Ron Paul, opponent of the Fed and fan of the gold standard, a lone wolf no more

[bobbyw24]

Rep. Ron Paul's feelings about America's central bank are a matter of public record. An extensive public record: In dozens of congressional hearings over the past four decades, he has ribbed, cajoled, harassed or annoyed any representative or defender of the Federal Reserve brave or unlucky enough to appear before him. Normally, his interrogations concern America's profligate money printing, Congress's unnecessary spending, the Fed's secrecy and, especially, gold, which he believes should underpin the currency to render it sound. But his distrust runs wide and deep. Consider this comment from a 2007 hearing: "This whole notion that a central bank somehow has the wisdom to know what interest rates should be is, to me, rather bizarre. And also the source of so much mischief." That first sentence is a neat encapsulation of his economic worldview. And the second could well apply to Paul himself. His career in and out of public office has been devoted to two propositions: 1) The Fed is bad. 2) The gold standard is good.

His consistency has been impressive-which is not to say he has been influential. He rarely gets satisfactory answers in hearings, and he'll probably never get satisfaction in his long crusade to radically alter America's monetary policy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/12/AR2011021202409.html

[TNforPaul45]

That was a pretty good article! I am surprised WaPo. If we had more reporting like that in this country, we might not be in as sorry of a state as we appear to be.

The most important quote from the article:



"This may be Ron Paul's moment. The question now is what he does with it."

[jct74]

That was a pretty good article! I am surprised WaPo. If we had more reporting like that in this country, we might not be in as sorry of a state as we appear to be.

It was written by a writer from Slate.com, WaPo just reprinted it up. Anyways, I just saw this article at the very top of MSNBC.com with a picture of Ron's face, so I thought I'd give it a bump. It's a decent article, not overly biased. Very long too.

[bwlibertyman]

I'm afraid that when people still hear Ron Paul they still think cooky gold standard guy. I work with a very vocal progressive and last night he was complaining about how they put him as the chair to his subcommittee. He compared it to putting someone who is anti military in charge of the military budget.

I explained that RP wasn't against monetary policy but just against unsound monetary policy. I told how RP supported money that was actually backed by something and how he didn't think that we should print money out of thin air. He didn't really have anything to say to my arguments. He still thinks he's crazy.

I'm not sure if he's more scared of Ron Paul or an establishment head in 2012. I made the comment that rp was the only gop candidate that had a chance because all of the others were typical rinos. He said "rp's radically to the right". So it's hard to say. I always make fun of Obama in front of his face to the facts that we're still in 2 wars, gitmo is still open, we're still running deficits, and still bailing out corporations. He dismisses them all but what can you expect.