The Book of Ron Paul
1998 Ron Paul Chapter 102

Revamping The Monetary System

24 September 1998

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The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. BASS). The Chair recognized the gentleman from Texas [Mr. PAUL] for 5 minutes.

1998 Ron Paul 102:1
Mr. PAUL. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I’d like to call the attention to fellow colleagues to the issue of three things that have happened in the last couple of days.

1998 Ron Paul 102:2
Today it was recorded in our newspapers and it was a consequence of a meeting held last night and that has to do with a company that went bankrupt, Long-Term Capital Management, and I believe this has a lot of significance and something that we in the Congress should not ignore.

1998 Ron Paul 102:3
This is a hedge fund. Their capitalization is less than $100 billion, but, through the derivatives markets, they were able to buy and speculate in over $1 trillion worth of securities, part of the financial bubble that I have expressed concern about over the past several months.

1998 Ron Paul 102:4
But last night an emergency meeting was called by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It wasn’t called by the banks and the security firms that were standing to lose the money, but the Federal Reserve Bank of New York called an emergency meeting late last night. Some of the members of this meeting, the attendees of this meeting, came back from Europe just to attend this meeting because it was of such serious nature. They put together a package of $3.5 billion to bail out this company.

1998 Ron Paul 102:5
Yesterday, also, Greenspan announced that he would lower interest rates. I do not think this was an accident or not coincidental. It was coincidental that at this very same time they were meeting this crisis, Greenspan had to announce that, yes indeed, he would inflate our currency, he would expand the money supply, he would increase the credit, he would lower interest rates. At least that’s what the markets interpreted his statement to mean. And the stock market responded favorably by going up 257 points.

1998 Ron Paul 102:6
On September 18th, the New York Times, and this is the third issue that that has come about in the last several weeks, on 9/18 the New York Times editorialized about why we needed a worldwide Federal Reserve system to bail out the countries involved in this financial crisis.

1998 Ron Paul 102:7
Yesterday, on the very same day, there was another op-ed piece in the New York Times by Jeffrey Garten, calling again for a worldwide central bank, that is, a worldwide Federal Reserve system to bail out the ailing economies of the world.

1998 Ron Paul 102:8
The argument might go, yes, indeed, the financial conditions of the world is rather severe and we should do something. But the financial conditions of the world is in trouble because we have allowed our Federal Reserve System, in deep secrecy, create credit out of thin air and contribute to the bubble that exists. Where else could the credit come from for a company like Long-Term Capital Management? Where could they get this credit, other than having it created and encouraged by a monetary system engineered by our own Federal Reserve System?

1998 Ron Paul 102:9
We will have to do something about what is happening in the world today, but the danger that I see is that the movement is toward this worldwide Federal Reserve System or worldwide central bank; more of the same problem. If we have a fiat monetary system, not only in the United States but throughout the world, that has created the financial bubble, what makes anybody think that creating more credit out of thin air will solve these problems? It will make the problems much worse.

1998 Ron Paul 102:10
We need to have a revamping of the monetary system, but certainly it cannot be saved, it cannot be improved, by more paper money out of thin air, and that’s what the Federal Reserve System is doing.

1998 Ron Paul 102:11
I’d like to remind my colleagues that when the Federal Reserve talks about lowering interest rates, like Mr. Greenspan announced yesterday, or alluded to, this means that the Federal Reserve will create new credit. Where do they get new credit and new money? They get it out of thin air. And this, of course, will lower interest rates on the short run and this will give a boost to a few people in trouble and it will bail out certain individuals.

1998 Ron Paul 102:12
When we create credit to bail out other currencies or other economies, yes, this tends to help. But the burden eventually falls on the American taxpayer, and it will fall on the value of the dollar. Already we have seen some signs that the dollar is not quite as strong as it should be if we are the haven of last resort as foreign capital comes into the United States. The dollar in relationship to the Swiss franc has been down 10 percent in the last two months. In a basket of currencies, of 15 currencies of J.P. Morgan, it’s down 5 percent in one month.

1998 Ron Paul 102:13
So when we go this next step of saying, yes, we must bail out the system by creating new dollars, it means that we are attacking the value of the money and when we do this, we steal the value of the money from the people who already hold dollars.

1998 Ron Paul 102:14
If we have an international Federal Reserve System that is permitted to do this without legislation and out of the realms of the legislative bodies around the world, it means that they can steal the value of the strong currencies. So literally an international central bank could undermine the value of the dollar without permission by the U.S. Congress, without an appropriation, but the penalty will fall on the American people by having a devalued dollar.

1998 Ron Paul 102:15
This is a very dangerous way to go, but the movement is on. As I mentioned, it has already been written up in the New York Times. George Soros not too long ago, last week, came before the Banking Committee making the same argument.

1998 Ron Paul 102:16
What does he happen to be? A hedge fund operator, the same business as Long-Term Capital Management, coming to us and saying,
“Oh, what you better do is protect the system.” Well, I don’t think the American people can afford it. We do have a financial bubble, but financial bubbles are caused by the creation of new credit from central banks. Under a sound monetary system you have commodity standard of money where politicians lose total control. Politicians do not have control and they do not instill trust into the paper money system.

1998 Ron Paul 102:17
And we go one step further. The Congress has reneged on its responsibility and has not maintained the responsibility of maintaining value in the dollar. It has turned it over to a very secretive body, the Federal Reserve System, that has no responsibility to the U.S. Congress. So I argue for the case of watching out for the dollar and arguing for sound money, and not to allow this to progress any further. Thank you.

Note:

1998 Ron Paul 102:2
Long-Term Capital Management possibly the same company referred to as Long Term Credit Management in 1998 Ron Paul 104:1. and as Long Term Capital Management LP in 1998 Ron Paul 120:16.



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