Ever since 1913, the United States of America has been captive to an unconstitutional and immoral institution known as the Federal Reserve. The U.S. government is forbidden from counterfeiting money, so they outsourced it to a "private" cartel of banks. This is similar to how the government outsources censorship to "private" social media companies. Ever since 1913, the Fed has destroyed the value of the dollar, along with the U.S. economy; and it has financed endless wars and debts that cannot be honored. America can't the "land of the free" as long as there's a Federal Reserve.
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.
Happy Friday.
Great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Good.
We are going to talk about a subject I could say, but it would be a lie.
This is the first time I've ever talked about this subject.
I think I've been talking about it about five years before I ran for Congress because I became fascinated with all the evil that comes out of there and how it manages to be involved and feed weapons into the energy of all the weapons of running the economy and policing the world and running all these wars.
And it's all connected.
It's connected to our civil liberties and our budget and all these things.
But, you know, there's one thing different is a lot more people are waking up than they were maybe 10 or 15 years ago.
It was, you know, not that much talk about us, but it is now.
It's bad news for some people who are getting caught doing some things.
But it's good news that the people are hearing about this because even back 20 or 30 years ago, it was barely mentioned, but it was accepted as policy that you had to go along with because the Fed had to be independent.
Of course, I argue the case.
They're not talking about independence.
Everybody should think secrecy when they talk about independence.
And that's what some of this stuff is that we're going to be talking about.
But I wanted to just mention a sort of interesting anniversary today.
Today, gold is right around $3,500.
That's $3,500.
And back in 1971, when we threw in the towel and said we will no longer honor our commitment at $35 an ounce, we turned it loose.
I'm surprised.
I'm surprised this fiance system has lasted so long.
But we'll be talking a little bit about the corruption and the evil that it has portrayed since then.
So it's $3,500.
That's 100 times what it was when Nixon declared bankruptcy and said, we can't get rid of our last coin.
So we have to stop it.
We're going to save a little gold just in case we run out of credibility.
I think we just may well be there.
And that's the reason we will talk, especially today, about the Federal Reserve and some of the corruption that's going on.
And it's really pretty entertaining if it weren't so serious.
But there's a war of words now on who's right about, you know, the argument is, not even in our camp yet, the argument is who should decide what the interest rates should be and what should they be.
And so according to the philosophy of the Austrian school, one of the most important points is nobody can know what the interest rate is.
The interest rate is crucial because it is information that savers and spenders and investors and governments, everybody should know about it because most people have generally accepted the principle wage and price controls aren't worth very much and they do a lot of horror.
And yet they have the price control of money, which deals with, you know, thousands, millions, billions, trillions of dollars of transactions every single day.
And yet we're still arguing over who's going to set the next interest rate.
And of course, the president is very interested in participating in this.
And he's a strong critic of what Powell's doing.
And he'd like to substitute his judgment over Powell.
But even that doesn't solve the problem because it's not like if we, libertarians, sound money people, had the responsibility, we say, well, we can't do anything.
We don't know.
We just have to let it turn it over to the marketplace, which would be, under today's circumstances, you know, a horrendous job to do.
So that's not likely.
But people still come up to me.
They say, is it too late to invest in protect in gold?
And I keep thinking, well, the trend looks pretty strong that we're going to keep printing money.
You don't look at the price of gold.
You look at what the Fed's doing.
And if they're still monetizing debt and debt is not shrinking, then I would say it's good to get a little protection to have some of your funds into gold.
And this is what the Birch Gold Company do.
They help people take put bullion into a gold IRA.
And this is not too complicated, but it's certainly helpful to get that set up with Birch Gold help.
So if you're interested in that and getting more information, they will give you the information for free.
And all you have to do is take the number on the page there.
That's Ron 989898.
And that will go to Birch Gold.
They will send you some information on how one might shift maybe investments in common stock and put it into bullion gold and satisfy all the hound dog IRS agents that will be watching everything all the time.
So this will be a tremendous advantage to have it.
So if you're interested in getting the information on how to go about, text Ron 989898.
Hey, Chris, let's go ahead and start talking about this very important subject.
I would, you know, I was kidding you.
This is the first time I've ever talked about the Fed.
But no, I've been talking about it for a long time.
And I guess over the years, the one thing that has impressed me is the influence it has had.
Because most of the time, by the time an average person gets out of school, they heard a little bit about the Fed.
But they have to be independent because then people would cheat.
They would know what's going on and take advantage of it on their investment.
But we'll have a few comments on that too, on whether there's any insider trader with the Fed.
So Chris, this is a good day to talk about this, but it's also a time where I can answer the question, I don't think it's too late.
Because as long as those debt is going up, when they swear it's going to go down, I would say it's probably a good thing to get some protection against the insanity of managing our currency that way and hold some type of bullion and property that would withstand this onrushing crisis that is destined to happen because what we have today cannot continue.
Chris?
That's right, Dr. Paul.
Yeah, we'll get to insider trading in a little bit.
We'll start with Lisa Cook.
She's the Fed person that's in the news.
Trump is going after her.
I think he did try to fire her, and now she's suing to not be fired.
I mean, it's very transparent as to what is happening here.
Trump wants her out to put somebody in that will push for lower rates because President Trump wants lower rates.
He wants more counterfeiting of dollars, which is insanity because prices are insane.
You know, they're not coming down.
I'm paying more.
Doesn't matter if I go on Amazon, in the supermarket, in the stores.
Prices are rising.
My electric bill is insane.
So, but President Trump keeps, he just goes out, there's no inflation.
We need lower rates.
Now, why does he want this?
Because he wants the interest on the debt to go down for the government to pay on interest of the debt.
But they're raising the debt.
They're not cutting government.
They're not cutting anything.
So he's not interested in making our lives easier.
In fact, it's going to make it much harder.
The more money they print, if they go down to 1%, God forbid, they're going to blast prices even higher.
So Trump may get his help with paying interest on the debt, but you have to do all the other holistic things to get the government out of trouble.
And he's doing none of it, none of it, none of it, whether it be wars, the economy, he just wants those interest rates down, and he says there's no inflation.
And Lisa Cook just happens to be the one that's in the crosshairs right now so that he could put in somebody that will lower rates.
That's right.
I believe it all has to do with power and influence and money, all these things.
But why I like what's going on, it brings to a front, you know, a subject people should know more about.
It should be an opportunity for people to learn more about, you know, the Federal Reserve and how it functions.
And they've gotten away with this secrecy stuff.
Well, we wouldn't want the Congress interfering.
And we have to be independent because somebody might cheat and have some secret trading or something like this.
So they argue against that.
But what they're really talking about is the secrecy of it.
And I think this Cook case indicates that all kinds of things are going up, going on that the people don't know about.
So I think it's great that we're talking about this.
But I think one reason why I think it's good is I think the Fed loses its credibility.
I think it's going down because this can't be a good advertisement.
Say, well, why don't we give Powell the Nobel Peace Prize for good monetary system?
No, I don't think so.
I think the credibility is going down.
And actually, it gets pretty nasty, too, I think, for arguing over this in such strong language when you think our position is we don't even need the Fed.
And yet they're going to fight over the control and the influence of it because they want to benefit from it.
And of course, one other thing that could help us incite people to thinking more about this and helping to make a decision on whether they should have protection, that is an audit of the Fed.
That's fine.
Now, that's one thing we should give the president credit for, is he's exposed this like he did USAID, exposed a lot of wasteful spending.
He doesn't come up with the answer.
The answer is not on our doorstep.
But I think you first have to know what's going on.
So I think the credibility issue is very good because it's going down.
Of course, there's an increase in antagonism because they line up because it's such a big deal.
The credibility, which side are you going to support?
And of course, when you have the system that said, well, the people should have a say in it.
They should set the interest rates according to their wishes.
And that's the way it happened for a long time.
Most people don't realize there were a lot of years we didn't even have a Federal Reserve.
And in the early years, they didn't have as much influence.
So I think these are benefits.
It's beneficial for us to hear of these complicated, messy innuendos about what people do, because maybe it'll wake up some people and say, well, maybe we ought to look into this, not only because it's big, it's important.
Maybe it is in our interest to know what's going on in the Federal Reserve.
Chris.
Right, Dr. Paul, very good.
Next, what we're going to cover is we read that there was insider trading at the Fed, and we know that insider trading goes on in Congress.
They get very rich, and they're trying to, you know, at least throw a bone to the public that they're going to make it illegal.
But here's the thing: as long as we have the interventionist government that we have, which interferes in every aspect of our lives, there is no getting rid of insider trading.
I don't care what laws they put.
This is just too easy money to be made for the politicians.
Even if there's a law, A, they'll break the law or they'll find loopholes.
Because what happens is corporations, you know, they go, they lobby the politician.
Hey, Mr. Politician, can you make this law that will benefit my company tilt the tables of the marketplace with legislation for us?
And the politician will be happy to do it.
But the politician knows this legislation is going to create tremendous profits for the company.
The politician knows it.
They're writing the legislation.
It's going to benefit this company.
So the politician wants to get on board, buy the stock.
You're literally forcing that the stock is going to go up.
Make money.
And they do.
They make millions of dollars.
They legislate.
And it's called insider trading.
Yeah, that's what they do.
I'm sure there's many members of Congress that they go into Congress specifically so that they could get rich like this because it's such easy money.
So even if they make a law, yeah, you can't, Congress can't trade stocks, they will either break the law, they break the Constitution.
So what's another law to break, or they'll find some kind of loophole.
They won't directly trade it themselves.
Their cousins, brothers, friends will do it in some weird account, and they'll make millions of dollars that way.
The best way to avoid this is to have the government not interfere in the economy so that they don't tilt the tables for one company, for another.
But, you know, there is no appetite for that.
And that's why this will continue, insider trading.
Yes, and I'm afraid they will doctor it up a little bit and say, we'll watch it and we'll be more careful.
Crazy Sanctions, We Remember00:03:31
And yet, the corruption will continue.
They won't be able to contain it.
And the one thing is they won't look at the one corruption that I've already spoken to, and that is the counterfeiting.
That's where the corruption is.
I mean, when you're measuring it, it's the big one, counterfeiting the money that the world uses as a reserve currency of the world.
And as long as it serves the interests of the powerful people, they get richer and richer and they become trillionaires and billionaires.
And we should not resent the fact that people are making money, but we want them to make it honestly and not having an automatic insider trade ability on what the Fed is doing, because what they say and do does have a lot of effect on us.
So this is something that happened back when Volcker was chairman.
And I remember the subject came up, and there was some news out and some reports that so-and-so in the Federal Reserve was privy to their meetings, had some insider trading.
And I remember asking Volcker about it.
He said, you know, he didn't deny it.
He said, but we have taken care of it internally.
We have, you know, we will check up on them.
But, and I don't think that solved the problem.
Matter of fact, it's probably worse than ever.
But the big fight now is who will really run the show?
Who will set the interest?
They don't believe in the market setting it.
So is it going to be the Powell people that are appointed by the President and the Senate?
Or is it going to be a contest, which already is a contest, between the chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve and Trump?
And this is ongoing.
There's a court case going on.
But once again, I think exposure, exposure, that's what we need to have.
And there'll be a lot learned by what's going on right now about what's wrong with the Fed.
Very good.
Dr. Paul, I'll finish up with our last topic.
And it has to do with the U.S. sanctioning Russia.
Their crazy sanctions, we all remember.
They were going to isolate Russia, isolate Russia.
It all backfired, all of it.
The whole war backfired.
Russia wasn't isolated.
In fact, they did quite well in the meantime.
So now the United States is mad at other countries like India, who bought and sold oil from Russia throughout.
They would buy it from Russia cheap, sell it throughout the world.
India made billions and billions of dollars, capitalizing on the dumb policies of the United States.
And now the United States is mad.
They want to now put tariffs on India as a punishment for doing that.
So the United States is trying to dictate to the world who you can buy from, who you can sell to, what you can sell.
This is just so, so bad.
This was supposed to stop, you know, turn into taking care of America.
Instead, they're trying to punish countries for doing business.
And everybody adapts.
You know, when you put sanctions on, everybody says, okay, this is a situation.
How do we adapt to this?
Chaos And Central Planning00:05:18
And that's how they did.
The whole world adapted to the sanctions.
And it's not just nations that do this.
Companies do it.
People do it.
Individuals.
Think about COVID.
All those policies that were nonsense.
All the masks that were sold, the hand sanitizers.
Billions and dollars were made on all this stuff.
And it wasn't necessary.
You can't now go back and say, hey, you made all those billions on masks.
Give it back.
No, it's done.
Everybody adapted to your dumb policies, made their money, and now you're trying to cry over it.
You know, what we need for the United States is to stop this stuff.
Stop trying to punish everybody, put everybody under your thumb so that everybody obeys because it's not going to happen.
That's not the way it works.
But unfortunately, it's not happening with the Trump administration.
We were hoping that it would.
So I guess more of this is to come.
Chris, this is a very important subject and you said it well.
We have a system where there's various names and what people refer to it because sometimes when the socialists and the Marxists and the rest of them want something changed and made worse, they say, look at what the free market's doing.
And you've just recited many times.
The market that we deal with is not the free market.
I mean, the money system is not honest money.
So to blame corporate, to blame the system of what we have now for all our problems, avoids the fact that you have to name what we have.
We have central economic planning of the worst kind by people who are powerful and get themselves in the right place.
And we end up with the corporations ganging up on us.
So if you get enough corporations banning together, they become a minority.
And this is why, you know, the minority and the powerful can decide the tax system.
And all of a sudden, you say, well, who has to bear the burden?
Well, it's the middle class.
The middle class suffers the inflation tax.
The rest of them, you know, just participate in it.
And so the planned economy is what we have to attack.
I call it corporatism because it's a mixture.
And now, Mises has talked about that in Human Action, and he says it exists, but he preferred not to say, well, that's fascism.
But he did say, if you keep it around too long, that's what it turns into.
And I just wonder whether if he were alive today, he'd say, you guys are moving pretty fast, you know, toward true Marxism.
But Marxists want chaos in the streets.
It looks like in that regard, they're being very successful.
There's a lot of chaos and all the social changes that we're having.
And it looks like a time that somebody like the Marxists might offer themselves up as a solution.
And here, lo and behold, we see more of them being more aggressive and even getting it to the Congress.
So that is something that we have to deal with.
But we have to be, you know, looking for an end to this, because I think chaos in the streets should be used for our benefit.
But it won't be if they accept the challenges and the accusation that what we have are problems that developed in free enterprise.
And they aren't, they're the problems that develop from the Federal Reserve, a foreign policy of interventionism, internationalism, all these things.
And then they blame the Constitution on this.
So that means that we have to get people to understand where the problem is.
And we have to prepare ourselves to talk, say, for instance, the monetary system.
Okay, you guys don't want to offend, but they sure bail out a lot of people and bring about calm when there's a crisis.
We have to prepare to explain how it happened and what has to be done and get the people to accept it.
Because the ideas are so important.
In a narrow sense, it was the ideas that spread.
People do have control.
Just think of the ideas that developed during COVID.
The people finally woke up and they were furious and they're still angry about it.
So, you know, information is very important.
And we all know that most of the information coming from the government is canned information.
But we do have an internet, which I think one has to be very cautious because there's a lot of garbage out there.
But there also can be some good stuff.
And we do our very best to present the case for peace and prosperity through a voluntary system of honesty in property management and protection of civil liberties, and one of a foreign policy of non-intervention.
It's available, so instead of complaining about what the Marxists have done and are doing, we have to take a responsibility on ourselves to change people's minds.
Because when the people change their mind about COVID, guess what?
Their aggressiveness melted away.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.