Not linked on Ron Paul’s Congressional Website.
Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3
minutes to the gentleman from Texas
(Mr. PAUL).
(Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission
to revise and extend his remarks.)
2009 Ron Paul 11:1
Mr. PAUL. I thank the gentlelady for
yielding, and Mr. Speaker, I rise in support
of this resolution because I don’t
believe the bailouts can work, and
more spending isn’t the answer.
2009 Ron Paul 11:2
Actually, we should have talked
more about prevention of a problem
like we have today than trying to deal
with the financial cancer that we are
dealing with. But the prevention could
have come many decades ago. And
many free-market economists predicted,
even decades ago, that we would
have a crisis like this. But those warnings
were not heeded, and even in the
last 10 years there have been dire warnings
by people who believe in sound
money and not in the inflationary system
that we have that we will come to
this point.
2009 Ron Paul 11:3
Over those decades we were able to
bail out to a degree and patch over and
keep the financial bubble going. But
today, we are in a massive deflationary
crisis, and we only have two choices.
One is to continue to do what we are
doing: inflate more, spend more, and
run up more deficits. But it doesn’t
seem to be working because it won’t
work because the confidence has been
lost. The confidence in the post-
Bretton Woods system of the dollar fiat
standard, it is gone. This whole effort
to refinance in this manner just won’t
work.
2009 Ron Paul 11:4
Now, the other option is to allow the
deflation to occur, allow the liquidation
of bad debt and to allow the removal
of all of the bad investments;
but that politically is unacceptable, so
we are really in a dilemma because nobody
can take a hands-off position.
Politicians have to feel relevant. And,
therefore, they have to do something.
But there is no evidence that this is
going to work.
2009 Ron Paul 11:5
Now we hear that there is a proposal,
and we read about it in the paper, and
I don’t know who came up with this,
but it is the idea of having a bad bank.
Let us create a government bad bank,
and this bad bank is to take the bad
debt from the bad bankers and dump
these assets onto the good citizens.
Well, I think that is a very bad idea. I
mean, it doesn’t make any sense for
the innocent American citizen to bear
the burden.
2009 Ron Paul 11:6
But others will say no, we will bail
out the citizens as well. But ultimately,
it is the little guy that loses
on this. The bankers got $350 billion,
and we can’t account for it and their
assets don’t look that much better, and
yet the American people are still suffering.
It didn’t create any more new
jobs. The attempt now will be maybe to
redirect this. But, unfortunately, it
will not be any more successful.
2009 Ron Paul 11:7
The fallacy here is we are trying to
keep prices high when prices should
come down. What do we have against
poor people? Lower the price of houses,
get them down. A $100,000 house, get
them down to $20,000. Let a poor person
buy these houses. That is what we
want.
2009 Ron Paul 11:8
But this is a remnant of the philosophy
of the 1930s when it was thought
we were in trouble because the farmers
weren’t getting enough money for their
crops. So people were starving in the
streets, and guess what the policy was
that came out of Washington: plow
under the crops and then maybe the
prices will go up. Diminish the supply,
and it will solve our problem. It didn’t
work then, it won’t work today.
