Ron Paul: 15 Years After the US Invaded Iraq, It’s Time to Listen to the Iraqi People

By Ron Paul | 

This month marks the 15th anniversary of the US war on Iraq. The “shock and awe” attack was launched based on “stove-piped” intelligence fed from the CIA and Pentagon through an uncritical and compliant US mainstream media. The US media was a willing accomplice to this crime of aggression committed by the George W. Bush Administration.

Despite the lies we were constantly bombarded with, Iraq never presented a threat to the United States. Iraq never had the weapons of mass destruction that the neocons used to frighten Americans into supporting the war. How many of them knew all along that there were no WMDs? We’ll never know. Attacking Iraq and overthrowing its leader was long a plan in the neocon playbook and they used the 9/11 attack on the US as an excuse to pull the plan off the shelf and put it into action.

The US “regime change” war on Iraq has directly resulted in the death of at least a quarter of a million civilians, and indirectly perhaps a million Iraqis have been killed. The Iraqi infrastructure was destroyed and the country was set back many decades in development. Far from the democratization we were promised, Iraq has been turned into a hell on earth. Due to the US use of depleted uranium and other chemical weapons like white phosphorus, Iraqis will continue to suffer from birth defects and other related illnesses for generations.

How did we get there? War propaganda was essential in paving the way for the Iraq war. Americans are generally skeptical about launching new wars, so it takes a steady media bombardment about the alleged depravities of any targeted regime before public opinion begins to shift in favor of war.

Because the neocons who helped launch the war have never had to face the consequences of their actions, they continue to promote war with impunity. Just this past week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was pushing for a US attack on North Korea in which millions may be killed. He said this weekend, “All the damage that would come from a war would be worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security.” That’s just what they said before the US attacked Iraq, and how did that turn out? I find it disgusting that the media continues to give airtime almost exclusively to those who promote more US disasters like Iraq.

The Iraqi parliament did something extraordinary last week. A majority of elected Iraqi representatives voted to demand that their prime minister draw up a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from the country. President Obama had withdrawn US troops from Iraq in 2011, after a status of forces agreement could not be reached with the Iraqi government, but he returned the US military to Iraq under the auspices of fighting ISIS.

We had no business going into Iraq in the first place and we have no business remaining in Iraq. Al-Qaeda and ISIS emerged in Iraq because our attack and occupation of the country 15 years ago created fertile fields for extremism. Nothing will be achieved if we remain. Let’s listen to the Iraqis and just come home!

The post Ron Paul: 15 Years After the US Invaded Iraq, It’s Time to Listen to the Iraqi People appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel Are Symptoms of a Much Deeper Problem

(RPI Op-ed) — President Trump’s recent cabinet shake-up looks to be a real boost to hard-line militarism and neo-conservatism. If his nominees to head the State Department and CIA are confirmed, we may well have moved closer to war. Before being chosen by Trump to head up the CIA, Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo was one of […]

Ron Paul: ‘The Fed Is At A Crossroads…Crisis Is Coming’

The Fed has created a mountain of problems for everyone in the United States and every single solution that they come up with leads to even more problems. Ron Paul recently discussed what the Fed has done, how it tries to keep things going, and the inevitable economic crisis that is coming.

Ron Paul has been one of the few steadfast proponents of liberty, which is likely why he’s no longer associated with the government at all. In a recent video, Paul discussed the problems the Federal Reserve created and why their solutions will generate an economic crisis of epic proportions.

“They [The Fed] have a lot of power, but their main goal is to do central economic planning which always fails. It’s also a gimmick because they have meetings, they are supposed to have eight a year, and then there’s a big announcement…they come out and they make a statement and the chairman is interviewed, and then, later on, you get the minutes. It’s big fanfare. But I see it as mostly propaganda, just carrying a message. Getting it from the people who really run things, the deep state, and they get it out there. But it does have a lot of effect on the market. I actually believe that there are some people who know how fictitious the Fed really is and how inept it is, but still watch it because they know a lot of other people are going to pay attention…the deep state is not a part of the government, but they have a lot of influence.”

Paul went on to explain that often we are told it’s not right to criticize the Fed. But that will change.

“The next downturn, which I think will come soon, the Fed’s not going to get credit for getting us out of it. They didn’t get any credit for getting us out this last recession which we’re really, in many ways, still in…times are different. But times are getting much worse now. This next downturn is going to be a serious one and the Fed doesn’t have any magic whatsoever…central economic planning never works no matter how long they get away with it.”

And something we’ve heard from top financial experts such as Peter Schiff, Paul also says there’s a trend to ditch the dollar, which will lead to its collapse.

“I think it [the dollar value] is going to continue to erode on international exchange markets and this will hurt us because that’s also the reason that we see interest rates going up,” Paul says. “Peter Schiff is right,” Paul continued. This whole house of cards will come crashing down as interest rates rise.

Ron Paul: FISA Memo Proves Both Parties Lie To & Spy On Americans to Push the Police State

The release of much-anticipated FISA memo proved that no matter what, the military industrial complex marches on at the demand of democrats and republicans.

The post Ron Paul: FISA Memo Proves Both Parties Lie To & Spy On Americans to Push the Police State appeared first on The Free Thought Project.

Congress Quietly Pushing Bill to Require National Biometric ID for ‘ALL Americans’

H.R.4760 - Securing America"s Future Act of 2018 - is a massive giveaway to the police state which will use a National ID to track Americans.

Ron Paul: ‘When Our Financial System Crashes…The Elites…Will Suffer The Least’

When the housing bubble popped in 2007, the Federal Reserve went to work to re-inflate the bubble by printing more money – quantitative easing. But the policy has made matters much worse, as now everything is a bubble, and according to Ron Paul, when it bursts, only the elite will come out unscathed.

The Federal Reserve has once again created an artificial and unsustainable economic bubble. Central planning still doesn’t work, and the sooner we move to sound money the better. Ron Paul discusses the monumental mess that The Federal Reserve has wrought.

“Some very serious consequences of this policy of unprecedented credit creation have set the stage for a major monetary reform of the fiat dollar system,” says Paul in a special report video. And the economic trouble that the United States is in should concern every single one of us. It is far from a minor issue.

“As our financial system unravels, the seriousness of it will become evident to all, as the need to pay for our extravagance becomes obvious. This will make the country much poorer. Though the elite class that manages such affairs will suffer the least.” -Ron Paul

“The housing bubble is back along with subprime loans. There’s an auto financing bubble encouraged by subprime loans for many customers. The stock market is in a bubble waiting to be pricked. The bond market is in a huge bubble as a result low or negative interest rates.”

The Fed wasn’t alone in its interventionist monetary policy. Central banks around the world followed the same prescription. All in all, the central banks of the world increased their balance sheets by $8.3 trillion, with only $2.1 trillion worth of GDP growth to show for it. That’s going to become apparent when all of these bubbles burst.

“This left $6.2 trillion of excess liquidity in the banking system that did not go where the economic planners had hoped. Central banks now own $9.7 trillion of negative interest-yielding bonds. The financial system has been left with a bubble mania, financed by artificial credit and unsustainable debt. The national debt in 2007 was $8.9 trillion; today it’s $20.5 trillion. Rising interest rates will come and that will be deadly for the economy and the federal budget.”

The biggest takeaway from Ron Paul’s report, is that central planning and large government never works out regardless of the intention behind both, and at the expense of liberty.

“A compliant citizenry that fails to grasp the importance of liberty, and instead accepts dependency on government as a substitute for self-reliance guarantees that the bursting of the QE bubble will generate a much more serious crisis than it need be.”

Ron Paul: Just Say No to Jeff Sessions

(RPI) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions kicked off the New Year by reversing the Obama-era guidance for federal prosecutors to limit their enforcement of federal marijuana laws in states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use. In what is almost certainly not a coincidence, Sessions’ announcement came days after California’s law legalizing recreational marijuana sales went into effect. Sessions’ action thus runs counter to the wishes of the majority of the people in the most populous US state, as well the people of the 28 other states (and DC) that have legalized some form of marijuana use.

Federal laws criminalizing marijuana and other drugs have failed to reduce drug use. However, they have succeeded in giving power-hungry politicians and bureaucrats what was, before 9-11, the go-to justification for violating our civil liberties. The federal war on marijuana has also wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Far from reducing crime, outlawing drugs causes crime by ensuring criminals will control the market for drugs. Outlawing drugs also provides incentives for drug dealers to increase the potency, and thus the danger, of drugs, as higher potency products take up less space and are thus easier to conceal from law enforcement.

The US Constitution does not give the federal government any authority to criminalize marijuana. Thus, the question of whether marijuana is legal is one of the many issues reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment. If the Constitution gives Congress the power to ban marijuana, then why was it necessary to amend the Constitution to give Congress the power to ban alcohol?

Sessions’ usurpation of state marijuana laws is the type of federal intrusion into state issues usually opposed by conservatives. Sadly, too many conservatives are just as willing to sacrifice constitutional government and individual liberties for the war on drugs as they are for the war on terror.

Conservative hypocrisy is especially strong when it comes to medical marijuana. Many Americans have used medical marijuana for conditions such as cancer and glaucoma. Yet many conservatives who (properly) decry Obamacare’s mandate forcing every American to purchase health insurance cheer Jeff Sessions’ effort to deprive suffering individuals of the medical treatment of their choice. Cruel paternalism in healthcare policy is often associated with progressives, but unfortunately conservatives are just as guilty.

States that have legalized medical marijuana have fewer deaths related to opioid abuse. These states have also experienced a decrease in crime and black market activity. This is perhaps because some have found medical marijuana a viable alternative to opioids.

Laws outlawing marijuana criminalize peaceful behavior that, while potentially harmful to the individual, does not violate the rights of others. Therefore, these laws, like all laws authorizing government force against peaceful, if immoral, actions, are incompatible with a free society. Once again we see the hypocrisy of conservatives who decry progressives’ war on tobacco and fatty foods, yet support jailing marijuana users.

Federal laws outlawing marijuana violate the Constitution, justify violations of civil liberties, and increase violence. By criminalizing nonviolent behavior voluntarily chosen by individuals, drug laws undermine the moral principles underlying a free society.

President Trump should fire Jeff Sessions and replace him with someone who respects the Constitution and individual liberty. Also, officials from states with legal medical or recreational marijuana should refuse to cooperate with those tasked with enforcing federal marijuana laws. If President Trump and state officials stand up for liberty, the people will join them in saying no to Jeff Sessions.

Op-ed by Ron Paul / Republished with permission / RPI / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

Ron Paul Issues Dire Warning: U.S. ‘On the Verge of 1989’s Soviet System Collapse’

“Anybody who thinks we’re not doing too badly has not been flying on an airplane lately. That’s about as authoritarian-fascism as you can get,” Ron Paul said.

Ron Paul: No One Should Be Surprised That a Gov’t Who Kills for Profit is Full of Rapists

Ron Paul just went on an epic rant exposing the failed and immoral system that is Washington D.C. and the violence and propaganda it uses to maintain its power.

Ron Paul Blasts Congress" Political And Personal Immorality

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Many Americans have been shocked by recent revelations of the extent of sexual harassment in Congress.

However, no one should be too surprised that those who spend their lives defending and expanding the welfare-warfare state engage in immoral personal conduct.

It is only natural that an immoral system, like the welfare-warfare state, tends to attract individuals likely to practice personal immorality.

The welfare-warfare state is built on a foundation of taxation and fiat currency controlled by a secretive central bank. While some type of taxation may be necessary to fund the few legitimate functions of government, taking people’s money to fund a redistributive welfare state at home and a global empire abroad is nothing more than theft. The Federal Reserve’s erosion of purchasing power is also a form of theft.

The welfare-warfare state relies on violence. Every law preventing us from living our lives as we choose — whether forbidding us from working for below minimum wage, preventing us from smoking marijuana or drinking raw milk, telling private business owners who can and cannot use what restroom, or requiring us to purchase government-approved health insurance — rests on the threat of force being used against those who refuse to obey.

The warfare side of the welfare-warfare state is obviously rooted in violence. War inevitably leads to deaths, including the deaths of innocents. A permanent warfare state is also the quickest way to lose our liberties. This is why the Founding Fathers counseled against standing armies and foreign entanglements.

The neocons and “humanitarian interventionists” who control our foreign policy have disregarded the wisdom of the Founders. They actually promote endless wars not to protect our security but to promote “democracy” and “universal human rights.” They are impervious to evidence of the failure of military interventions to achieve these goals and indifferent to the human and fiscal costs of endless war. They dismiss the loss of innocent lives — including the deaths of children — as unavoidable “collateral damage,” while using their influence in the media to spread pro-war propaganda. They also smear their opponents as aiding America’s enemies and sympathizing with terrorists.

No one holding political power wants to admit the system he supports is immoral and a failure. Therefore, defenders of the welfare-warfare state rely on lies and deceptions. They ignore all evidence of the failure of big government to accomplish its ends, instead pretending they can fix the system with a few reforms. They also work with allies in the media to promulgate the lie that without the welfare state the masses would remain poor and uneducated, and without the warfare state we would be overwhelmed by those who hate us for our freedoms. They never mention that many foreigners hate America because of the suffering caused by our hyper-interventionist foreign policy.

The welfare-warfare state is built on violence and deceit.

It is thus inevitable that many of those participating in this immoral system will combine their immoral politics with immoral personal conduct. Hopefully the revelations of sexual misconduct among the welfare-warfare state’s Capitol Hill and media defenders will lead more Americans to question the morality and the wisdom of allowing the federal government to run the world, run the economy, and run our lives.

Ron Paul Just Exposed How the New ‘Tax Cuts’ Will Actually ‘Hammer’ the Middle Class

Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul is calling out Congress for celebrating ostensible tax cuts—that will hammer middle-class Americans.

Senior Intel Corp. Scientist Predicted Bitcoin In Cryptography Manifesto—In 1994

Bitcoin is one of the "sophisticated financial alternatives to the dollar" that was predicted in a 1994 manifesto from a senior Intel Corporation scientist.

Ron Paul Says He Was "Surprised" His Followers Prefer Bitcoin To Gold

Earlier this week, former Congressman Ron Paul posted a Twitter poll asking his followers to choose between four different assets for a long-term investment, with the stipulation that the bearer would need to keep their money locked up for ten years.

 

A wealthy person wants to gift you $10,000. You get to choose in which form you"ll take the gift. But there"s a catch: You must keep the gift in the form that you choose, and you can"t touch it for 10 years.

In which form would you take the gift?

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) December 5, 2017

 

Paul admitted he was surprised when he saw that a majority of respondents – 54% - selected bitcoin over gold, dollars and a 10-year Treasury bond.

During an interview with the Street, a reporter asked Paul if he was surprised that his followers prefer bitcoin to gold.

Yea a little bit. I was a little bit - of course I wasn’t surprised that only 2% would store it in Federal Reserve notes, nor do they think they should buy Treasury bills. Gold has 36% but bitcoin has 54%...it’s the sort of information that tells me where my viewers are and what they’re thinking. Most of my viewers know how supportive I am of gold, and they know I’m tolerant of digital currencies.

Still, Paul believes cryptocurrencies are an interesting experiment and is generally supportive of their development and increasing popularity. But when asked for his thoughts on where bitcoin might be in ten years, he demurred.

What’s it going to be like in ten years? Nobody knows. But we have a pretty good idea where gold will be. It’s been around a long time and it’s not going away.

Though the market for gold is still much larger than the market for bitcoin, Paul’s interviewer asked if the interest in cryptocurrencies could be one reason for gold’s recent stumbles.

I think we could still be in a phase where gold could take off. It’s just a matter of figuring out when…the fed has created so much money and people have sort of caught on to it like a fever."

Paul said he doesn’t invest in bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies, and has no plans to start.

No, I don’t intend to at all. I find it fascinating, but as an investor, no…"

At the interview’s conclusion, Paul explained that digital currencies have helped demonstrate an important principle about government and sound money: When a government loses all credibility and its currency becomes worthless, people will work out an alternative monetary system on their own. Venezuela and Zimbabwe have been perhaps the best examples of this: bitcoin trades at a premium in both countries. And in Venezuela, bitcoin miners risk being prosecuted by the government.

“Take a country like Zimbabwe or Venezuela. They change their attitudes quickly when they get in trouble.”
 

Good news: Young Americans want a new political party

Do we need a third major political party? I often joke that I’d be happy if we actually had a second party, as when it comes to the big issues – war, monetary policy, civil liberties – the Republicans and Democrats are more alike than different. Perhaps that’s why a recent NBC News poll has found that nearly two-thirds of young people surveyed do not believe either the Republicans or Democrats are doing a good job and that a third major political party is needed.

I think this is an encouraging sign. I suspect the NBC News poll result reflects the fact that young people are not as easily hoodwinked by the mainstream media and by the two-party duopoly charade in Washington. This generation has grown up with the Internet and the abundance of alternative media that challenges what really is a one-party system in the United States. They have been exposed to many new ideas, including good ones like libertarianism and non-interventionism.

Currently, mainstream politics in the US is all about power – how to get it and how to keep it – and not at all about philosophy or ideology. It is about selling out principles at every turn in order to chalk up another point in the “win” column. On issues like war and spending, it’s incredible how easily the two major parties are able to “compromise.”

A serious effort to create a new political party could be very exciting, but only if that new party is based on real ideas rather than simply the desire for power. Creating a viable third party will not be easy. While there is plenty written in the media about foreign collusion in US elections, the real collusion is between the Republican and Democratic Parties to prevent new parties from joining them on the national stage and the ballot.

Unfortunately the Libertarian Party has failed to live up to what should have been its role as an ideological alternative to Washington’s one-party system. As was quite obvious in the 2016 presidential election, the Libertarians yielded to prevailing attitudes on war, welfare, the Federal Reserve, and more. In believing that winning was more important than standing for something, they ended up achieving neither.

I would still like to have some hope for the Libertarian Party, but to really fill its role as a challenger to our two party system (that is actually a one party system) it would need a major overhaul. It would need to actually embrace the core libertarian principles of non-aggression and non-intervention in the affairs of others.

At the end of my 2008 presidential campaign, I brought together the candidates of the “minor” political parties and proposed that we agree on some basic principles regardless of whether we are libertarians, conservatives, progressives, or greens. Among those was the idea that we should never go to war unless we were directly attacked or threatened, that the Federal Reserve should not be allowed to benefit the rich by creating money out of thin air, and that we should not endorse deficit spending.

If a new party could come together and agree on these basic principles while agreeing to disagree on other, less important priorities, we could begin a formidable movement toward peace and prosperity.

Let us hope that this NBC News survey provides the inspiration to a real pro-peace, pro-prosperity movement in the United States. I have much confidence in the youth of our country!

Via The Ron Paul Institute

---

Featured image: maf04/Flickr

The post Good news: Young Americans want a new political party appeared first on Intellihub.

Good News: Majority of Young Americans Want a New Political Party

(RPI) — Do we need a third major political party? I often joke that I’d be happy if we actually had a second party, as when it comes to the big issues – war, monetary policy, civil liberties – the Republicans and Democrats are more alike than different. Perhaps that’s why a recent NBC News poll has found that nearly two-thirds of young people surveyed do not believe either the Republicans or Democrats are doing a good job and that a third major political party is needed.

I think this is an encouraging sign. I suspect the NBC News poll result reflects the fact that young people are not as easily hoodwinked by the mainstream media and by the two-party duopoly charade in Washington. This generation has grown up with the Internet and the abundance of alternative media that challenges what really is a one-party system in the United States. They have been exposed to many new ideas, including good ones like libertarianism and non-interventionism.

Currently, mainstream politics in the US is all about power – how to get it and how to keep it – and not at all about philosophy or ideology. It is about selling out principles at every turn in order to chalk up another point in the “win” column. On issues like war and spending, it’s incredible how easily the two major parties are able to “compromise.”

A serious effort to create a new political party could be very exciting, but only if that new party is based on real ideas rather than simply the desire for power. Creating a viable third party will not be easy. While there is plenty written in the media about foreign collusion in US elections, the real collusion is between the Republican and Democratic Parties to prevent new parties from joining them on the national stage and the ballot.

Unfortunately the Libertarian Party has failed to live up to what should have been its role as an ideological alternative to Washington’s one-party system. As was quite obvious in the 2016 presidential election, the Libertarians yielded to prevailing attitudes on war, welfare, the Federal Reserve, and more. In believing that winning was more important than standing for something, they ended up achieving neither.

I would still like to have some hope for the Libertarian Party, but to really fill its role as a challenger to our two party system (that is actually a one party system) it would need a major overhaul. It would need to actually embrace the core libertarian principles of non-aggression and non-intervention in the affairs of others.

At the end of my 2008 presidential campaign, I brought together the candidates of the “minor” political parties and proposed that we agree on some basic principles regardless of whether we are libertarians, conservatives, progressives, or greens. Among those was the idea that we should never go to war unless we were directly attacked or threatened, that the Federal Reserve should not be allowed to benefit the rich by creating money out of thin air, and that we should not endorse deficit spending.

If a new party could come together and agree on these basic principles while agreeing to disagree on other, less important priorities, we could begin a formidable movement toward peace and prosperity.

Let us hope that this NBC News survey provides the inspiration to a real pro-peace, pro-prosperity movement in the United States. I have much confidence in the youth of our country!

Op-ed by Ron Paul / Republished with permission / RPI / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

Ron Paul: We Are Reaching A Point Of No Return

This article was originally published by Adam Taggart at PeakProsperity

Dr. Ron Paul has long been a leading voice for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, sound money, civil liberty, and non-interventionist foreign policies.

Dr. Paul served as the US Representative for Texas’s 27^th Congressional District from 1976 to 1985. He then represented the 14^th district from 1977 to 2013. He ran for the office of US President, three times, most recently in the 2012 Republican primaries. Dr. Paul also had a long career as an OBGYN over which he delivered more than 4,000 babies.

The recent author of the book, The Revolution At Ten Years, Dr. Paul looks ahead at the future of the movement he helped launch — tackling central planning, the military empire, cultural Marxism, the surveillance state, the deep state, and the real threats from these institutions to our civil liberties.

As a multi-term member of Congress, Dr. Paul knows the players and policies responsible for the growing unfairness and inequality now rampant in society. He does not expect the offenders will reform willingly. Instead, he predicts the system will collapse under its own unsustainability — offering a rare and valuable chance then for more sound and fair solutions to prevail:

Wealth doesn’t come from the creation of money, especially a fiat system. With too much fiat money and all this credit, eventually the economy becomes exhausted and engulfed with debt and mal-investments. The treatment for this is a correction; you have to allow the debt to be liquidated. You have to get rid of the mal-investment and you have and to allow real economic growth to start all over again. But that wasn’t permitted in ’08 and ’09, which is why there’s been stagnation. It’s hard to believe that today we have negative interest rates — real rates are negative and people still aren’t grabbing them up! A shortage of money isn’t the problem here; rather, it’s a shortage of understanding market conditions.

We’re over-taxed and over-regulated. This is resulting in a destructive system that has divided the country into two groups: those who haven’t recovered from the Great Financial Crisis versus those who are getting very rich because they’re on the receiving end of the new money created by the Federal Reserve. The people who get to create the credit get to distribute the credit, which always results in a situation where money becomes unfairly distributed, as its allocation is no longer dependent on productivity.

We haven’t changed anything. We still have a system where we encourage people to borrow money, that debt doesn’t matter, and we’re not going to cut taxes, and we’re not even going to admit that we spend too much money. Nobody can cut anything — that’s why Washington is at a stalemate. A lot of people don’t like Obamacare, but there’s enough people who do like it. Once it has been implemented, it’s very hard to get rid of a program. I also don’t think that the proposed tax reforms will actually lower taxes. They never do.  Our politicians won’t admit where the real problem lies: overspending, monetizing the debt, taking over the whole world through the monetary system, financing wars, financing welfare and the military industrial complex. It’s going to continue until this whole thing comes apart.

The eventual event will be driven by the marketplace. When it comes undone, they will no longer be able to prop things up just by printing more money. If we have a sharp downturn and they decide, “Well, QE didn’t work because it wasn’t enough.” and they double QE, there’ll be a point of no return and all confidence will be lost. We’ll dump the dollar. Interest rates will go up instead of down. That will make all the difference in the world because it will be unsustainable and create real challenges for the dollar remaining the reserve currency. When the dollar no longer serves as the world’s key currency, that’s when the ballgame will be over.

Click the play button below to listen to Chris’ interview with Dr. Ron Paul (29m:56s).

Click here for full transcript

Ron Paul Reminds Americans the US Military is Occupying 53 of 54 African Nations

Ron Paul noted that not only is the United States military in Niger, but U.S. troops are stationed in 53 out of the 54 nations in Africa.

Ron Paul: Trump’s Candidates for Federal Reserve Chief Are a Total Disaster

(RPI Op-ed) This week President Trump revealed his final five candidates for Federal Reserve chair. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, all five have strong ties to the financial and political establishment. The leading candidates are former Federal Reserve governor and Morgan Stanley banker Kevin Warsh and current Fed governor, former investment banker, Carlyle Group partner, and George H.W. Bush administration official Jerome Powell. Gary Cohn, current director of the president’s National Economic Council and former president of Goldman Sachs, is also on Trump’s list.

Trump is also considering reappointing Janet Yellen, even though when he was running for president he repeatedly criticized her for pursuing policies harmful to the middle class. Of course candidate Trump also promised to support Audit the Fed and even voiced support for returning to the gold standard. But, he has not even uttered the words “Audit the Fed,” or talked about any changes to monetary policy, since the election.

Instead, President Trump, in complete contradiction to candidate Trump, has praised Yellen for being a “low-interest-rate-person.” One reason Trump may have changed his position is that, like most first-term presidents, he thinks low interest rates will help him win reelection. Trump may also realize that his welfare and warfare spending plans require an accommodative Fed to monetize the federal debt. The truth is President Trump’s embrace of status quo monetary policy could prove fatal to both his presidency and the American economy.

The failure of the Fed’s post-2008 policies of unprecedented money creation and record-low interest rates shows our experiment with fiat money is nearing its inevitable end. All of Trump’s potential picks are likely to continue the Fed’s current policies. Even the ones who say they favor higher rates will likely bow to the wishes of their friends in the financial and political establishment and make sure any rate hikes are minuscule. Appointing a Fed chair who will continue, or only make marginal changes to, these failed policies will hasten the collapse while making the resulting depression more painful.

Some say that Trump could make a radical change in monetary policy by appointing Stanford University professor and former George W. Bush administration Treasury official John Taylor. Professor Taylor is a leading advocate of a “rules-based” monetary policy. Advocates of forcing the Fed to follow specific rules say this will bring stability and predictability to monetary policy. However, a rules-based policy still allows the Fed to control the money supply and distort interest rates, thus still plaguing the economy with Fed-created bubbles and busts.

Trump would do well to appoint a Fed chair who follows the teachings of the Austrian school of economics and thus understands that the only thing the Fed can do to “fix” the economy is allow the correction to run its course. He should also use his bully pulpit to pass Audit the Fed and legislation legalizing competing currencies.

Fortunately, even if Trump is not speaking out on Audit the Fed, many Americans are demanding that Congress vote on and pass this bill. An increasing number of Americans are seeking alternatives to the Federal Reserve System, such as precious metals and cyber currency.

Another positive development is occurring in the states. Arizona recently passed legislation recognizing gold, silver, and other precious metals as legal tender. Wyoming will consider similar legislation next year. If Congress refuses to act to restore a free market in money by auditing and ending the Fed, more states are likely to pass these laws as more Americans reject fiat currency in favor of real money.

Op-Ed by Ron Paul / Republished with permission / RPI / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

Ron Paul Rages At The Decades Of Wars" Damage To The American Economy

In a new interview with host Jesse Ventura at RT, former presidential candidate and House of Representatives Member Ron Paul discusses the harm imposed on the American economy by the succession of US wars over the last few decades, from the Korean War onward, that drain money away from prosperity-building activities in America.

“Just think if all the money we have spent overseas since World War II ended, if that money had been left in this country to let wealth grow,” proposes Paul.

 

Had that happened, Paul says there would not be so many people using food stamps, the middle class would not be dwindling, and the jobs situation would be better in America.

 

While the American economy in general has been hurt by the wars, Paul notes that some Americans have benefited financially. Paul concludes,

 

“It’s insanity to think that war improves your economic condition; it improves the condition of the war manufacturers.”

As The Ron Paul Institute"s Adam Dick details, this economic damage, Paul points out in the interview, is just one of the ways that “the wars hurt us here at home.”

Wars also lead, Paul argues, to government efforts, such as via the USA PATRIOT Act, in contravention of Americans’ freedom.

Watch Paul’s complete interview here:

Big Brother’s War on Cash

Everyone is surely aware by now that all of our digital communications are being sent to government databases for storage. If our American ancestors could see it, they wouldn’t believe their eyes. We still, however, have the ability to use cash. All of our economic decisions are not under constant government surveillance. Ron Paul discusses the dangers of Big Brother’s War on Cash.

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