Jan 27 2009
Ron Paul: ‘We need more regulation’
Texas Congressman Ron Paul made the rounds of the cable news shows this morning, explaining that to help the current financial crisis we do need more regulation - of the Treasury and Federal Reserve.
As all of Washington is swept up in a frenzy of spending, Paul stands out as the voice of reason. He points out that we need to look at the reasons why we are in this to begin with - “spending too much, borrowing too much, and inflating too much.” And so that begs the question, how is spending and borrowing more going to help the problem?
First here he is on CNN’s “American Morning” -
Host Kiran Chetry asks Paul what the President can do about the deepening recession, citing that most economists advocate massive spending by the government.
Paul responds that massive spending would be helpful - if done by the people. Every penny the government spends has to come from the people. Governments do not spend productively, and the proposed stimulus package would cost each American $6,700 in more debt. How is that beneficial?
So his answer? Get government out of the way, allow the liquidation of debt and allow prices of houses to go down. It is hard medicine, but in the long run would be much more productive than massively increasing debt and destroying the dollar, something which is getting closer and closer.
Chetry then retorts with the common response - “the hands off approach didn’t seem to work” she says. But Paul rightly declares, “we never had a hands off approach,” saying “To blame the free market for this calamity is absolutely an intellectual error.”
He then was off to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” -
Again he takes the usual questions attacking free markets and defending more regulation and spending. Here he points out “no one wants to cut the American Empire.” Our overseas presence is costing us $1 trillion dollars a year. To stop wasting that money would immediatly benefit the crisis in this country.
And again Dr. Paul gives his prescription of hard medicine, something the people don’t want to hear and politicians don’t want to say. There is no easy way out. When you are in trouble because you’ve been spending beyond your mean, you can’t spend more to get out of it.
I didn’t catch these I’m glad you posted them.
I loved “where in the world is osama bin laden.” Especially that “Osama bin hiding” song lol…
The biggest thing that I took away from that film was that nobody was mad at Americans - they were mad at our government. Fair enough, I’ve been mad at my government too.
They probably understand better than our own people do what it’s like to not have control over our government. If our people understood (or cared?) more then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.
I loved the interview w/ Osama’s uncle. “So you’re saying he’s in Afghanistan” lol… great movie. Supersize me (the mickey d’s film he did a few years back) was a great one too. I’m sure you’ve seen it, but if you haven’t - I bet you’d love it.
I completely agree.
You know, I still have never seen “Supersize Me.” I haven’t eaten fast-food for a very long time, so figured I wouldn’t get much out of it. I did enjoy his style in “Where in the world…” though, so perhaps I should see it. Great stuff.