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Aug. 1, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
19:12
#AskRonPaul: $35 Trillion U.S. Debt, Gold & Bitcoin Surge, Would Ron "Do It All Over Again?"

We're back with another edition of "Ask Ron Paul," where Dr. Paul takes viewer questions.

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Time Text
Debating Precious Metals Standards 00:13:31
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, welcome to the program.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing fine.
I understand this program is a little bit different than most of our programs.
And you delight in this type of program because you get a chance to put me on a hot seat and see if I'm just reading all behind my notes, and I have to answer questions.
Oh, boy.
Matter of fact, I like this.
We can't put it on your teleprompter.
You have to.
Well, anyway, so how do we do this again?
Do you make these questions up or are these real?
These are real viewers and real people.
We put out the notice earlier in the day, and we ask people if they want to be on the show.
They can put in a question.
And if it's one that interests you, then we put it up.
And so I think it's a fun, it's a popular feature, and it's fun to bring it back.
So let's dig into it, Dr. Paul.
And here's the first one.
Very interesting.
Now, this is from Sandra at Silvery Owls.
It's her handle on Twitter X.
And she asks, Dr. Paul, what would be the most realistic way to deal with the $35 trillion debt and return to sound money, seeing as there is no way to pay off this debt?
Well, I like the question because it's recognizing one big point.
Well, a couple.
It's a huge debt, and it seems just impossible.
What are we going to do with it?
But we have to deal with it.
And countries have done this many, many times.
And even we've done it in this country.
Well, we did it with gold in 1971.
We were bankrupt then, and we had to really shuffle things and adapt to it to admit that we had really undermined and devalued our dollar.
But $35 trillion, that's a lot of money.
And it's going up exponentially.
Just the interest on paying the money to pay on the debt is outrageous.
And it's just, it's a collision.
And more and more people are realizing this, but not enough people.
Congress talks about it, but it's all lip service.
They just talk about it.
And yeah, we have to do something about it and something about it.
I think it's sort of a partisan thing there because you have a lot more Republicans pretending they're going to do something, but then they never do anything.
And that's why I get disgusted with, oh, we have a new president, a new Congress, and things will happen.
Well, I've been in Congresses where everything was Democrat and they were spending too much money.
Then one time, for a short period of time, we had the House and the Senate and the presidency, and it went up big time.
So that's not a solution.
And the one thing about the question is I think the most important thing is that we don't deceive ourselves.
We have to admit it.
Because if you say this is no big deal, we've gotten by people when there was 30 or 25, we said it was way too high, and it was.
But the final conclusion of solving this problem and devaluing and liquidating this debt is unknown.
It could be next week or next month.
That's when people lose confidence in the dollar and everybody dumps it.
And Mises calls it the crack up boom because people don't want to touch the money.
And we read about it in Germany and Zimbabwe.
And they just buy anything at all.
They have to work on a new currency.
And so often they have to go back to a sounder currency.
But the most important thing on this is the truth.
You can't say, well, if we elect a new president, if we just had a few more members of Congress, or get control of the House or the Senate, because it involves the appetite by the people who have become addicted to these programs and their appetite, even those who think that it's big trouble and it's a mess, and they're for cutting other people's bonuses.
So that's one thing that they'll argue for.
People have to realize that there is no easy solution.
You can't walk away there.
It's not going to be painless.
And they say, well, why would anybody want to walk, you know, default on it?
You can't just quit paying Social Security and this sort of thing, which is true.
They wouldn't.
But not dealing with it.
You could work for a gradualist way of getting more people to support cutting, cut the military and overseas spending and trying to work the debt down.
But it's not going to happen.
It's not going to happen.
So, but there's no way that we can get around not liquidating that debt, whether it's going to be at 35 or 45 or 55, because at the end, these numbers go up so fast you can't keep track.
But we're on the, and more and more people are recognizing this debt is unsustainable.
But there's two ways you liquidate a debt.
If an individual has a debt, they have to, you know, cut down on spending, get another job, work hard, and declare bankruptcy, always do it.
But you have to liquidate the debt, and you can work your way out, or you can, you know, fudge and work some other deal.
A country never works their way out of it once they, because that's why they get control of the currency early on, like we have with our Federal Reserve, because we steadily liquidate debt.
See, the real debt might be up at $35 trillion, but if we only just devalued our currency, what if we printed $5 trillion?
Well, the real debt goes down because we devalued the value of the currency.
And the government's like that, too, because it's the real debt that counts.
But the debt will not be paid off in the conventional or old-fashioned sense, but it will be liquidated, which means that it's going to be paid off with junk money.
And that will be the conclusion.
It may last a short period of time.
It may be staggering.
And we're in the middle of that.
We're liquidating real debt all the time, but we're also exponentially increasing the debt.
We can't keep up with it.
So that's why it's a race between us devaluing the currency and paying the debt off with counterfeit money or waiting to really pay it off.
So I would say that it's not going to be worked out by the politicians.
The politicians are going to spend money.
The debt is going to be liquidated.
And that's why the people have to start thinking, how do you rebuild?
How do you participate?
Will the professors ever come around to saying, well, it's a money issue?
So it's a big, big job to do.
But the most thing the common person can do, and they are, is a lot of people realize this and they're trying to protect themselves.
You know, the people who own their homes and they don't have too much debt, there is a benefit to that because it's a real asset.
The other thing is dealing with the precious metals.
The other thing is to have an ability to support your family and defend your family.
There's all kinds of survival things to do.
But you can't depend on the government coming around and cutting the spending.
And I think admitting the truth and that we know where the problem is and we know what's coming.
So therefore, we have a job of education and preparation.
And I think it's a very serious problem.
I'm glad you brought that up first because I think it's the big problem because it involves all domestic spending, all military spending, and all the special interests, pharmaceutical spending.
And that's why things are going to change.
All right, Law, let's move on to the second one.
And this is brought to us by Tyler Jordan, who is at The Dark Pill, I believe, on TwitterX.
And Tyler Jordan asks, Dr. Paul, given that banks and oligarchs have so much gold, wouldn't returning to a gold standard be a bit of a reward for their bad behavior?
Why not silver as a better alternative national currency?
I think it's a good question.
We have the answer.
Don't dictate.
You know, and that's why I'm for competing currencies.
And if, you know, the poor people will buy silver, and that's good.
Some of them, you know, can work their way and get some gold, but that is a way.
But you don't want to invite the principle of saying, if somebody's going to benefit from that, then they're too rich, and we have to say, well, we're going to prevent that.
You don't want to do that.
But there's a lot of people that stole the gold, too.
The people that have stolen the gold.
And that's the banking system.
It's so corrupt.
But I think, see, we didn't have a real good decision at the beginning of our country because we had, most people thought we were on a gold standard, but we weren't.
We were on a silver standard.
But even when they tried to mix gold and silver, it didn't work very well.
And even though the gold standard lasted, really, the final link was lost in 1971.
It was a bimetallic standard because we had gold and silver together.
But that's not too bad to use it and recognize gold and silver money.
That's what the Constitution says.
But the mistake is fixing the price of gold and fixing the price of silver because there's a lot of variables, the people's demand for it, and the accessibility.
Because over the years, maybe it's easier to mine silver than it is gold, and you have an increase.
So you want that to adjust, but that wouldn't be too hard, especially in the age of computers.
It'd be sort of like, you know, exchanges are easy when people travel around the world.
You could have exchanges, you know, everywhere if you have the gold and silver money.
But the main thing is that the government has to follow the standard, and that means they cannot rely on a system where the people demand more free stuff, and then the government provides that.
They get re-elected, and they depend on the Fed monetizing that debt.
They say, well, we'll just print the money because the people don't want taxes either.
But they don't come up and say, oh, this is very bad.
I'm willing to have you cut my program.
So that's why I say it's going to go the wrong way.
But I think I sort of, you know, I don't get in the business of advising people, you go out and do this.
But I've always been sympathetic to silver for that reason because I grew up as a coin collector.
It was a hobby.
And I keep kidding.
I said, you know, back then I looked at these coins and I knew about gold coins.
I knew about silver coins.
And I knew about nickel nickels.
I even knew there was copper in the panties.
But, you know, we gave up on the gold standard, and that didn't solve our problems.
So we gave up on the silver standard, and that didn't do too much.
Then we gave up on the nickel standard because we have nickels in our nickels.
And we can't even afford a copper standard.
That's because we've endorsed the principle that we want a free ride and we think we can get away with it.
And that's in collaboration with the bankers and the people who believe they're going to get benefit.
The people are suckered into this, thinking, well, we can't go with that crazy stuff that Ron Paul thinks about.
They might cut back on my benefit.
My oxygen, they're going to get cut back on the benefit.
But I think I like to think of money as a weight.
And that was one idea that came out of the Gold Commission.
And I like that there is a coin, the silver eagle, and it's one ounce.
And I think that's a usable currency.
But because even the old money has silver and gold in it, and that you can use those in a crisis.
So anyway, I don't think the goal has to be, well, somebody that's rich has some gold and we have to punish them.
That's too much interference.
And one problem we have is too many very rich people that have made a living, have made more money off inflation, and they're not worrying about restoring the gold standard.
Well, let's look at the last one.
Now, this is a little bit different.
We always like to end on a little bit different of an approach.
And this is from NATO Ham.
He's at Nathan Hamilton 20, Hamilton without the N.
Pressure To Speak Out 00:03:59
And he asked, if you could start all over again at this point in time, would you get involved in politics again?
Or would you maybe give the private sector more of a run for the money?
Well, as it turns out, you know, I was one that had ideas, I had goals, and wanted to be a doctor and was doing this.
But I also believe a little bit of sometimes you don't have total control of what you do.
We have free will, and we make our decision.
But sometimes, you know, I got exposed to Austrian economics, and I hadn't heard about that in college, and it fascinated me.
I wanted to speak out.
I didn't decide to be in politics.
I never did.
And that wasn't my goal.
And I never got very good at politics.
But I wanted it as a platform because I believed so strongly that the principles of liberty were so important.
And it was a sounding block for me.
And I think that was a discovery made gradually.
I can't define it.
It probably had to do with family backgrounds, the work ethics, and the principles of liberty and honesty.
And that's why I wanted to talk about it.
And then I became outraged personally about the evil wastefulness of our governments, whether it was the monetary issue, whether it's the runaway spending, and what we're witnessing.
And as the years went on, I became more concerned about the wars that we fight, what we talk about all the time.
So that was a strong motivation for me.
So if it was back when I was deciding what I'd do, I'd probably do the same thing.
But sometimes there are events, when I was here for four terms, because I felt like in 1976 there was an accident.
I was speaking out about money, and then all of a sudden there was nobody in 1974 that wanted to run as a Republican.
And so I say, oh, maybe I can get a few people to listen.
I never dreamed that my wife warned me, she says, that's dangerous.
You know, she said, you're going to get elected.
Mess up our happy home.
So some of the events I feel there's a little bit of influence.
Nobody knows what's going to happen because I didn't, you know, in a way I was fighting that, you know, and I thought, well, I missed my practice.
And it was a cost to me.
And I had kids going to school and all the motivation.
So I said, no, I'm getting out.
And I was out for 12 years.
But then there was this pressure again.
It was a pressure.
It's almost like invisible.
And exactly where it comes, I have my own theories about that.
But the pressure was to speak out.
And that's why in 1996, I decided to run again.
And thinking, well, maybe there'll be more people that are interested.
And to my pleasure, I found out there were more people.
And that's where I'm an optimist.
I think over the years, especially with the presidential races, I knew exactly what the politics of it was all.
But since my goals were different, I was delighted to meet young people who said, you know, this makes sense.
And that's why I love working with you in the Liberty Report and having our conferences, because guess what?
We're going to meet some young people again.
Some have been there before, and there'll be some that, you know, are brand new.
And how many times have we had, especially you, because you run the program, that later on you meet them?
And some of them ended up being us guests on this program.
Still Important Connections 00:01:27
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Many of them have started their own newsletters and everything.
So somebody says, yeah, but you had less money when you were in medicine than you were doing this, which is true.
But you don't measure benefits and value only by the dollar because we get satisfaction from just working with young people.
Leonard Reed said if it looks discouraging, he says, just remember, your main job is to be educated, understand things, and present it.
And don't ever worry how you will be used.
Somehow, and I always think, how am I going to be used?
I'm always looking for Leonard Reed.
And somebody will come and say, why don't you do this?
Why don't you do this?
And you yourself, when we were leaving Congress, you came and I didn't come to you and say, hey, we want to start the RPI, the Institute.
So you were part of bugging me.
But anyway, we're still doing it.
It's still very important for me.
Exactly how we make those decisions, sometimes very complex.
But I'm delighted that I've had this opportunity.
Yes.
Well, thank you everyone for sending in their questions.
And Dr. Paul, up to you to close it out.
Very good.
And I, too, want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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