Ron Paul full "In Depth" interview on C-SPAN 8/3/14

[useless]

If by "extreme" you mean extremely different from the status quo, then yes. But if you mean extremely different from the way things should be, then no. He wants pretty basic stuff: abolish the Fed, a better monetary standard, repeal the Patriot Act, flat tax, government accountability, balance the budget.

He's also pretty extreme when it comes to his dislike of LGBT people and people of colour.

 

[Cutlass]

Like I said, if by "extreme" you mean strong departure from the status quo, then yes, he is extreme. The Fed should never have existed in the first place. In fact...if it didn't, the national debt would be about one-millionth of what it is today. Just because Washington gets loonier and more corrupt every year, that doesn't make the people who still see the straight & narrow more extremist. But that depends on how you define extremist.

See, the problem here is that you have a Paulesque deliberate ignorance of economics going on here. The Fed should absolutely exist. And the debt has nothing to do with it. The debt is caused by irresponsible Republicans. Not the Fed.

 

[Hygro]

See, the problem here is that you have a Paulesque deliberate ignorance of economics going on here. The Fed should absolutely exist. And the debt has nothing to do with it. The debt is caused by irresponsible Republicans. Not the Fed.

Volcker raised interest rates and they made up the loss by printing money and giving it to rich people.

 

[CELTICEMPIRE]

Our currency isn't worth something?

The government prints little green paper rectangles that incentivize me to do janitorial work over the summer so I can use those little green paper rectangles to buy stuff. I'd say those little green paper rectangles are worth something.

Because the government says that it's worth something, the green paper rectangles are not intrinsically worth anything.

In all seriousness, complaining about how the Fed 'destroys the value of the dollar' when the US dollar is still one of the most stable and valuable widely used currencies is laughable. Until you've had fun in Belarus or Ukraine with their crappy currencies (which I have done) lets not talk about how the value of the US dollar has been destroyed by the Fed.

(Fun Fact: The smallest currency denomination printed in Belarus is the 10 ruble note. For a price point comparison, when I was in Belarus, 1USD was equal to about 8,000ru. Since then, their currency has weakened falling to around 10,000ru per USD. And this was after they got their inflation vaguely under control.)

What you just mentioned is precisely why things aren't even worse. Other countries are devaluing their currencies too, but that doesn't mean we should as well.

 

[Cutlass]

You do understand that that's less than 2% inflation a year, right? And that because of those policies by the Fed, everyone has so much more money that it actually is an extreme deflation?

 

[Ajidica]

Because the government says that it's worth something, the green paper rectangles are not intrinsically worth anything.

Excepting its use as a conductor, gold has no intrinsic worth. "Shiny" is about as useful as gold gets for most people.

What you just mentioned is precisely why things aren't even worse. Other countries are devaluing their currencies too, but that doesn't mean we should as well.

Some degree of devaluation is needed to keep exports competitive.

The Fed may muck things up from time to time or not respond in the best manner (hindsight is 20/20) but they have produced far better results than an unregulated or a fiat currency would have produced. (With the added benefit of increasing stability making deficit spending a far more practical policy.)

 

[CELTICEMPIRE]

You do understand that that's less than 2% inflation a year, right? And that because of those policies by the Fed, everyone has so much more money that it actually is an extreme deflation?

We have more money, but costs have also gone up.

Excepting its use as a conductor, gold has no intrinsic worth. "Shiny" is about as useful as gold gets for most people.

If I found gold that was abandoned 1000 years ago, I could sell it because it would be worth something. If in 1000 years someone finds a box of Federal Reserve Notes they would likely not be worth much.

Some degree of devaluation is needed to keep exports competitive.

The Fed may muck things up from time to time or not respond in the best manner (hindsight is 20/20) but they have produced far better results than an unregulated or a fiat currency would have produced. (With the added benefit of increasing stability making deficit spending a far more practical policy.)

The Fed didn't prevent the Great Depression, the current financial crisis, or the many smaller recessions that have occurred since 1913. Inflation helps the rich but screws over the poor and middle class.

 

[Zack]

If I found gold that was abandoned 1000 years ago, I could sell it because it would be worth something. If in 1000 years someone finds a box of Federal Reserve Notes they would likely not be worth much.

What point are you trying to make? That says nothing about intrinsic value.

 

[Cutlass]

We have more money, but costs have also gone up.

Costs have actually gone down. It takes few hours work to purchase just about anything.

 

[Ajidica]

If I found gold that was abandoned 1000 years ago, I could sell it because it would be worth something. If in 1000 years someone finds a box of Federal Reserve Notes they would likely not be worth much.

1000 years from now we could be primitive barbarians hitting each other over the head with an antelope's thighbone due to a total thermonuclear apocalypse as we scrounge for unopened cans of dog food.
Plus, it isn't like gold based currency is a clear path to stability. Just look at the fun the Roman Empire had with keeping a stable currency.
(Good clean fun with Michael Parapinaces! Parapinaces was Greek for 'minus a quarter'. In his efforts to pay the army he devalued the currency so the coin -nomismata at the time IIRC- was worth only 3/4 as much as it previously was.)

The Fed didn't prevent the Great Depression, the current financial crisis, or the many smaller recessions that have occurred since 1913. Inflation helps the rich but screws over the poor and middle class.

Let's go through this one by one, shall we?
1) The Great Depression occurred when our understanding of fiscal policy was primitive and monetary policy was the theoretical equivalent of the glint in the milkman's eye, putting it bluntly. The understanding of the role the Fed would play then was vastly different from what it is now and even if the Fed had decided to take an active role in averting/resolving the Great Depression it is questionable as to whether they would have had any tools that could have done it effectively. My economic history is a bit iffy but I'm not sure they had fully worked out the link between interest rates and investment yet.
2) The Fed struggled in this GFC because their primary tool, fiddling with interest rates, wasn't going to work here. Interest rates were already quite low and going any lower could have had some Interesting Implications, things you generally want to avoid. Secondly, one of the core causes of the GFC was a complete failure of the regulators to keep the banks in check, not a task for the Fed.
Lastly, the Fed had decided to take a relatively hands-off approach to monetary policy and were way too concerned about the possibility of inflation even as inflation remained at near-record lows and some indicators suggested we might have been heading for a Japan-style 'lost decade'.
3) The goal of the Fed isn't to prevent recessions, that would be stupid and undesirable. The goal of the Fed is to maintain a stable money supply that accommodates macro goals, whether engaging in expansionary policy to stimulate growth or contractionary policy to reign in growth. When compared to recessions and depression before the Fed was created, recessions and depressions since then have been far more mellow. The troughs are smaller and the effects are nowhere near as catastrophic.
Prior to the Fed we were seeing massive crises every decade or so. After the Fed, we really have seen only three: The Great Depression, Stagflation, and the GFC. The first two occurred before the good monetarist ideas were synthesized with accepted Keynesian conventions and the last one occurred in a situation where Fed short-sightedness both limited their tools in preventing and resolving a recession.

 

[Hygro]

Because the government says that it's worth something, the green paper rectangles are not intrinsically worth anything.



What you just mentioned is precisely why things aren't even worse. Other countries are devaluing their currencies too, but that doesn't mean we should as well.

I don't understand why this matters. Inflation is a weird thing to measure, and requires a lot of semi-arbitrary value judgments. For example, no amount of 1913 dollars could buy my computer. I can buy t shirts for the same price in dollars as I could multiple decades ago.

As long as your purchasing power is increasing--and boy did an hour's labor's worth of purchasing power increase during those steepest points!--does it matter if something costs 1 unit of money or 100 units of money?

The value of your work is not being eroded by the changing value of a dollar relative to itself from a different time. So again, why does it matter?

 

[KMRblue1027]

Dollars in their raw form basically represent time, it doesn't matter what that arbitrary number is you're still exchanging time just with bigger or smaller numbers.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Gotta admit the guy has amazing charisma. I can't get anyone to listen to me when I talk about economics, and I actually know something about it.

 

[Kyriakos]

1000 years from now we could be primitive barbarians hitting each other over the head with an antelope's thighbone due to a total thermonuclear apocalypse as we scrounge for unopened cans of dog food.
Plus, it isn't like gold based currency is a clear path to stability. Just look at the fun the Roman Empire had with keeping a stable currency.
(Good clean fun with Michael Parapinaces! Parapinaces was Greek for 'minus a quarter'. In his efforts to pay the army he devalued the currency so the coin -nomismata at the time IIRC- was worth only 3/4 as much as it previously was.)


Let's go through this one by one, shall we?
1) The Great Depression occurred when our understanding of fiscal policy was primitive and monetary policy was the theoretical equivalent of the glint in the milkman's eye, putting it bluntly. The understanding of the role the Fed would play then was vastly different from what it is now and even if the Fed had decided to take an active role in averting/resolving the Great Depression it is questionable as to whether they would have had any tools that could have done it effectively. My economic history is a bit iffy but I'm not sure they had fully worked out the link between interest rates and investment yet.
2) The Fed struggled in this GFC because their primary tool, fiddling with interest rates, wasn't going to work here. Interest rates were already quite low and going any lower could have had some Interesting Implications, things you generally want to avoid. Secondly, one of the core causes of the GFC was a complete failure of the regulators to keep the banks in check, not a task for the Fed.
Lastly, the Fed had decided to take a relatively hands-off approach to monetary policy and were way too concerned about the possibility of inflation even as inflation remained at near-record lows and some indicators suggested we might have been heading for a Japan-style 'lost decade'.
3) The goal of the Fed isn't to prevent recessions, that would be stupid and undesirable. The goal of the Fed is to maintain a stable money supply that accommodates macro goals, whether engaging in expansionary policy to stimulate growth or contractionary policy to reign in growth. When compared to recessions and depression before the Fed was created, recessions and depressions since then have been far more mellow. The troughs are smaller and the effects are nowhere near as catastrophic.
Prior to the Fed we were seeing massive crises every decade or so. After the Fed, we really have seen only three: The Great Depression, Stagflation, and the GFC. The first two occurred before the good monetarist ideas were synthesized with accepted Keynesian conventions and the last one occurred in a situation where Fed short-sightedness both limited their tools in preventing and resolving a recession.

Re Parapinakes:

1) One of the most SCUM emperors of all time. But he was in good (scum) company, and ultimately they won the civil war against Romanos Diogenes, leading to the loss of half of asia minor, good job vermin

2) Iirc- but i am not sure- 'parapinakes' does not have to do with losing a 'quarter', but losing a part of the amount of grain one could buy with a nomisma. I don't recall how much was devalued, but it surely caused a very noted economic problem.

3) Parapinakes was such a leech that his vermin pals gave him the church title of 'bishop', AFTER his reign ended. That was a first (and a last), and was done exactly so as to avoid reprisals against him (eg having him accidentally lose his eyes and left to rot in some island in the Bosporos). Basically he was the proto-Angelos.

 

[Hygro]

Gotta admit the guy has amazing charisma. I can't get anyone to listen to me when I talk about economics, and I actually know something about it.

That's a really good point. It's really hard to keep people's attention talking economics. Ron Paul does it. Unfortunately he cheats (and gets it wrong, sigh) by using late 19th century material. It's like a politician citing Freud for psychology.

 

[Cutlass]

It's also true that Paul is only getting the attention of a small minority of the populace. It's a dedicated and reliable minority, but it's still a small minority.

 

[Kyriakos]

It's also true that Paul is only getting the attention of a small minority of the populace. It's a dedicated and reliable minority, but it's still a small minority.

In contrast to, let's say, Joe Biden? Or any other arch-clowns?
At least R.P. seems more sane than the rest of those (Bush, Bobama, Biden, Bcheaney etc).

 

[Cutlass]

Biden is sane. He's just a poor public speaker for someone of his political success. Bush and Obama have both been far more successful in getting much larger numbers of people to listen to them than Paul has been.

 

[Kyriakos]

Biden is sane. He's just a poor public speaker for someone of his political success. Bush and Obama have both been far more successful in getting much larger numbers of people to listen to them than Paul has been.

That doesn't seem to be a reflection on their worth, but on some issue on the other side of the line..

'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me...uh...can't get fooled again!'.

 

[Hygro]

When Biden speaks well, though, he's real solid.