Ron Paul influence

Texas may be bottom tier when it comes to national education statistics but these candidates nailed it on the head.

Funny how central banking has existed for ~ a century in this country and people think its a norm... to be against it is so radical huh? What about a couple thousand years of history and real money actually backed by something?

"Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it"

It's too bad he gets decimated in the 50+ voting block (aka the welfare recipients and those on state funding). He would destroy every other candidate if the people who "matter" to this country (the young, productive workers) had their fair say. Such is politics....

The central bank isn't the problem. Whatever mistakes the Fed made a decade ago had almost nothing to do with the housing bubble. This is the industry I work in--subprime lending, Congressional housing policy, fraud, poor appraisal practices, and individual greed created this housing bubble. Low interest rates had only a nominal effect on housing prices. By today's standards interest rates were downright high in 2005. Loose credit created the housing bubble, and loose credit was not particularly associated with interest rates.

The Fed isn't to blame for Congress spending money like it's going out of style. I keep hearing that fiat currency is an enabler of Congressional carelessness and that the clear fix is to end the Fed and get on gold. Think about how crazy that is! You're telling me the American people have the political will to transform the entire monetary system of the civilized world but not the political will to demand that Congress balance the budget? You're telling me the American people are willing to sacrifice immense economic pain in the first decade of a monetary policy revolution but don't have the political will to demand simple reforms to the entitlement system? If that's what you're telling me then I've got oceanfront property in Arizona to sell you.

I'm just curious as to what a Fed audit is even meant to accomplish. Fed employees are not elected. Most are bureaucrats and only a handful are even appointed officials. The Fed releases all or most of its private information on a 5-year rolling basis. This audit the Fed and end the Fed movement has begun to become more fad than fact, more fantasy than finite. Even if we uncover the most nefarious items associated with the Fed, what exactly would we do about it? Give greater power to Congress over monetary policy? If you think we have a clusterf*ck of a system now just wait until the Speaker of the House or the Chairman of the House financial services committee is pulling monetary policy strings.

Sure, the Fed could use greater oversight and could stand to operate under the Japenese principle of kaizen--constant improvement--but let's leave the End the Fed movement to 1st year economic majors at our local community colleges.

Although I vehemently disagree with the gold standard, even if it were the right course there's

The dollar will only collapse if Congress doesn't get its spending under control. The collapse of the dollar is not an inevitability. The salvation of the dollar begins this November with the GOP expanding its majority in the House, the GOP taking over the Senate and Romney becoming president. If these 3 things occur and we see no progress on getting our fiscal house in order then I will be with you that the collapse of the dollar is inevitable. That's why it's so important to remove Obama and Reid from positions of power in November. Romney is a moderate, but he's spineless enough to go with the mood of the country and the Tea Party takeover of Congress I'm praying will be the spark that ignites at least the temporary salvation of this nation.

Well, I'm expressing greater optimism than I feel. In my mind I'm willing to give it one last go with a GOP Congress and center-right executive. If there is little progress made then I will start moving to the libertarian camp come 2014 and 2016. I do appreciate how the Ron Paul movement has put a spotlight on the horrific spending habits of Congress. It's too bad for the movement that he's not a little younger.

what exactly is the benefit of the gold standard? they're just going to re-peg it when the political pressure to do so becomes too strong

There are nuances VA Tech is missing. The Fed needs real money, otherwise it can just print and blow-up later when bond vigilantes do here what they've done in Europe. While the gold standard is unpopular (mostly due to propaganda from liberal or ignorant economists), the ideal is a structure of a multi-commodity backed currency, or a system of competing currencies backed by different hard assets. Right now, this system sort of exists, but is left to the domain of the elite, who can buy and store hard assets, or buy futures, to preserve their wealth.

Btw, people who say deflation is "evil" are the intellectual midgets of the economic profession. These people would have you believe that increased productivity in real terms is a bad thing...

Again, alex, there is no political will for anything of the sort. The United States is still relatively wealthy and well off---relatively good economy, good universities, good quality of life, relatively inexpensive fuel. Why in the world would the American public subject itself to years of unnecessary pain because a handful of movement people believe there is a "better" form of monetary system? All the ills of our nation can be corrected externally from our monetary system. Outsized budgets, collapsing entitlement systems, cyclical housing bubbles, burgeoning municipal debt, etc. They can all be fixed without radical monetary revolution. Why have a movement aimed at radical and unrealistic reforms when the movement can most realistically accomplish its goals through incremental reforms in the tax code, in spending, in housing policies and in better Fed and government sponsored enterprise oversight?

I always got the impression that auditing the Fed was meant to reveal something shocking (fairly likely); shocking enough to get the public (if only temporarily) behind massive monetary policy reform.

Just to clarify something guys: Ron Paul realizes he won't be able to End the Fed, despite his desire to do so. What he intends to do if elected is to create a competing sound-money currency and let the people choose which one they prefer.

You don't need to end the Fed if it eventually just fades away.

Bottom line is we are never going to pay the debt back (especially if Romney / Obama get elected) and therefore there will either be A) A default (not going to happen) B) inflate away the debt (might happen) or C) A structured resettling (again not going to happen)...... The way I see it we either walk away in 3-4 years or we see some huge inflation numbers. Debt / GDP has already crossed the "critical" 100% zone, and I really don't see any hope for the future. The bond market can be tricky (just look at Italian spreads over the past year, it really doesn't look bad until its bad.) We are in for a very, very rude awakening in the near future.

The problem is the issue that the "national debt" means virtually nothing to almost all Americans. I know it's not particularly salient to me (what does $15,000,000,000,000 vs $13,000,000,000,000 matter to me?). Unless you are in the CBO, you just aren't exposed to the numbers often enough to get worried, and the benefits (buying useless crap now) far outweigh in our minds the much more negative future consequences (increased inflation, etc.) Our minds just aren't built to deal with complex political issues unfortunately (some do get it,but I don't believe the average American is truly able to understand).

The good news though is that we have a bunch of Chinese goods, they have a bunch of dollars in the bank, and we have nearly half a trillion dollars in total gold reserves. Still, we aren't in a good position.