The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a
previous order of the House, the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. PAUL) is recognized
for 5 minutes.
2010 Ron Paul 21:1
Mr. PAUL.
Madam Speaker, I rise to
call attention to my colleagues of a
vote that occurred in the other body
today. Senator VITTER from Louisiana
offered an amendment to the financial
reform package in the Senate that was
essentially—it was exactly the same as
H.R. 1207, which is Audit the Fed bill.
There was a vote on this, and unfortunately
there were only 37 Senators that
voted in favor of this Audit the Fed
bill. This is rather sad because it is already
in the House version of the financial
reform bill, and in the House we
have 319 cosponsors of this bill. So it is
a very well-accepted bill by a broad
spectrum of both Republicans and
Democrats.
2010 Ron Paul 21:2
But the reason why this is so disturbing
is because of the current
events going on in the financial markets.
Right now we are involved with
bailing out Europe and especially bailing
out Greece, and we are doing this
through the Federal Reserve. The Federal
Reserve does this with currency
swaps. They do this by literally giving
loans and guarantees to other central
banks, and they can even give loans to
governments. So this is placing the
burden on the American taxpayers, not
direct taxation, but by expanding the
money supply, this is a tax on the
American people because this will
bring economic hardship to this country.
And because we have been doing
this for so many years, the economic
hardship is already here. We have been
suffering from it.
2010 Ron Paul 21:3
But the problem comes that once you
have a system of money where you can
create it out of thin air, there is no restraint
on the spending in the Congress.
And then the debt piles up, and
then they get into debt problems as
they are in Greece and other countries
in Europe. And how do they want to
bail them out? With more debt.
2010 Ron Paul 21:4
But what is so outrageous is that the
Federal Reserve can literally deal in
trillions of dollars. They donít get the
money authorized. They donít get the
money appropriated. They just create
it, and they get involved in bailing out
their friends, like they have been doing
for the last 2 years, and now they are
doing it in Europe.
2010 Ron Paul 21:5
So my contention is that they deserve
oversight. Actually, they deserve
to be reined in where they cannot do
what they are doing. But initially, we
need oversight, and that is why this
vote of only 37 Senators willing to
audit the Federal Reserve in a thorough
manner and hold them in check,
which means that there were 62 Senators
that support the idea of maintaining
a status quo with the Fed and
that they will still be able to make
these loans to these foreign central
banks.
2010 Ron Paul 21:6
Now, what has this led to? It has led
to tremendous pressure on the dollar.
The dollar is the reserve currency of
the world. We bail out all of the banks
and all of the corporations. We have
been doing this for the last couple of
years to the tune of trillions of dollars,
and even today it looks like the dollar
is strong on the international exchange
market. People are frightened about
what is happening throughout the
world, and they are buying Treasury
bills and they are buying dollars and
holding dollars. But the real truth is
the dollar is very, very weak, because
the only true measurement of the
value of currency is its relationship to
gold. For 6,000 years, gold has been the
best measurement of the value of a
countryís currency.
2010 Ron Paul 21:7
In the 1970s, we were very much
aware of what was happening. Our dollar
was depreciated to gold at 18 percent,
and it ushered in a whole decade
of inflation: prices going up 15 percent;
interest rates up to 21 percent. In the
last 10 years, our dollar has been devalued
80 percent in terms of gold.
That means, literally, we have printed
way too much money. Right now, we
are just hanging on. The world is hanging
on the fact that the dollar still is
usable. But the whole problem is our financial
situation is no better in this
country than around the world. There
is just a greater trust in our dollar because
we have a military machine and
we have economic growth in this country
which is greater than others; but,
quite frankly, it is quite weak.
2010 Ron Paul 21:8
So we face a very serious crisis. To
me, it is very unfortunate that we are
not going to have this Audit the Fed
bill passed in the Senate. It has been
passed in the House. Possibly we can
salvage this in conference and make
sure that this occurs. But since the
Federal Reserve is responsible for the
business cycle, for the inflation, and
for all of the problems that we have, it
is so vital that we stand up and say it
is time for us to assume the responsibility,
because it is the Congress, under
the Constitution, which has been authorized
to be responsible for the value
of the currency.
2010 Ron Paul 21:9
As a matter of fact, the Constitution
still says, it has not been amended or
changed, but only gold and silver are
supposed to be used as legal tender, not
pieces of paper, not computer entries.
This canít work. It is not working very
well. The world is starting to recognize
this, and I am really concerned about
what is going to happen, because a currency
crisis is much worse than a financial
crisis. We have just been
through the financial crisis. We are in
the midst of it. But a currency crisis,
which is on our doorstep, means that
our dollar will be devalued.
