Thursday, November 08, 2007

Rep. Ron Paul on the economy and taxes

Real conservatives have always supported low taxes and low spending.

But today, too many politicians and lobbyists are spending America into ruin. We are nine trillion dollars in debt as a nation. Our mounting government debt endangers the financial future of our children and grandchildren. If we don’t cut spending now, higher taxes and economic disaster will be in their future — and yours.

In addition, the Federal Reserve, our central bank, fosters runaway debt by increasing the money supply — making each dollar in your pocket worth less. The Fed is a private bank run by unelected officials who are not required to be open or accountable to “we the people.”

Worse, our economy and our very independence as a nation is increasingly in the hands of foreign governments such as China and Saudi Arabia, because their central banks also finance our runaway spending.

We cannot continue to allow private banks, wasteful agencies, lobbyists, corporations on welfare, and governments collecting foreign aid to dictate the size of our ballooning budget. We need a new method to prioritize our spending. It’s called the Constitution of the United States.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tim - Why do worry so much about the federal government being so much in debt when the local government has a surplus and you think that it irresponsible? I have one question are all of the town's long term liabilies fully funded? And if they were fully funded would the surplus be so high?

Anonymous said...

Even if Ron Paul were elected and strict fiscal discipline were imposed tomorrow, it may already be too late to avoid the consequences of decades of debt-financed spending.

As you mention, the US Treasury is $9 Trillion in debt. Plus the federal government is liable for another $60 Trillion in unfunded obligations. Even brisk economic growth cannot pay our way out of this massive mountain of debt at this point.

The feds will have only two options in the longrun: either default on obligations (unlikely), or hyper-inflate the dollar to meet obligations (likely).

In fundamental terms, US dollars are junk bonds. Investors are beginning to recognize this and trade junk US dollars for harder assets.

Gold is soaring at an all time high of $840+/ oz. Even the formerly junk Canadian dollar has reached an all time high against the US dollar.

Oil producers are demanding more US dollars due, in part, to the declining value of the dollar. There's a good chance our economy is heading into serious stagflation, -- the worst combination of hyper-inflation and slow economic growth or recession.

It's unlikely that any candidate for president can solve these fundamental economic problems. The cow's already out of the barn, and we'll be paying dearly for decades of both Democratic and Republican debt-financed spendaholism.