Thanks to a FOIA request, an internal document from the Federal Reserve, known as the "Doomsday Book" has been released. The purpose of it is to guide The Fed's actions during emergencies. Emre Kuvvet, professor of finance at Nova Southeastern University says "the central bank—or at least the legal team at its dominant member bank—apparently believes it can rely on precedent to justify virtually any emergency action." Do laws lose their purpose when virtually anything can be justified? Perhaps Tacitus was right: "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With us today we have Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, welcome to the program.
Great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Good.
We have a few interesting subjects today.
We do want to talk about the information coming out and articles written about the Doomsday book.
That sounds sort of really scary, but we'll talk about that.
But before we do that, I want to visit for a few minutes on an article that appeared originally in the Birch Gold Group, and that is written by Brandon Smith, a person we know and follow, because he's certainly done our alley on the monetary issues.
But his point of his article today that I found interesting because there's more to it.
It's nice to say inflation, print money, prices go up.
But it does get a little more complicated than that because there are a lot of variables.
And there is a position in Austrian economics about the subjective theory of values.
So people can do what they want and human action explains all that.
So it's not ABC, and that's why the human action is important.
That's why the Austrian economists don't depend on computers.
The computer people just say, well, we'll take ABC, put them together, manufacture, and we know what the people are going to do.
Well, they don't.
They don't know that because people change their minds and sometimes they prepare for war, the wars don't go well, all that thing.
But anyway, his argument in the article was that not everybody thinks of deflation.
Of course, we had deflation in the depression, and what that meant was the money supply was shrinking, and we had a deep depression.
Things didn't go well.
And he thinks that should be a concern.
I do too.
I think it is because I think that the market wants deflation.
The market wants correction.
And sometimes the inflation is so bad, and the market comes in and starts deflating and ruining the economy, and prices do fall.
And then the government reaction to this has a lot to do with how severe it is and how long it lasts.
And yet, you know, people should know about this, especially if they're in the investment business.
But, you know, in a way, it's related to stagflation.
You know, you have your inflation and then you have a stagnant economy.
You don't have to have a depression to recognize this.
And it sometimes is used to confuse people and mix them up by making reports on inflation and deflation.
But in a way, it's an inflationary depression.
I think people can understand that a little easier because you say, well, inflation is good, and RFID is always saying it's not enough.
That'll stimulate the economy.
And right now they say, well, we can't slow it up.
We got to raise interest rates and get involved.
But the inflationary depression is a real thing because that's what was going on in, say, Venezuela and Vimbalwe.
And that shows that the money supply is overwhelming and the value of dollar and currency is going down.
So you have inflation of the money supply and prices are sky high.
At the same time, it doesn't do anything.
The more they inflate, the worse the economy gets and the slower it is.
And then they end up with a depression.
So that is something to be concerned about, and we don't know exactly what will happen.
And the one thing for sure is the Fed doesn't know either, and they pretend they know, and they have to do that, but it sometimes is just to cover how they're going to protect themselves.
And when things get badly, generally what they do is they argue among themselves because they're interventionists.
Well, we should do today, next week, or tomorrow.
The market is saying this.
And so it becomes very unstable.
And it produces a situation exactly opposite of what would happen if you had a sound currency.
And this would require the F to get rid of the Fed.
So the marketplace has not respected enough that we listen to it, even though the Fed pretends they pay attention.
But right now, we can see that the control and the understanding by the Fed is pretty flimsy.
And therefore, the problems we're facing today with are we going to have mostly inflation or mostly deflation?
I sort of think we're going to have inflation, but there is going to be pockets of deflation, and that's probably going on already because they say, well, are we ever going to have a recession?
I think some people might claim they're in a recession right now.
So sometimes it's just arguing the language and how you describe it.
But I think it's a fascinating article.
And as I said, it was first published on the Birch Gold Group, which reminds me of mentioning generally on Fridays about our relationship with Birch Gold because we partner with them because they're, of course, very interested in gold.
And this past week was a very interesting week on gold.
And yet that doesn't tell us what's going to happen tomorrow or the next week because it's very, very flexible.
You know, things go up and you think, oh, I got it.
And I know exactly two weeks from now, I'm going to buy or sell gold because I know what the price will be.
I learned that early on.
I couldn't do that.
And my philosophy has always been, you know, it's a long-term protection of our money that we earn our wealth.
And that can be done.
And that's what Birch Gold is interested in, is to protect and help individuals protect their wealth.
And it's no easy task, but they're very much interested in these savings groups and having information how to start an IRA or a pension fund where you can put your gold in there, gold, the bullion.
Because for a long time, of course, gold was illegal.
And then it was complex to put it in your pension fund.
And now it's available.
If people want to shift their stocks, regular stocks, into bullion, you can do that.
But if you want to get some help and information from Birch Gold, what you do is you look at that number on the screen.
It exists right now.
And text Ron at 989898.
And the Birch Group will mail you information.
They don't charge you for this, but this will give you a guide.
And I think it's worthwhile.
Even if you say, oh, it doesn't sound right for me.
I think all if you're interested, I have an understanding of money.
It's interesting to me.
I like to go and look at everything and the possibility and get advice and how interpretations are of the event.
So this is one thing you could do to get further involved if you're interested in putting your metals into an IRA account.
And once again, the number, Ron, 989898.
And Chris, I want to now go over to the article that we both have talked about a little bit, and I find also fascinating because it brings back memory.
And the title of the article is Sun Shines on the New York Fed's Doomsday Book.
And this rumor, so-called rumor, has been around a long time.
Oh, they have a record.
They know exactly what they do for every emergency.
And they know if we do this, it'll get worse.
That's usually what they do.
You know, they compound it, certainly in the Depression and the 70s.
They look at it.
They think if just because they create the crises, they don't know how to solve them.
But they can't solve the problems any better than they are by creating these problems.
But anyway, this is an interesting book and an article that was written recently.
The reason I always was fascinated with this, because it's supposed to have the secret plans on what the Fed's going to do and what the government's going to do.
And they do everything in secrecy.
So this book was, you know, there was a lot of talk about this existing, but it was only recently that they were able to get hold of this book and find out, get a little bit better feeling on this.
But my theory on this, even though they don't date this, was that in 1987, when the biggest crash, nominally speaking of the stock market, occurred in 1987, I think it was down 20% in a day, Reagan was in office and he said, oh, we better be careful with it.
So he established the President's Working Group on Financial Market.
We had to have a group of people, you know, at the Fed and Treasury and FBC and SEC, all these things to be prepared for this.
And it was named on Wall Street and others that knew about it as the Plunge Protection Team.
And then everybody would, sometimes it would happen and sometimes people would anticipate the market's going to do this and it did something else.
Oh, the Plunge Protection Team's in there.
It's helping out.
Well, that was a lot of talk and people say that's just conspiracy.
But this conspiracy might be a true conspiracy because I think they very much operate in this manner.
So that is what has been revealed.
It's in the news.
And I think it's a very important subject because it just does one thing.
It complicates timing and how you should do your investments.
But it also, to me, makes the point that you have to find something that protects the best manner possible when there's chaos in the media.
And that is understanding the precious metals.
Chris.
Right, Dr. Paul.
Yeah, this doomsday book apparently was released.
It's an internal document or book that was released on a FOIA request.
Understanding Precious Metals00:11:13
And it's basically, from what I gather, we saw this article in the Wall Street Journal, that it's a bunch of legalese, legal precedents that the Fed can use to handle emergencies.
And the professor that wrote the article says they apparently believe that they can rely on precedent to justify virtually any emergency action.
So the first thing I want to say is, A, we are already in the emergency because the Fed exists.
The Fed is the emergency.
You know, this type of emergency that they're talking about is how the Fed would save themselves.
They're not looking to save us.
They're looking to save themselves in a financial panic.
And apparently they have all the legalese ready to justify anything they want to do.
That further shows us how messed up laws are.
It shows that law has lost virtually its meaning.
And that's typical of authoritarians.
They will manipulate laws and language, especially.
I mean, we saw with COVID how language with the vaccine, you just change what the word vaccine means.
That's all it's done.
And, you know, I like to use, there's a lot of people that don't understand that liberal, if you think of liberals today, the word liberal used to be libertarians, the exact opposite.
But it was hijacked.
You know, this is typical.
You change the meaning of words to make it mean what you want to mean.
So that's why people will say classical liberal.
That means the classical liberals are the libertarians.
So language is used, you know, and manipulated laws are also used as weapons.
One example that came to my mind is a company, if they charge a too high price, according to bureaucrats, they're gouging.
If it's too low, it's dumping, according to bureaucrats.
And if it's the same as their competitors, it's collusion.
So no matter what price you have, if they want to come after you for something, they have the laws all set.
And this is not what law is supposed to be about.
It's totally, and that's why if the Fed has a doomsday book, they have their legal ways of doing whatever they want.
And that's not what law is about.
I want to close this segment by saying I found a quote, and most of us have heard it from Tacitus, and I think he was right.
He said, the more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
And boy, is that right on.
And when you think, how many pages are there now?
Or the Federal Register?
I can't keep up.
How many thousands and thousands of pages?
We get new people in.
Oh, we're going to shrink it.
But it keeps expanding and expanding.
Even when the people are trying to do it, some of them are very sincere.
But the situation, the whole organization of government is so powerful and there's so much money behind it.
It's not going to be very easy until the market demands that it collapse.
And that will be a big, big problem.
But, you know, over the years, most people associate me with an effort to audit the Fed because I want to know what's going on.
And here they are.
They're telling us the doomsday book, but it's been secret all this time.
They had to work hard to get it out.
So the information leaks out.
I think everybody knows that the Federal Reserve works in top secrecy.
I think the Federal Reserve Board chairman and the boards are usually just front people for the people who really have the control.
And those are the oligarchs we have, the people who run the military industrial complex, the welfare state, because they have to have the money.
Now, when this subject came up in the committees, when I was in Congress, it was always I would point out a few of these things, and they said, well, yes, that's true, but the problem isn't the Fed.
The problem is the Congress, which they have a half of truth there.
It is the problem of the Congress.
It's the problem of the people.
People want to spend too much.
So they blame the people.
But then they say, it's always the Congress if they wouldn't spend so much money.
But of course, if we didn't have the Fed that's readily available for financing anything and everything that the bureaucrats put in place as a favorite to the people who are really running the show.
And that's what's happening.
They do have control, and there are some people.
And if you say it's a conspiracy, people frown on that.
But there are two types of conspiracies.
One that's just made up out of thin air, and it's just an assumption.
And the other one is that it's a true conspiracy.
People got together and planned it.
There's a lot of good people conspiring together to bring about liberty.
There are other people getting together and conspiring.
How are we going to spread our effort of cultural Marxism?
So they're doing that all the time.
But when I would bring the subject up to a Federal Reserve Board chairman and say, what's the matter with the audit?
We need to know about this.
And they would hem and haul and say a few decent things, pretending they were all for it.
But then they would always go back to one word, no matter which chairman it was.
They always say, we have to be careful, though, because we have to have independence of the Federal Reserve.
We don't need a lot of people, you know, lobbyists and congressmen and other people knowing what's going on.
So they want independence away from this sinister influence.
But my argument always within, and I warn people, I say, anytime the Fed say they want independence, substitute the word secrecy because that's what their goal is, but they'll never be able to keep it secret.
As time goes on, it'll become more apparent.
And, you know, the markets help tell us that.
And they'll let us know as much as anything.
Even though the people who want to maintain this system, unfortunately, right now they're in control of the justice system and the police department, the people that want to come in and use the guns to enforce the system that we have.
But conditions are getting rockier, and it'll be more necessary than ever that we know what the Fed has in store for us under what's generally outlined in the doomsday book.
But it shouldn't be that complicated.
It should be that we follow the Constitution, have honest money, and have decent people there and a monetary system that does not allow counterfeiting.
Chris?
Exactly, Dr. Paul.
Yes, in this doomsday book, it doesn't surprise me.
Since the very beginning, authoritarians want no restraints.
So they think they could get around anything.
We've all heard of and know of the emperors and kings who said that they were divine, and that's it.
That puts them above everything.
But even when you, oh, and the Soviets, they were outside.
There was no laws.
There were no traditions.
There was nothing, no religion.
Nothing was going to hold them back.
And look, they were a blip on the screen when you look at it.
70 years, that's virtually nothing.
And that's being propped up.
They would have failed a lot sooner, even though they had no restraints on them.
So it doesn't matter if you can get yourself above the law, because there is law that you cannot get yourself above, and that's all the natural laws.
And that's what always puts the nail in their coffin.
Because like everybody, even authoritarians have to deal with limited resources.
They don't have unlimited resources.
So if they're spending all this time and resources going after Trump, those are resources that they're not using, going after somebody else that may be against them, like a Musk or whatever.
So they have to constantly make choices, and they constantly make the wrong choices.
They go over here, but they're beaten over there.
So even if they put themselves above the law, it's still not enough.
And that's why central planning, authoritarianism, empires, they always fall.
So even if they think they got the whole legal system beat, they, in the end, will be beat themselves.
So that's a silver lining to all this.
It's just ugly as all this happens because we have a short time on this earth and we have to deal with all these gangs fighting with one another.
And from this book on the doomsday book, there's a quote in here to try to describe how things can be smoothed out and everybody will be happy.
We'll modify our position, tell the people, have these plans.
Don't let the people get to know what they are.
It might panic them.
But I want to quote one paragraph from this article.
It says, while the Fed's flexibility is crucial, boy, that's an opening, during times of crisis, ensuring that its actions operate within legal boundaries is equally important.
I had to laugh at that.
You know, it starts off with a monetary system and something the Federal Reserve system is totally illegal.
It's technically legal by the law, but it violates everything in the Constitution and common sense and what was believed by the founders of this country.
And as the authority that establishes its mandate, Congress can revise and modify those boundaries.
It'll be taken care of because a lot of smart people are involved in planning the doomsday.
But, you know, that's enough just to scare people to even have that word attached to it.
Doomsday.
Well, politically, doomsday is being talked about realistically.
It's not a secret conspiracy because just common sense tells us there's big problems ahead.
And one number that I look at carefully, because it's expanding exponentially and has a lot to do with settling the dispute on whose fault is it, as is the Congress or the Federal Reserve, it is the payment of the debt increase and the amount of interest that we're paying on the debt, growing exponentially, and it's going to get worse.
It isn't just going up and down and maybe generally trend upward.
This is skyrocketing right now, and there's a lot of blame to go around.
And it's not just Biden.
He contributed to and makes a mess out of things.
But believe me, there's a lot of big spending Republicans that have supported some of these positions, especially the military-industrial complex so often.
But a lot of them, even the military-industrial complex, are smart enough.
They're bipartisan.
Oh, yeah, this is bipartisan.
Power's Peril00:03:08
Both parties were very enthusiastic about Ukraine.
They didn't bother declaring war or anything, but we took it over and we participated with NATO to invade Ukraine and all this nonsense.
But the market is going to answer it, and it means that they better get busy and they better come up and they better get the right information if they want to deal with doomsday.
Chris?
Exactly, Dr. Paul.
And yeah, so doomsday is, in general, it sells, it gets people's attention.
And I say it, you know, there's a lot of doomsdayers that believe in freedom, but they think everyone is doomed.
And I don't buy it.
I think a global totalitarian government is a long shot at best.
It shouldn't be feared, but you pay attention to it.
And the reason I think that is because there are many competing factions.
And they all have their own interests, their own ideologies.
So you'll have some that'd be like, oh, no, this new world order, it's going to be by the elites.
And you have others, no, it's going to be the workers.
And others, no, it'll be the peasants.
And then technocrats will be saying, no, you're all wrong.
It's going to be engineers and scientists.
And so you see how they're never going to agree on this.
And they all think that they're right.
They all think that history is going in their direction, not their opponents who they hate and have to destroy.
So it's not this one big globalist blob that we're up against.
It's competing factions, which is good.
Because if it was one big blob, then we'd be in trouble.
So we basically live in a world of gang warfare and there are these big gangs and the best we can do is get out of the way when they fight each other to the best that we can and preach the opposite.
That's why liberty is the opposite of this.
You want limited power.
It's when people have this great power that they do great damage.
Only great big states that the people have surrendered to have all this power can create world wars.
If power was limited, they wouldn't be able to.
A street gang, you know, they're gangs too.
They can't create world wars.
They don't have the resources and they don't have the people that believe that they should have all this power.
So that's why we need to limit the scope of government.
I'll finish up there, Dr. Paul, saying, you know, liberty is available.
The people just need to want it and they have to see the benefits of it.
And hopefully we help provide those benefits.
You're exactly right.
And it's good, I think, for you to know where the problems are, but you're open to what we suggest here is that the answers are available to us.
It's not like it's a strange mystery and we have to invent something brand new.
But the difference between good and evil, between civil liberties and totalitarian, it's all understanding.
It's understandable.
But to me, the weird thing is, is there's so much greater success on happiness and peace coming from a free society than from a totalitarian.
Understanding Liberty's Remnant00:01:01
And yet people still drift back and accept carelessly the authoritarians who promises them, you know, Nirvana, that everything is going to be okay, there will be no problems whatsoever.
But I think that the conditions will get worse, but I think conditions are getting better for an understanding of the monetary system, the ideas of liberty.
And I think that means that there will be a remnant who will pick up the pieces.
I don't have the optimism of saying, oh, one more election or two, and we're going to have control of the Congress and we're going to reverse all this.
I don't think that's going to happen.
What they're going to do, though, is they, excuse me, I think what will happen is people will realize the difference and we will see a day when we will have our way and we'll able to express ourselves for the cause of liberty.