happens.
And as the world slips out of their fingers, as it must, because you can't conquer the world, they start to resent us here at home.
You start to feel like they don't really care about us here.
And when you look at the border, how do you not come to that conclusion?
And when you look at Congress with Kamala Harris and Pelosi holding up Ukraine flags and they're wearing Ukraine flags on their lapels, what's going on?
This is the U.S. Congress.
What are they doing?
But this is the lure of empire.
And what happens is you can't fix the problems 6,000 miles away or 1,000 miles away any more than a father and mother, instead of taking care of their household, going down the street into all the neighborhoods trying to cure alcoholism and domestic abuse and this and that.
They'll eventually exhaust themselves because you cannot solve all the problems of the world.
You do not have the resources.
Printing Money, Creating Trouble 00:11:43
You do not have the knowledge.
And what happens is your home, your own home, your own kids will fall apart as a result.
So this is where we are.
And it's an unfortunate situation.
You know, Chris, you asked a good question about do they know what they're doing?
I spent a couple years up there.
And let me tell you, they don't know what they're doing.
And that's a big problem.
But they know how to talk political, politicians, like, and make promises and things.
But the problem is there's a limit to all this, and that we're facing that.
And that's why they can't even agree on a speaker because the political parties are there to pass out the loot that is taken from the people through either taxation or the inflation by just printing the money.
So that is the real problem.
And they do not know exactly what happened.
But I see that perception in that lack of knowledge starting, you know, I mentioned 1971, but that was a consequence of what really started in the progressive era.
You know, Chris has already brought the subject up, you know, about war and inflation and printing money and deficits.
But, you know, that was 1913, and that's when the foreign policy was changing, and that's when Woodrow Wilson said, let's make this join a war and make the world safe for democracy.
But the progressive universities were introducing these ideas too.
They introduced the idea of the income tax.
Who owns what you earn?
Well, the government owns everything because they take everything and let you use a certain amount on it.
And if that isn't enough, they just keep printing money and diluting the value.
So the progressive era and what was going on down there has ushered in an age where all this stuff happened.
But, you know, the ability for the market to respond, I think, is just unbelievable because people will say, well, things got pretty good, you know, in the 50s.
In the 60s, people had their houses.
Things weren't as bad as they were now.
But, you know, that's all deception.
And it also shows that there has been a lot of wealth.
There still is a lot of wealth.
But what's happening now, the people are waking up.
Just as they woke up about the overreach on our civil liberties on COVID, the people are waking up on the economics as well.
And interestingly enough, you know, this whole idea of how much can they spend on so-called national defense or national security.
And they do that, but they don't have the money is the big thing.
So they have to print the money, and that causes the problems.
And that leads to social disorder because the distribution of the wealth, the shrinkage of wealth happens when you do this to the monetary system.
Some people lose a lot more than others percentage-wise, and that's usually the poor and the middle class.
They get hurt the most.
And who benefits the most?
Well, if it's war, I imagine that the military-industrial complex.
They just happen to be there making a lot of money.
And what about if you have a natural disaster that was really not so natural?
It was sort of government concocted, and that was the overreach with the COVID.
And that took a while, a couple years of all this suffering, and still people believe a lot of that nonsense.
And yet, a lot of people finally woke up to it.
So it's not something that we can't get people's attention, and they'll want to do the same thing.
But that whole thing in recent weeks about closing down the government has to do with funding, just a minority of Republicans that wanted to make sure there was no more funding to the Ukraine.
And that got the attention, which means that they must have conceived of it themselves or they heard from their constituents.
Why are we spending that much money when we don't have it and people are starting to suffer?
So that to me is all optimism because people are perceptive enough to connect the two.
But it's still very, very difficult because the temptation to say, well, that may be true, but I need to buy lunch tomorrow.
I want a check sent to me.
And the government needs it too.
They need to take care of it.
They're supposed to make us safe and all this nonsense.
So they will be pacified for a while, not realizing that the long term is not long term much anymore.
The long term is already here.
People always warned it.
I did too.
The next generation is really going to suffer.
I don't talk that way as much anymore because I think it's this generation.
I mean, when you look at how many young people are still living with their parents for economic reasons.
So, no, I think that next generation that people predicted would suffer, they've already had a bit of suffering from that.
So that's why the system needs revamped.
That's why the monetary system needs looked at.
And that is certainly a good reason why we have to quit these crazy wars that we fight by just printing more money and not achieving anything which is actually a negative for our national security.
It doesn't help.
So I still want to remain the optimist, but I also want to remain the person to try to warn people what's going on and that the correction is not simple and pleasing to everybody and it's not automatic.
But it has to be done because it'll happen.
The correction will come.
The system will, you know, just sort of collapse on itself.
And the suffering could be much worse.
That if we just say, this is what we have to do, it's, yes, it's going to be painful.
But the maximum, the worst thing you can think of, wow, they want a lot less government, a lot less taxes.
That's not such a bad idea.
I would think we should be better at convincing people that come our way because it makes a whole lot of sense.
Freer and more well-to-do is a goal that should be sought and can be achieved through a free society, a free society.
Right, Dr. Paul.
And we plead our case every week, especially on Fridays.
We talk about the, you know, when you think that the government is there to help you, you know, you may think that, but it's going to end up hurting you.
And we pointed it out with everything.
Minimum wage laws, how it hurts the people it's supposed to help.
You can't print $6 trillion in the CARE Act.
It's going to drive up prices.
But when that $6 trillion was on the line, people wanted their checks.
And now look what happened.
Prices are skyrocketing.
This is basic supply and demand.
But the propaganda is so good and so effective that we just keep going through these things.
And it's not just here where domestic policies, where the government says they're going to help, that they end up hurting you.
It's also overseas.
Think of all the countries that the U.S. went out to help.
It's countless with Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria.
And the latest being Ukraine.
And this is just the recent.
Now you could go back to Vietnam and Korea and before it hurts the people that they're going to help.
Look at Ukraine.
This is generational damage that has been done with half a million dead.
And the Americans flipped on a switch.
I'm sure most Americans still don't know where Ukraine is.
But, you know, government says, look this way, and everybody goes this way.
And that's the end of Ukraine.
You know, I mean, is there a country out there that anybody could think of?
They say, man, we had some problems, but Lindsey Graham and Nikki Haley came and fixed everything.
No, Not one country, and it'll never happen because you can't go and bomb people into freedom and prosperity.
But, you know, again, the propaganda is so effective.
They know how to zero in on those who are speaking rationally and, you know, and to censor them and to they're the bad guys.
And, you know, they get away with it until, as we, you know, and as Dr. Paul points out, they eventually have to throw in the towel because the money is gone and they're bankrupt.
Very good.
You know, because events evolve differently when the inflation comes, when they inflate the currency, interest rates are lower than they should be, and deficits are encouraged, and the military-industrial complex, you know, get what they want.
But it's not predictable.
It's predictable in the sense you know those things will come, but you don't know when and which segment of the economy might be hit harder than the other.
And that's why people say, well, we don't understand that.
If you said, well, I've had people come up and say, look, if you're going to inflate the currency in order to tide everybody over and you increase the money supply by 10%, what's the matter with that?
Wages will go up 10% and prices will go up 10% and everybody will be happy.
But it's not that way.
It doesn't work.
Some prices might go down and some people may benefit tremendously from it.
So it doesn't work that way.
But you can participate in understanding why if deficits are run up and the people are dependent on just fiat money, printing money, and the Fed takes care of all the PR work and makes sure that everybody understands how noble the Fed is, then they can get away with this.
But, you know, I think the one example of what happened shortly after the Fed was started, which was in 1913, of course, it inflated for World War I, and they inflated it in the 20s.
But during the 20s, there were people predicting there's a bubble, there's a bubble there, and there's going to be a crash.
And nobody believed them because the CPI didn't go up.
For some reason, well, there is a reason.
There was an increase in productivity, and productivity lowers prices, which is good.
But some of the economists believe when prices are dropping, that's deflation, and they don't like that.
But the increase in production lowered the prices, and the CPI didn't go up, and they say, there's no bubble, there's no bubble.
But the price of stocks went up, and it was distorted, and the values were distorted.
And the people who did predict, even back then, that no, there's a bubble there, and it's going to crash.
The point being is you don't know exactly where it's going to go and what's going to happen.
Sometimes they know it's going to happen, but they have to be in denial.
And the people who are benefiting by it, you know, figure, I'm going to get what I can out of this, and I'll, you know, try to, you know, survive it all.
But the greatest threat to us, Chris, I think under these conditions, when there's turmoil and economic and political distress, is the loss of liberty.
People Want Safety and Security 00:09:59
And people want to know, ask me quite frequently, okay, how do you protect yourself?
What do we invest in and what we do?
Well, everybody knows I think metals are very important in doing that.
But to tell you the truth, my message to individuals that want to know, I think people should talk about and understand why it's liberty that you have to preserve and protect.
Because if you don't have a free society and there's chaos and then there's more authoritarianism, look how much authoritarianism increased during the COVID epidemic.
And right now, I mean, the First Amendment's in shambles.
The FBI and the CIA, nobody trusts them anymore.
So the more chaos we have, the more liberties we lose.
And that is why, just think, if you could guarantee that you're going to have the Bill of Rights and that protection, you mean we could speak out and not have a threat and somebody coming through in combination with social medias and the FBI and silence us?
No, it's not that way.
So that is the reason why all this is important in understanding it and who's really benefiting to say, well, in this mix, and maybe top of the list for me is the top of the list is protecting our freedom so that we can express ourselves and debate the issues and try to change things peacefully.
Yes, it would be painful, but let me tell you, if nothing is done, then the big bus comes, it'll be a lot worse than just trying to work our way out of this.
Very good, Dr. Paul.
I will finish up.
Yeah, when it comes to empire, you know, I talked about how the politicians delude themselves, but unfortunately, it trickles down to the American citizens.
They also have false beliefs that lead ultimately to regret.
You know, as American citizens, our job is to keep our government, our government, in check, just like it's our government's job to protect this land.
Our job is to keep them from going everywhere else.
And obviously, the American people have failed miserably at that over the last 100 years.
We're supposed to be the leash to keep these power-hungry people from going all over the world on all their adventures, and no one else can do it.
People in another country can't do it for us.
So it's our primary job.
But they know how to get you out of that by, oh, look, Ukraine-Russia, pick which side are you on?
No, we're on the side of you stay right here.
You know, it's not your job to go out there.
And then they'll go to the next one.
Iran, or not, yeah, Iran, Israel, Gaza.
Go ahead, pick.
And then they'll show you all the images and stuff.
And it's not our job to pick.
We are Americans.
We have to keep our government in check.
Because once they go out there, they're going to bankrupt us.
And they're going to mess things up out there, which they've done, you know, over and over and over and over.
How many times do they have to do it?
Obviously, they have to keep going because Americans still don't get it.
So we have to break out of this empire mentality, not just the politicians, the American people, even the MAGA people.
We thought that they were America first.
They're now gone.
So we have a big job ahead of us, the people that want true America first, non-intervention overseas, and then limit government as far as possible here at home.
Very good, Chris.
You know, the policies that we're talking about have to be sold to the people, and they're easy because it's all for free.
Oh, you're going to send me a check, you're going to take care of us.
But what they use is sounds good.
Like for the military, it's always for national defense and go after the evil person.
And this is something that most people, you know, really want.
I want it too, but I don't want it under the conditions that we have today.
During the presidential campaigns, I was accused of being anti-American and anti-military because I said, bring the troops home.
Don't fight those wars.
They're undeclared and they're not going to do it.
And they're bankrupting it.
But no, that was a reason to be accused of being unpatriotic.
And they will use that.
And it's very effective.
People want to be patriotic and they want to love their country.
But maybe arguing the case for liberty is a good way to express those feelings, which is something I believe that we should do.
And, you know, the other things that the money is spent on in a welfare state is if you do that, you care about people.
You're a humanitarian.
You're going to feed the poor and you're going to provide the jobs.
And, you know, on and on.
And who wants to be declared is not a humanitarian.
He doesn't care about people.
The truth is, the free society and sound money is the most wonderful type of government ever designed because that is where you have the maximum amount of freedom and prosperity is when you have people assuming responsibility for themselves and they have their freedom.
And you don't have to fib to them and say that, well, if you don't settle for food stamps for everybody, then you don't care about people.
They never say, well, it doesn't seem, you have a point.
It doesn't seem to work real well.
Oh, yeah, the food stamp program is great.
But by the time it gets really going, the food stamps all go to the wealthy people from their lobbying for it, you know, in the various lobbying forms.
It doesn't work.
So this temptation to say, well, I'm for national defense and I'm going to do this and I'm going to support this and I'm a humanitarian.
I don't want people to starve.
Well, yes, it sounds good, but it's exactly the opposite thing to be doing.
What you want to do is give people freedom and give them an incentive.
And this could be applied to what's going on in our school system too.
The way the federal government has handled our school system certainly hasn't helped.
But if you don't vote for every penny for the federal government school system, then you don't care about educating kids.
And that is also playing on emotion.
But the one other thing that they use that is maybe even more difficult to explain to people because people want to be safe.
I want to be safe.
I want my family to be safe.
And they'll use this term safety.
We have to make everybody safe and secure.
And they have to be taken care of and protected and safe from these enemies.
And the truth is, in a republic and with our Constitution, the safety, I believe what we had planned is a way to get the most safety for people.
But if that's the goal, that means you have to really do everything and everything.
You have to control the people.
And that's why you have to have OSHA coming out of your ears to tell you what you can do because we have to make you safe.
You know, people couldn't be safe if you had a policeman at the front door of every house in the nation.
You're still going to be unsafe.
But if you had freedom and you understood the Second Amendment and self-reliance and determination, then it might be a lot different.
But it to me is a sad thing because people get sold on this.
I understand it, but they're misled when they think national defense, I can't go against anything, it's for national security.
And humanitarian, I'm a humanitarian and I want everybody to have free medical care.
And also, I want everybody to be safe.
And they get sold that.
Most of the time, it's the far-left progressives that promoted this.
But it's mixed up because you can't say that it's only the far left that invented a non-interventionist foreign policy because they've shifted where at one time the left during the 60s were very much anti-war on Vietnam.
But now they're with the Republicans.
It's all mixed up because they accept this idea that the government has to do this.
But the real truth is, the big money is behind all this demagoguing because they say what we'll do.
So the bilateral industrial complex benefits by making sure people are scared and they have to spend all those bills and say if you don't, you're against our military and you're against our freedoms.
And the same way with humanitarian things.
If you don't vote for that, they accuse you of being a bad person.
You have to be confident enough that liberty is nothing to be ashamed of, and it is the best way for people to live.
And the freer a person or a country is, the better off everybody is.
But that is a moral subject.
And to protect what might be in a written constitution can be pretty nice, but you have to have a moral society that will actually understand and follow those rules.
And that is where I think we come up short.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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