Ron Paul questions Ben Bernanke about World Currency

[Gimpanzee]

y..you...you mean we have NO GOLD?!

not to worry, the national museum doubles as a reserve. Just a case of putting this and a few others



under a couple of thousand degrees centigrade and we're back in the game. That and 18 tonnes in hoopy earings mainly concentrated on North Main St in Cork and Parnell St in Dublin.

[rhonda15]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp7UHYbCfBg]YouTube - Ron Paul Fox Business News 11/18/2008[/ame]

[youngdan]

Can you imagine McMain or Obama discussing this topic

[droghedasouth]

Can you imagine McMain or Obama discussing this topic

I though Bernacke was very polite in response to Ron Paul's 4 minutes ramble through the beauty of gold and the immorality of fiat currencies.

Well for those of you who are obsessed with gold, I can just about see the attraction.

For me, I think it is just one level above tulip bulbs as an investment category and believing that the entire financial sstem should revolve around it is just b0ll0cks.

After all if you want a metal that won't tarnish, why not base the world financial system on platinum.

But of course, there is no talking to you people.

[CookieMonster]

I *heart* Ron Paul.

[rhonda15]

THAT wasn't condescending!

/sarcasm

... to each his own - i guess that's why the central banks of the world continue to hold 15% of all the gold ever mined and why Iran just bought 75 Billion worth of gold in the last week.
If you want to put your faith in a piece of paper with some pretty ink on it be my guest.

[youngdan]

What has your post to do with what I said in my post

[rhonda15]

What has your post to do with what I said in my post

sorry youngdan you misunderstand - i was replying to droghedasouth! - i should've used the quotelink

I know Ron Paul is the best - so nice to see him get respect - from Fox of all places!

[droghedasouth]

THAT wasn't condescending!

/sarcasm

... to each his own - i guess that's why the central banks of the world continue to hold 15% of all the gold ever mined and why Iran just bought 75 Billion worth of gold in the last week.
If you want to put your faith in a piece of paper with some pretty ink on it be my guest.

The corrollary is that 85% of reserve assets are not gold.
Central banks are selling gold - the only still have some because the always had it. For the most part they have no long term interest in holding gold.

But if you want to carry around a little pouch of gold sovereigns or krugerrands fire ahead; but the are very difficult to use for buying cheap flights on Ryanair.

[cathal maguidhir]

looks like if fianna fail ure succeed in getting the 400 billion of imaginary polyfiller into the daily widening cracks ,the whole house is coming down anyway,,let the irish banks fail, capitalise our own bank ,and quick, we are at the point of implosion,half of a tenth of one percent of the people on this planet are enslaving the rest, by lending them imaginary money, "Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders."

– The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s
Volcker issues dire warning on slump
Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has warned that the economic slump has begun to metastasise after a shocking collapse in output over the past two months, threatening to overwhelm the incoming Obama administration as it struggles to restore confidence.


By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 10:39PM GMT 17 Nov 2008

"What this crisis reveals is a broken financial system like no other in my lifetime," he told a conference at Lombard Street Research in London.

"Normal monetary policy is not able to get money flowing. The trouble is that, even with all this [government] protection, the market is not moving again. The only other time we have seen the US economy drop as suddenly as this was when the Carter administration imposed credit controls, which was artificial."

His comments come as the blizzard of dire data in the US continues to crush spirits. The Empire State index of manufacturing dropped to minus 24.6 in October, the lowest ever recorded. Paul Ashworth, US economist at Capital Economics, said business spending was now going into "meltdown", compounding the collapse in consumer spending that is already under way.

Mr Volcker, an adviser to President-Elect Barack Obama and a short-list candidate for Treasury Secretary, warned that it is already too late to avoid a severe downturn even if the credit markets stabilise over coming months. "I don't think anybody thinks we're going to get through this recession in a hurry," he said.

He advised Mr Obama to tread a fine line, embarking on bold action with a "compelling economic logic" rather than scattering fiscal stimulus or resorting to a wholesale bail-out of Detroit. "He can't just throw money at the auto industry."

Mr Volcker is a towering figure in the US, praised for taming the great inflation of the late 1970s with unpopular monetary rigour. He is no friend of Alan Greenspan, who replaced him at the Fed and presided over credit excess that pushed private debt to 300pc of GDP.

"There has been leveraging in the economy beyond imagination, and nobody was saying we need to do something," he said. "There are cycles in human nature and it is up to regulators to moderate these excesses. Alan was not a big regulator."

Even so, he said the arch-culprit was the bonus system that allowed bankers to draw forward "tremendous rewards" before the disastrous consequences of their actions became clear, as well as the new means of credit alchemy that let them slice and dice mortgage debt into packages that disguised risk.
it could be worse ,so i did cheer up ,i started to smile and sure enough it did get worse.