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July 15, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
33:07
The Coming Collapse of the American System

In a recent wide-sweeping interview, legendary investor and writer Doug Casey has some dire predictions for the United States based on the ongoing Epstein scandal as well as US policy toward Israel, Ukraine, Russia, etc., and the "Big Beautiful Bill." Is a collapse on the horizon?

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Time Text
Inflation's Complex Case 00:14:48
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today with Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Good.
Back at it, trying to find the problem.
That was easy.
Yeah, that's easy.
Looking for a solution, that's a little more difficult.
Even though sometimes I argue that these solutions aren't difficult and complex, but they're made complex by people who don't want some of the corrections because some people benefit from the chaos.
And we've talked about that all the time, the spending on the military-industrial complex.
You'd think the American people would be 99% against all that mess.
But no, there's somebody making profits off it, and we know how the deep state works.
But before we get into that, I want to talk a minute about the dollar in general.
We talk about inflation, we talk about prices, and we had a price number come out today, and CPI has been doing better than they expected, and everybody's happy about it.
But the comments now that are made on the ordinary media, Fox and others, they call, yeah, but we don't want to pretend it's all gone.
And they call it sticky inflation.
Well, sticky inflation is just a description of how monetary inflation lingers and sticks around.
And sometimes they try to make it invisible, but it's there.
Once they mess around, run up debt, print money, and then there's malinvestment and a lot of mistakes made in the economy.
Those problems stick around, but they call it sticky inflation as if there's something about the currency itself is sticking to our fingers.
But bad ideas are sticking around, and that's the case.
But there is emphasis recently now that one thing that we ought to be looking at, I look at all these statistics, and I think like in the morning, the price of gold tells me something, and the budget deficits tell me something.
But there's been a little more emphasis on just looking at the value of the dollar.
And there's a basket of currencies they use generally, and there's seven countries in it.
Six of our most frequently used trading partners, you know, measure the value of the dollar.
And it went down tremendously in the 70s because there was a major thing, you know, the closing down of the gold win and everything.
There was a lot of adjustments.
So the dollar became weaker.
But this year, this first half of the year, there's sort of a record.
It sort of was a sneaky thing to me because it was up around a little over 100, but they measured it from six months ago that it's down 10%.
So losing the value of the dollar by 10%, that means all prices, no matter how they measure the CPI and the PPI, you know, people know, they exclaim, wow, I went to the store.
This bag of groceries used to cost me $10.
Now it's $30.
You know, it's on and on.
So I think that's an interesting point to make is the fact that the value of the dollar is really what we're talking about and measuring.
And the problem that it happens, because most people just talk about inflation, but they don't want to relate it to the dollar.
They want it to relate it to profits or labor unions or all kinds of things.
And then the big debate going on now is: will tariffs increase inflation?
Well, what they should say is, will tariffs increase prices and will increase taxes and that sort of thing.
But they don't, They like to use those words because if you stick to the definition of inflation, you know, it would emphasize the Federal Reserve.
I remember one time sort of debating in a gentle way with an Austrian economist that, you know, was arguing this or talking about it.
I said, why don't we just have two things?
Why don't we just have price inflation, monetary inflation, this sort of thing?
He says, no, they don't want you to do that.
They want you to think that there's other causes.
And when you think about it, everything in the news is always, what's the excuse for the inflation this month?
Oh, yeah, well, we had a flood or something like that.
So anyway, this has been more in the news lately.
Here's one headline.
There are results of a 10% drop on a dollar value in the first six months of this fiscal year.
And that's a big deal.
It was higher than that in the 70s.
But that could accelerate, but that's just telling us what we already knew.
But it might call the attention to people to look at the value of the dollar rather than looking at for some miscellaneous reason or excuse is what they usually have.
But that's one thing that you can't ignore.
It'll be around because the budget deficit is going to be around.
But we did want to mention an article that my friend Doug Casey wrote.
I've known him for years and I respect his opinion.
We don't agree with everything, but we have been good friends.
And he wrote on Nion Trans trying to dissect basically where we are.
Are we in good shape or bad shape in this country?
And also working into the great debate over Jeff Epstein.
And because over the years, he's always taken a position.
And I bet if we had time to dissect this out, he's been pretty optimistic about the world.
When you look at thousands of years, think of the progress, technology and all.
And even under today's circumstances, there are some magnificent things being developed.
At the same time, there are some really bad things being developed.
It's sort of one example of that is just think of the 20th century, the development of nuclear energy.
What if it had all been used for peaceful purposes?
But, you know, the government got involved.
They were going to protect us and make sure we were safe.
And so, well, we have to kill a few people with it and see if it really works.
So we start dropping these bombs.
And we're still in this business.
But I think this is an important thing to make the difference between progress, because I want to follow the principle that we are making progress.
And I do it, you know, more academically, that the dissection of economics.
And we've praised Austrian Economics and Mises Institute and other institutions for passing a long sound economic policy.
And there, I do remain optimistic that that is very, very helpful.
But after reading Doug's article here, he talked a little bit about all this fear.
And he got me thinking, hmm, I've read this article, but maybe I'm more fearful than I was before.
Maybe I'll have to modify my optimism.
But I think his analysis is very interesting.
And I think it'll be well read.
But that Doug has been around a long time in this field.
And he's been great on gold and a gold standard and that sort of thing.
Yeah, you point out, I mean, we've had, especially you've had a long relationship and we have a lot of respect for Doug Casey.
And that's why when you sent this article over, it's actually an interview between Doug Casey and Matt Smith.
And you sent it over this morning.
We thought, why don't we do a little something different today?
Why don't we just kind of go through this interview, look at some of the points that Doug and Matt are making, and maybe add a little bit of our own comments.
And so I thought we both thought that might be a good idea for today.
And so click that first one on this Doug Casey on fear, corruption, and the coming collapse of the American system.
Now, that's a title that got our attention because it's important.
And he takes a look at the current news.
And let's just go through a few of these things.
Now, the first take, as you point out, is about the Epstein situation.
Go to that next clip if you can.
Matt Smith says, all right, good morning, Doug.
Lots happening these days.
I'd love to get your take on, I think, starting with the Epstein case.
Case closed, apparently.
What do you think?
What's going on?
Doug Casey says, well, where to start on this thing?
It's so ultra disappointing, so embarrassing, and so serious that it's hard to figure out where to begin.
But it's been obvious to me watching these things that this could only end very, very badly.
And I highlighted this.
And it's shameful the way Bongino and Patel, who made a point of saying how honest they were and how they were going to reform things, have just backed off and said there's nothing there.
And then this woman, Bondi, that was equally inexplicable.
She says she's got this stuff on her desk ready to go.
It turns out she doesn't have it after all.
There's clearly corruption here.
It's very bad.
So it sounds like Doug is disgusted by this whole thing because Bongino and Patel made their careers by screaming about the Epstein files in the Epstein case.
And they promised that they would solve it.
They're there.
Now they're there.
They're saying, nope, there's nothing here.
Trust me, guys.
Well, this seems to be the case in more than one area where when you're on the outside, you have one opinion.
And all of a sudden, when you have a little bit of clout and authority to change things, all of a sudden, oh, I've rethought this through.
Maybe we should, maybe we don't want it to jump.
And all of a sudden, they have the special interest.
This is a demonstration of live, pure democracy.
The people's gang up on you.
Who has the control?
Who's controlling the elections and whatever is going on?
And who controls the Congress?
Who controls the course?
Who controls our educational system?
All of a sudden, they realize that.
So that's a lot of big talk.
That's why it does get pretty boring.
We do.
We read all the talk and speeches and campaigns, but I'm always very cautious with telling myself, go easy.
And this last one was an example.
I can remember being excited about George Bush's people giving us his ideas on foreign policy.
Peaceful foreign policy.
Hey, maybe.
Maybe this is different.
But it didn't take long.
Now, in this case, with the current administration, it's more of a mixed bag because it isn't he had opinion and now Trump changes his opinion.
It's, I had one thing, changed it the next day, and then I added the next day.
And, well, we better go back.
No, somebody said that, and we didn't want them to say that.
But I think that's just, you know, even for the people who think they have the power and the wisdom, it happens in a bankrupt society, which is both moral and financial.
So even if you had good insight and are making big decisions, it's not going to be very easy because it's really out of their hands.
It's sort of like, why don't you guys, you know, let's give the ability for one person outside the Federal Reserve.
And everybody, every once in a while, people will do that to me.
What if we put you ahead of the Federal Reserve?
And what would you do with the interest rates?
I said, first thing I do is get rid of the Federal Reserve and make sure people understood the market is more powerful than the bureaucrats, even though they might be the rich people right now and the influencers.
But it is not the answer to just think that better bureaucrats and better politicians are going to solve our problems.
Yeah, it almost reminds me of, you know, kind of a joke that we've told for a long time when a maverick gets elected to the House and then he moves up the ranks a little bit and gets a position of leadership.
And the message they always give him is now that you're in leadership, you need to learn how to follow, which is to shut up.
And maybe that's what happened to these two fellows who got in, who made their name on Epstein, but who now don't want to have anything to do with it.
The other thing, and he doesn't exactly say this, but I was thinking about this idea because he talks about, Doug Casey talks about the enormity of the scandal, if it really is a blackmail scandal, the enormity.
And the reason maybe that they've had to back off and try to change the subject is that it exposes the fact that everything is fake.
Our House and Senate are fake.
They're all bought off either by foreign governments or by foreign blackmail artists.
The economy is completely fake.
I mean, you almost have this crisis of confidence in the entirety of the American system when everything you look around that you thought was real actually turns out to be fake.
It's almost an epistemological awakening that everything is not real around me.
What impressed me about this is the inference about people in politics, you know, have personal desires.
Sometimes it's political power.
Sometimes it's this.
It's a better job.
Sometimes it's lower than that.
But sometimes it's money and who knows what.
But he said what they're doing now, these people that are, you know, going back and forth and jumping all over the place, they have everything.
They have power.
They had power.
And yet they could have continued in a different manner by trying to hold things together.
But he thinks this breakdown in the administration is a big deal and that there's still a lot to be ironed out at the administrative level.
Who's going to run the show and who's really in boss?
Most people know who's really in boss, who's the boss at this time.
But there's going to be other people nibbling away at it because the thing's a mess.
There's truth out there, but we're not on the verge of instituting the truth to all these problems.
Yeah.
Well, the other thing he dabbles a little in foreign policy.
Now, the next one is a question from Matt Smith on a couple of the pressing issues out here, if we can put that up.
So Matt Smith says, the other thing, I basically just a whole list of random news items I think might be connected.
The second one is that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, we've covered this story, Dr. Paul.
Move Ahead: Cleaning Up Chaos 00:12:41
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is active today in essentially rebuilding a whole bunch of Israeli defense structures.
You know, it's not just that we're sending weapons, it's that we are actively involved.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is actually rebuilding infrastructure to accommodate the Israeli Air Force's new refueling aircraft and helicopters, as well as constructing new headquarters for their 13th Naval Commando Unit and numerous other projects.
It's costing billions of shekels, and that's according to the official documents from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to which Doug Casey, if we go to the next one, responds thusly.
He says, well, perhaps, this is interesting, perhaps this relates in some way to the Epstein scandal.
Why is Israel in effect being turned into the 51st state?
And this is an interesting point.
And treated even better than a state.
The money's being directed there.
Couldn't the Army Corps of Engineers be helpful to the Carolinas or Texas instead?
And that would be because of natural disasters.
Doug Casey continues.
Israel is getting a lot more attention than actual states in the U.S.
This is frankly criminal.
Look, I've never been anti-Israel per se.
It's just another nation state.
I understand why the Jews started it and all that.
I get it.
And I've always been sympathetic, especially because I'm not sympathetic to the Muslim world.
But why this?
What's the matter with Trump?
He looks like he's under Netanyahu's thumb.
He does, but boy, that's a mouthful.
Yeah, it is.
But a lot of people have believed this.
And there are so many different factions.
You know, the libertarian faction is one that people have to sort out and try to make sure that they understand a libertarian position that is not anti-Semitic and not anti-Jewish.
That's the whole thing.
So that is once, you know, it will take a lot of thought to be put into this.
But I thought that one point that Doug makes when he mentions about some of the things at home that could be taken care of.
See, that's a softer position.
It sort of leads toward things that I say, you know, where are you cut?
Well, yeah, cut all this stuff over in all these wars.
Yeah, maybe technically somebody could say, well, even Doug said that we should be on the welfare state and bail out everybody.
He didn't say that, but somebody might, some libertarian might come up with that.
But so I think it was a reasonable statement because it makes a lot of sense if you're going to have all this money.
The other argument is they take all this money from us.
That's what kept going through my mind is, you know, why are we not welcoming just anybody and everybody through open doors?
Because, you know, they come back.
But what about the facilities?
What about our hospitals and our schools and our playgrounds and our pars?
Who paid for them?
Who's the owner?
And there's no one owner, but there's people who are more responsible.
But to me, it's been an invasion of property because they don't see that in that way.
So this is the thing you have to deal with when you're trying to straighten out this mess.
And I think this is what Doug makes a real effort at trying to say that.
But the theme of this that struck me, Daniel, was not too optimistic.
This thing is a mass and it's not going to go away.
Of course, that's been my position because I've always said long term, I never claim that we can undo the Federal Reserve by a stroke of a pen.
And it's not going to do that.
But you have to have a replacement.
And that's the biggest job is to do that.
That's why I think the academic answers, and Doug's been great on this.
I mean, he's written in all kinds of economic matters, and his economics are very sound.
And he makes a point that I think the vast majority of Americans agree with.
You don't have to hate Israel to want our money to come to stay here and rebuild our things.
It's a natural thing.
It doesn't mean you hate anyone.
It just means that you think that our country should come first.
Well, the next one now, he talks about Ukraine.
I'm going to move on beyond that.
He just says, yeah, you've got to continue that war, a pointless war.
It should be completely obvious to everyone that Russia is going to win.
Instead of ending the war, Trump is making it worse.
Now he moves on to some economics issues and he talks about the debt.
If we can move ahead to that one where he says he's talking about move ahead too if you can.
Yeah, here we go.
Now, this struck me as something that I think would interest you.
And he talks about how do you deal with this massive debt.
So, Doug Casey says, I've said in the past, I'd consider something as radical as defaulting on the national debt.
People say, well, how can you do that?
The banks would fail.
Insurance companies own a lot of bonds.
It would be a daisy chain of problems.
People couldn't get their money out of the banks because banks wouldn't be there and so on.
Doug Casey says, well, I suppose.
But I always like to look at the bright side, as you know.
And the bright side is if you defaulted on the national debt, your children and grandchildren can avoid becoming indentured servants to pay it off.
Default on the national debt.
And yes, I know it sounds outrageous, ridiculous, un-American, all those things.
This is the point that sounds like you is going to happen one way or the other.
But if you default on it, the real wealth of the world would still exist: factories, farms, businesses, and technologies.
They're not just going to vanish because the creditors are stiffed.
Governments do it all the time because they're essentially criminal enterprises.
And it would punish the cronies who've been enabling the state with all its wars and gifts to the political class.
Pretty interesting proposal.
Yeah, to just let it go.
And that's the end stage.
It does happen that way.
The whole thing is given up and they give up on the currency itself.
But the only point I would make there is he's saying let's have a major default and do it.
Morally, that would be correct.
It would be chaotic, but the chaos is going to come anyway.
But I would say that right now, we have a major amount of default, but they're not identifying this default with the problems that we have.
How often do they emphasize this coming crisis?
You know, where the members of Congress are concerned, what do we have?
Five people in Congress, House, and Senate that care about the deficit?
That's default because the deficits mean they're going to print the money.
So the defaulting is there.
But the whole thing about whether you take your medicine and do it all at once and get it over with or what, I don't think tomorrow, if you did that, quit printing the money and get rid of the Fed, there would be a revolution.
But there's, Doug is pointing out, there's going to be one anyway.
It's coming.
So that's why I duck behind.
It's all about ideas.
We need to work on ideas.
We need to spread the ideas of peace and prosperity.
And hopefully, Daniel, we've been successful to some degree of spreading that message.
And Doug's also doing a good job of it, talking about the dishonesty of essentially a de facto default slowly and gradually by debasing the currency and how that's actually very cruel to people and to the economy, much more so than it.
And the people who get punished aren't necessarily the most guilty.
Yeah, I mean, does the deep state all of a sudden disappear?
Some of them do, but most of them survive and they go on to the next war.
Exactly.
Well, let's move ahead a couple to the now, where he talks about the president.
Well, if I were the president of the U.S., if we can move ahead to that one here, thank you.
So here, move ahead a little bit.
If I were president of the U.S., in other words, if I were Trump, what would I do to stop the country's decline?
I would take radical action to reduce the size of government.
Trump is not doing that.
The action he should take would be devastating to large parts of the economy, the parasitic parts.
Is it possible to pay off the national debt without destroying the value of the currency?
Yes.
But I think they want to pay it off with pocket change by making the dollar worthless.
I think that would be the worst alternative, but it's the one we're following.
That's it.
Yeah.
That's it.
Move ahead a couple of times.
Now, he's talking about the possibility of unrest, and we should give this a little bit of attention.
We're in for tough times, if we can find that one and put it up.
I'm going to run through these.
I just want to get your take on this, Dr. Paul.
We're in for tough times.
I really think so, said Doug Casey.
I still believe there's a possibility of a genuine civil war in the U.S., not like the unpleasantness from 1861 to 65.
It's not going to look like that.
It's going to be more like an informal guerrilla war, to which Matt Smith replied.
And we might be seeing early signs of that already with these targeted attacks on ICE agents.
Doug Casey, entirely possible.
Like I said, if I were a malefactor running a foreign intelligence agency, one of the many countries that don't like the U.S. and want to weaken it, that's exactly the path I would take, he said.
Very, very tough.
Very tough.
Matt's statement was very important there on the violence.
And, of course, I think that's the greatest danger of debasement of currencies: that as a maldistribution of wealth, you know, middle class and the poor, you know, get worse off.
And the value of this is something that's difficult to measure.
But the whole thing is, is our system, Republicans and Democrats and so many independents of government per se, because we don't follow the advice of the Constitution, that there is all of this is done by violence.
If we say that the government can't do anything that you and I can't do, why are people, why do we allow the government to allow, cheat, and steal when we know they do, and they perform many crimes.
So the violence is already there.
So it looks like, yes, I agree exactly with him.
And he's appealing to people that think of violence slightly different than I do.
I think government actions is violence.
And this is philosophically, it's just an extension of that.
They just all of a sudden be the lobbying effort and the ganging up and the purity of democracy gets a lot of what they want.
But ultimately, though, they have to deal with this and they resort because there's nothing left.
As the pie shrinks, people get more violent.
And I think if people don't understand this, it reduces the odds of us having an alternative system.
Because, you know, the Marxists know what we're talking about because they even write it in their writings that we want this.
Yes, it sounds like we're cutting away good things, but our goal is chaos, chaos in the streets.
And all we have to do is look, and we've already had a pretty good dose of it.
And then hopefully some of this is getting cleaned up.
But the judicial system hasn't been very helpful to it.
And I guess this contest going on right now, you know, with the administration is an expression that people aren't willing to come to odds with this.
It's a struggle.
Who's going to get what's left?
And just think, just think, you know, that budget thing.
Just think how little support we get from there.
But you know what?
That doesn't destroy my desire and my emphasis that there's a lot of people.
I still think you and I have done it, and you're good at looking at some of this polling.
And what people, when you allow a good poll to go out, you know, people say, you know, you're right about that.
Announcement: Clayton Joins Us! 00:02:04
I think it's crazy taking foreign aid and giving it to people overseas.
And, you know, what do they do?
Would they help feed the people?
Yeah, like we're feeding, we'll send more money for the Palestinians, you know, that sort of thing.
No, we send more money and hands out buying more weapons.
That's what happens.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I'm going to close out with an exciting announcement.
And a part of the blueprint for peace, Dr. Paul, that we're going to be looking at at our conference on August the 16th is the role played by the so-called alternative media and the fact that they're challenging the old media, the strength of the old media.
And that's why we have Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil of the Gray Zone who are going to join us and talk about the work that they do to get the truth out.
Well, here is an exciting announcement for speakers, Dr. Paul.
If you put up that second to last, now I'm sure many of you watch the show on the internet Redacted with Natalie and Clayton Morris.
They have 2.7 million subscribers.
Their shows routinely do better than Fox, MSNBC, and the others.
In fact, Clayton Morris had a very popular show on Fox, Fox and Friends, where he was an anchor.
Well, he left that world to become in the world of the independent media and has done extraordinarily well.
Now, I know you've been on with Clayton and Natalie several times.
I've been on.
Our friend, our colleague, Chris Rossini, has been on.
It is a terrific show, and they're terrific on foreign policy.
Well, my big announcement is that Natalie Morris will be joining us as a speaker at our conference on August 16th to share some of her impressions on starting an enormously popular internet program.
What are the ways they challenge the mainstream media, the mainstream paradigms?
And so I can't wait to have Natalie join us.
Clayton would join us, but he's got to stay home and take care of the kids.
Challenging Mainstream Media Paradigms 00:03:31
They're going back to school.
So it'll be Natalie with us, and we're thrilled to have her.
And so you must get your tickets.
You're going to want to see Max and Anya and Natalie, Doug McGregor, Nassim Nicholas Tale, Ron Paul, and the rest.
It's going to be a great event.
I've got a link in there to grab those tickets, get them while they're hot.
And we look forward to seeing you in August.
Over you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
I'm going to close by emphasizing something I said in the opening statement, and that is measuring the dollar's value by a group of our trading partners is an important way to look at what's happening and what can happen.
And the statistic was that the dollar is down 10% with our trading partners in the first six months of this year.
And that's significant.
How many six months can we put up with if we're losing 10% of our dollar?
And one of the worst times of the dollar being lost was in the 70s.
And it took a tremendous adjustment to take gold and adjust it because they had messed around with it for so long, taking gold at $35 an ounce and eventually saying, well, the market right now says it's over $3,000 an ounce.
And that's goneward.
So this means that if we continue to do what we're doing, we're up for a mess.
I think Doug Casey is absolutely right in warning us about this.
And this 10% tells us isn't measuring that is important.
But I don't think anything will change unless we have a better system of education.
Because right now, the universities are under attack.
The government ownership of the universities controlling how they can run their program.
That's been around for a long time.
The mistake was, why does a good university ever allow themselves to become dependent on the federal government to get more money that they probably don't need?
So that exists, and that has to change.
That's why I participate in Hope Schooling and the other private schools.
I want people to know and understand because if you don't change attitudes, it's very hard to all of a sudden change the policies that you have.
Policies do reflect, policies, attitudes do reflect the policies.
And right now, there is a revolution going on.
And that's the area where I happen to be more optimistic.
It's still small, but the numbers aren't the whole issue.
The idea is how many people are out there.
That, of course, is why we have press conferences and our educational conferences like we're having in August, to get people to understand and encourage people to go out and find more people.
And it might be slow sailing for a while, but that's the only way you can do it if you don't own the websites.
But we've been able to benefit from the internet and others have.
I think the conditions available to us to spread our message is better now than it's ever been since I've been involved in politics.
So I do remain optimistic in that sense, but also Doug gave me a little scare too.
He doesn't make me sleep better at nighttime because I respect his opinion and things that are not looking good, but there are answers out there.
And it's found in Liberty if you want to promote the peace and prosperity that I believe almost all Americans believe in.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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