Ron Paul has long argued that we need to legalize competition with the fiat money produced by the Federal Reserve. In fact, while today he believes that our interventionist foreign policy is the greatest challenge we face, he often says that inflation and fiat money is the reason he decided to run for Congress in the first place.
And when you hear stories like this about FDR arbitrarily altering the value of money, how can you disagree?
Some mornings during the autumn of 1933, when the unemployment rate was 22 percent, the president, before getting into his wheelchair, sat in bed, surrounded by economic advisers, setting the price of gold. One morning he said he might raise it 21 cents: “It’s a lucky number because it’s three times seven.” His Treasury secretary wrote that if people knew how gold was priced “they would be frightened.”
The Depression’s persistence, partly a result of such policy flippancy, was frightening. In 1937, during the depression within the Depression, there occurred the steepest drop in industrial production ever recorded. By January 1938 the unemployment rate was back up to 17.4 percent.
Is there another single anecdote that shows so clearly why we need Ron Paul in office to push for a return to the free-market of money?
[The above quote is from George Will's Sunday commentary in the Washington Post which discusses Amity Shales' new book, The Forgotten Man.]
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This week’s ballyhoo over a 14,000 Dow index reminded me of the ballyhoo about forty years ago over the Dow breaking 1,000. That was early in my years of full time employment. What it means to me is today’s dollar is worth about 7 cents (1/14th of the dollar of the mid-1960s) in terms of its purchasing power. It also means to me that someone has stolen 13/14ths of value of my earnings over the years of my working life. I suppose it is the nature of fiat currency to inflict this theft of one’s lifetime earnings upon a working man or woman. And who is it who benefits?
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