All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 11, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
25:13
Redefining Reality -- None Dare Call It A Recession

Here we go again...The Biden Administration is trying to change the definition of a recession. We just went through multiple redefinitions of words during the Covid fiasco. Is this how government is supposed to operate? Just make it all up as you go along?

|

Time Text
Lies And Credibility Crisis 00:15:19
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.
It's great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
You know, we're going to straighten out a mess.
There's a mess in Washington.
There's a mess in the economy.
There's a mess over there at the Fed.
There's a mess in the administration.
They're getting their words all mixed up.
It's sort of like they've gotten amnesia and they don't know what's going on.
But that's not news, is it?
That's old news now.
But we want to address one aspect of this because this is the week that they were trying to decide.
Are we in a recession or aren't we?
My argument's been that everybody goes, doesn't go into recession together.
Some rich people never go into recession.
So they're trying to figure out, though, the tradition.
It's been around a long time.
If the GDP goes down two quarters in a row, that is technically a recession.
And that's a bit of fudging, but at least they accepted it.
And it was supposed to be sort of the objective way of defining it because what the government can do or can't do in the midst of a recession, that's emergency.
But all of a sudden, the administration said, they've had enough negative news in the last couple of weeks or a couple months or these two year and a half.
We don't need anymore.
We don't need a recession.
So we're going to get rid of it.
We just will not declare a recession.
And everybody will say, well, I guess things aren't so bad.
And people will just accept because the president has so much credibility.
They say, well, the president's, he's trustworthy, and that's what we want.
He says there's no recession.
There's no recession, so everybody's okay.
So next time they go to the store, they should say to the owner of the store, yeah, I want my bag of groceries.
But that's not $50.
It's only $42 because there is no recession and there is no recession at all and no inflation.
So I don't think it's going to work that way.
I don't think they can go to the gas station and say, well, prices are all messed up.
We have inflation and now we're in the midst of a recession that you can't do this.
The president says so.
But you know what?
I'm mocking all that.
But in a way, that's what they have done in the past, and they're still liable to do it.
They'll say, well, the prices are going up.
There's no inflation of the money supply, no debasement of the currency.
The Fed is not at fault.
So they go on and say, well, what we have to do, there's a mysterious thing going on.
There's an epidemic, and the people have to get rid of it.
So what we'll do is put price controls and wage controls because maybe people are making too much money.
So they come in and they want to correct it.
Of course, it makes the whole thing worse.
But this is something that's been around for a long time.
And it only can happen if you have a central economic planning system, especially if it's run by a central bank that gets to print the money and regulate the whole economy.
And then when the problems pop up, they have to come up with another story.
It's just worse this time.
And it's being said that the administration and the people who speak for the administration are actually lying to us.
Do you think the American people will buy into that, that our president and the administration lies to us?
Have they ever lied us into a war?
No, they wouldn't do that.
Would they ever lie us into some type of an economic crisis over the environment?
No, no, they wouldn't do that either.
Would they do it ever?
Would they ever lie to us about COVID and why we have to sell out our liberties and lock ourselves into our houses?
No, they can't do it.
Why should they believe them?
You know, it's so silly.
It's sort of so sad, too.
But it is obvious that there's a mess and take it telling more lies won't work.
And so often I have made this point that Mises always said, if you write a regulation, expect two new ones then to fix the mistakes that you made with one regulation.
What about the application, which is the theory has been around for a long time?
If you tell a lie, you're going to have to tell several more lies to cover up your first lie.
And it goes on and on until they run out of credibility.
Chris, that might be what we're looking at today.
Why it's not working?
Because this president, I would say, has lost credibility.
The Fed is losing credibility.
Our foreign policy is losing credibility.
And I just work hard to make sure that freedom doesn't lose credibility and make sure that it is the authoritarians, interventionism, Mickey Mouse type money, all this kind of stuff.
That should be losing credibility.
Quite frankly, Chris, I think some of that is coming about.
I think that people are less skeptical or more skeptical and they don't trust the government as well.
So instead of lamenting that, if they're doing the right thing, and they should be skeptical about our government is telling us because it's so dangerous when they tell us these lies.
But most people now don't believe the government, and that's what we're in the midst of.
But then things don't get better.
So a lot of frustration out there.
And unfortunately, it's turning into anger.
That's why we should be concerned about it.
Chris?
Absolutely, Dr. Paul.
You know, before I begin, I do want to point out that because a lot of people are going to miss him, but Daniel McAdams is giving a speech at Mises University this week.
So he's going to be out the rest of the week.
It's a wonderful program given by the Mises Institute.
So we're very happy for him and wish him a lot of luck.
In the meantime, you're going to see me a little bit more this week, and I hope to make it worth your while.
As for our show, yeah, Dr. Paul is right on the money.
We're living in Orwellian times.
And Orwell made, you know, he helped everyone understand how this works.
You know, you just change the definition of words to suit your agenda.
You know, war is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
What happens is the people in power, truth and lies, there's virtually no difference between them.
They carry the same weight.
You know, whatever works.
You just, in order to get what you want right now, just say whatever you have to say.
And amazingly, they do not care about the consequences.
They just want what they want right now, even though the lies always come back to bite them.
You know, my entire life has been filled with stories about the disastrous wars that the U.S. has conducted, whether it be Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria.
It's a carousel of wars.
And they're all based on lies.
Does it matter?
They just keep going.
Just make new lies on top of the old ones to keep everything going.
We just went through the redefinition of vaccines.
Get one shot.
No, get two shots.
Get three and four.
And so you can see how this works.
They just want you to believe what they say in the moment.
Now, when you get to this point in our society where you have to make everything up as you go along, it is a big signal, a big red flashing light that says that this current system is coming apart.
And if you look through history, that's exactly what it looks like.
Society cannot run on lies.
Now, the good part is, you know, even though lies are dominant now, for those who see, look for opportunities, if you understand and can convey the truth, there's a big opportunity coming in the future for you.
So, but in the meantime, we have to deal with these Orwellians in the White House.
You know, in one place where they have been lying for a long time, and we can find the date when it really took off, and that's the big lie dealing with the principle of money.
And I've used the date so often, everybody will know what it is.
And that is, I was very impressed because it was a predictable date.
That was August 15th, 1971, when all the lies told about our system.
We were king of the hill, and we were in many ways.
We had the military, we had the economic power, we had the largest amount of gold, we were on a pseudo-gold standard, and it was working rather well.
We were spared a lot of the dangers and destruction of World War II.
So, it was still predictable correctly that we were still printing too much money.
But August 15th, what we decided to do as a country, matter of fact, people didn't even know because it was all done in secret by executive order with Nixon.
So, they decided that we would totally dislink the dollar from gold.
And they closed the gold window, which meant they were promising gold to foreigners that held paper money at $35 an ounce.
So, they changed the definition of the unit of account, and it became impossible to predict exactly what interest rates would be if you couldn't even define what the unit of account was.
And so, they needed somebody to set the interest rates.
At the beginning, it wasn't too bad because there was still a lot of wealth in the country.
But as time went on, it was more necessary to face up to the fact.
The truth of the matter is when you don't have a unit of account and you have a secret central bank that prints money at will for the special interest to fight war and welfare, it doesn't work.
It distorts the economy, causes too much debt and too much malinvestment, and it finally has to come to an end.
And now, most of the time, they could tinker with it on the edges, and some of the debt would be liquidated, and we would go back into our savings, and things would put back together.
But since 2008, that hasn't been the case.
And we've had this recession going on since there.
They talk about, you know, are we in a recession now or before?
Believe me, there's a lot of people who have been in a recession a long time.
And just because the GDP numbers are going up, they're fictitious.
They're lying to us.
And most of the investors know this, but they still respond to it because they figure a lot of other people are going to.
We respond to it because it's a collective idea.
But we don't have to decide whether it's true or not.
We're just trying to figure out how will the market respond to something the Fed does.
So when they tinker with the interest rates, you know, there's a response.
Just right now, we're in the midst of all this.
Are we in a recession or not?
And they're trying to figure out, should we raise the interest rates?
This is a Fed.
Should we raise the interest rates a half a percent or 0.75%?
And, you know, interest rates are still negative.
And since interest rates, you should think about interest rates as being something that has to be related to the CPI going up.
So if the real CPI is going up and nobody knows what it is, but it's not 2%.
It's not 1% like they claim.
They have to, the CPI is going up.
So interest rates, technically, you could argue, well, if the market was working, it'd probably be 10%.
So if you were a saver and you wanted to protect your future, you could save money and you'd be rewarded.
But now, who wants to save and see there have a nest egg that's not earning any interest, just shrinking away?
You know, it's so destructive.
And the recession has been there, and it's going to get much, much worse.
Someday they might even call it a depression.
And this to me is a real tragedy.
And it's not complex.
It's just a matter of defining the unit of account.
They're trying to define what a recession is.
And believe me, they don't want the truth there, so they have to lie to it.
But what we need now is honesty applied to the unit of account and say, you know, the unit of account is nothing.
We don't know what it is.
And what we need is a unit of account, which founders knew about this, and they knew about it when they had to restore the gold standard after the Civil War period and the chaos that exists.
So this is something that's not complicated.
But right now, this explosion, yes, we're in a recession.
We've been in a recession.
It could be for many people a depression.
And right now, the real wealth is shrinking.
But can you tell the truth if you're the president?
Well, first thing, I don't think they know it, know what the truth is, so they're not likely to tell us.
But if it's going to reflect the whole idea, the naivety of this thing, if they know the truth, the people are going to penalize you.
No, I happen to have a secret theory that if you're in office and involved in politics and if you tell the truth instead of being punished, you actually are rewarded.
Chris?
Yes, Dr. Paul.
And, you know, recession, the moment the Fed starts printing money, recession is inevitable.
They plant the seed once they start printing money, and they print money, trillions and trillions.
So recessions are unavoidable.
Because all of the printed money creates all these bad loans and investments, they have to be unwound.
Recessions are the unwinding of all the mischief that the Fed created by creating new money.
Now, recessions can turn into depressions when the government starts to intervene and try to make things go up, you know, with all their policies, wage controls, price controls.
You know, that's what happened with the Great Depression.
First, you had Hoover.
He massively intervened.
He broke precedent with all presidents before him.
And then FDR made Hoover look like a lemonade stand with all his interventions in the market.
And you ended up with the Great Depression.
Now, every president wants all of this to happen on the next guy's watch.
They don't want any of this happening during their term.
But it's largely out of their control.
This is the Federal Reserve is in charge of these booms and busts.
They are the ones that make the decision.
And right now, they have to make a decision.
Do they keep inflating and keep destroying the value of the dollar?
Or do they raise rates and destroy the bubble that they created?
They're going to have to destroy one of those two things.
They have no choice.
So we're going to wait and see which one they choose.
We constantly make the case of the Fed and Dr. Paul since 1976 that no one should ever have this type of power, you know, to control the monetary system in such a way with manipulating rates and counterfeiting money.
Moral Bankruptcy In America 00:09:49
But, you know, unfortunately we have this situation and everyone, including all of us, are going to have to learn this lesson the hard way.
Well, you know, on your first step, Chris, I paid close attention to it because you made the point that they don't they don't express shame.
You know, they they do this.
This this is true on everything the government does.
You know, if they get us into war, you know, and the war goes badly, and we went to war illegally.
It was immoral.
It was not proper.
It wasn't declared.
We didn't have the money for it.
All the things that couldn't justify a just war.
But a lot of people die.
A lot of Americans have died since World War II, since that was the last time we declared a war.
And a lot of suffering have occurred.
And not only the Americans have suffered, but the people who were unfairly hit and attacked.
When you think of the NATO war that's going on in Ukraine, think of all the innocent people over there that are suffering, plus a lot of other people.
It's just as astounding.
But it is true.
There's no shame.
Now, some people sort of know what's going on, and they can just brush it over and say, well, that's the price you have to pay and all.
But others are just brainwashed into believing this is a very proper thing.
But the shame business, I think, is very important because if you're seeking truth and you do something really stupid or really evil and a lot of people die, you know, if you have an iota of a desire to seek truth, there should be a little bit of shame shown and a recourse from that and say, you know, maybe I made a mistake.
I shouldn't have done that.
And we should change our ways.
That doesn't happen very often.
And so they don't show the shame.
But that becomes a philosophy in itself.
And that's what I think is running this country behind the scenes.
And that is the people who are the cultural Marxists.
A lot of clout.
They're in a lot of places that are running the show and many places, even the Federal Reserve, even though I think they're a minority group of people.
But they have a firm belief that you can't know the truth.
Nobody knows the truth.
So they don't even seek it.
And there's a lot of people still in this country and throughout the world think that that is one of the prime reasons the human race exists, is to seek truth and knowledge and seek excellence and find out what makes things tick, but always seeking the truth.
But that's not the case with annihilation.
And the nihilists are very, very prevalent in very important places because they don't have shame.
Maybe they would change their mind if that happened.
But it's up to the people who understand the difference between, you know, whether it's a recession or the gold standard, whatever, or how you go to war.
It's up to the people who know and understand what it would be like to seek for truth.
It doesn't mean that every individual has a monopoly and a complete control of the truth.
No, it's an ongoing process of always seeking the truth of the matter and what's true under the circumstances, the economic circumstances.
But certainly right now we're witnessing more so than ever and this whole idea of just denying the truth.
Well, you can't change the words.
They think nobody will notice.
But Chris, you mentioned the people will wake up and they're starting to wake up.
And that's really good news.
So I would say it's very worthwhile for us to participate in doing our best to understand the truth and encourage others to do the same thing.
Fantastic, Dr. Paul.
I will finish up by saying without the Fed, we would not have to live through these crazy booms and busts that affect all of us.
Even with sound money, though, this should be pointed out, you can still have booms and busts, but they would be more localized.
For example, if a natural disaster occurs somewhere and there's a mass migration of people into a new area, you're going to have a real estate boom there.
But that does not affect everyone everywhere.
But because of the Fed controlling the money, which is a part of every single transaction everywhere, we all have to play this boom-bust game, whether we like it or not.
And unless you know how this game is played, you're going to lose eventually, whether it be your house, your investment portfolio.
If you don't understand how this works with the Fed, you're the target.
Now, as Dr. Paul pointed out in the beginning, there are plenty of people who do understand.
They'll make money on the way up, they'll make money on the way down, and everything is fine for them.
Unfortunately, most people do not understand.
They have no idea what is happening to them, and they end up suffering tremendous pain that is really not their fault.
And there's only one way to get out of this.
People that watch this show know exactly what that is, and it's what Dr. Paul has been preaching for many decades.
First, audit the Fed, and then once you audit them, you will come to only one conclusion.
We have to end the Fed.
There you go.
I like that suggestion.
So, you know what?
One time I was having an interview with Alan Greenspan.
And, you know, most people know about him being a gold standard person until they ask him to run the Fed.
He said that, well, his beliefs have been modified.
So I got to ask him the question about that.
And it postulated, you know, if we had that not having the gold standard, you know, erases some of these benefits to seek the truth about economics and what the interest rate should be, for instance.
You could find a real interest rate.
And he was, you know, he was nonchalant, very polite.
He says, yes, that's true.
The gold standard did all this and all.
I said, well, why aren't we doing it now?
He says that he says that the people in central planning at the Federal Reserve have learned how to use a fiat currency and make it work like a gold standard.
And I thought, wow, that is so far removed from reality that they're going to manipulate because it does exactly the opposite.
Instead of getting real interest rates, you get nothing, getting some breaks put on spending, increases everything.
And it turns into a taxing machine because that's the way they monetize debt.
So everything that we talk about involves deceit by our government.
And that's been around, I'm sure, for a long, long time.
And the more moral a society is, the better.
And our founders recognize this and say, you know, you're going to have a free society and you're going to have a republic.
But they were a little bit leery about it.
But if you don't have a moral people and a religious people, they say it will be impossible.
It will not last.
So I think we're at this point where we have a financial bankruptcy and a moral bankruptcy in this country.
So if that doesn't change, which is basically a little bit above just studying charts to decide whether or not, are we in a recession or aren't we?
How are we going to lie our way out of this one?
It's so far removed.
But in all the areas, I think that we have to be cautious about what our government tells us.
Because, you know, in economic policy, which we're talking about today, all the statistics, their CPI, that's not, well, it's not a good measurement, but they're not legitimate.
They just change it.
And now they want to change the definition of recession, as if that's going to make a difference.
But then there's also the medical propaganda.
Look at what happened under COVID.
The culture of Marxists wanted control and power and chaos, and they got it by taking over and saying, well, it was right out in front.
The good scientists were arguing the case that natural immunity has not been canceled.
And they lost their jobs over that.
So that is the real tragedy.
But what about the probably, this could be the biggest tragedy, and that is lions into war.
And all these things represent a warring type of atmosphere because if you're not aware of the danger of global warming and climate control, you'll be charged with treason.
So we have a war against you.
You're warring against us.
You're murderers.
And that's the kind of language we have.
So we're a long way off from people accepting the idea that in spite of maybe the apparent immediate consequence of telling the truth, is something that people would have to wake up and say, not doing that is much more serious, much more dangerous, and one of the major reasons we're suffering as we are today.
Thanking Listeners 00:00:04
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
Export Selection